A few weeks ago, WordPress.com (not to be confused with the free downloadable software at WordPress.org) announced that they were going to be offering a site building service. This has concerned a lot of folks in the industry (“they’re going to steal our business”), but I think the concern is overblown. In fact, this is likely a good thing.
First, most of our clients won’t know or care about it. When someone comes to GreenMellen for a site, they very rarely come with WordPress in mind. We educate them on why it’s likely their best decision, but few were searching for “companies that build WordPress sites”. They want a company to build a site to meet their goals, and WordPress is simply a way we choose to get it done.
Next, building a site is getting easier while messaging is becoming more vital. Over the past few years, various visual editing tools have made creating a basic site easier and easier. I suspect the coming years will continue in that direction. Having someone else that can build a site is great, but it’s the messaging (and likely things like keyword research as well) that really make it work, and WordPress.com will have a tough time scaling that.
Finally, WordPress currently powers roughly 40% of the entire internet, or likely some 400,000,000 sites. If WordPress.com did an amazing job and could build a million sites a year (which seems incredibly unlikely), that means they’d take away 0.25% of the market.
All of that said, it’s an interesting development to unpack. My friends Robert Jacobi and Chris Lema both have written great takes on this, so I encourage you to check out their thoughts.
