HTTP Archive released its annual State of the Web report, the Web Almanac 2022. The report contains data on page content, user experience, content publishing and distribution with contextual insights from subject matter experts. It draws on a dataset that evaluates millions of web pages and is continuously updated on a monthly basis. The metrics from the June 2022 scan, used for the report, can be questioned publicly on BigQuery.
Il CMS chapter is of particular interest to WordPress users and product developers. The HTTP Archive dataset, based on the CMS definition by Wappalyzer , has identified more than 270 different CMSs. WordPress is still the market leader with 35% adoption on mobile, followed by Wix (2%), Joomla (1,8%), Drupal (1,6%) and Squarespace (1,0%).
In contrast to statistics from W3Tech, which show WordPress market share declining from March to June 2022 and then stable, Web Almanac shows WordPress up 1,4% from 2021 on mobile and 0,2% from 2021 on desktop. The methodologies differ as W3Tech only includes the top 10 million websites in its statistics, as defined by the Alexa top 10 million list and the top 1 million list. Stride . The Web Almanac dataset comprises 8.360.179 websites, of which 7.905.956 are mobile websites and 5.428.235 desktop websites.
Drupal and Joomla are slowly declining and Wix has grown over the past three years, although it still accounts for only 2% of the CMS market.
New in this year's data are the top five WordPress page builders. The Wappalyzer survey found that 34% of WordPress websites in the dataset use a Page Builder plugin for building pages. It would be interesting to see these numbers compared to how many sites only use the block editor with blocking plugins, along with sites that use the classic editor and no page builder, but this was not part of the data collection here.
Elementor is the most popular among page builders, occupying 40% of desktop sites and 43% of mobile WordPress sites. WPBakery is no less with 34/33%, followed by Divi, SiteOrigin and Oxygen.
As we see it today, page builders exert a significant influence on a site's performance ”,“ Historically, page builders have been anecdotal indicators of poor performance. For example, our dataset indicates that it is not uncommon for websites to have multiple page builders installed, adding a significant increase to the resources loaded from a site.
Now that we are monitoring page builder data, in future editions we will have the opportunity to evaluate year-over-year changes in page builder adoption and look for correlations in those changes with the overall performance of WordPress as a CMS.
said CMS chapter author Jonathan Wold.
The Web Almanac has also released data for the performance of Core Web Vitals and results vary widely between CMSs. Duda, a drag-and-drop website builder used by less than 1% of websites, is posting the highest numbers with 67% of its sites having CWV scores surpassed. TYPO3 (62%), Jimdo (61%) and Drupal (50%) are not far behind. WordPress, which surpassed 19% last year, reaches 30% in 2022 and is catching up with Joomla (38%) and Wix (39%). Get a consistently high score on Core Web Vitals it's more difficult for CMSs that are mostly independently hosted on the web, compared to a centralized SaaS platform, so the improvements here may be more difficult to achieve.
The report delves into core platform performance based on specific metrics, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Median Lighthouse performance scores for most platforms were low and needed performance across the board. SEO scores are consistently high across all major CMSs.
Lighthouse's average accessibility score for top CMSs is between 77 and 91. WordPress ranks in the middle with 86, and Squarespace scored the highest in this category with 91.
The report also includes some other interesting WordPress-specific charts, such as year-over-year adoption by region. WordPress appears to be the most popular in Spain (39%), Italy (38%) and Japan (38%).
The Web Almanac has also released data for WordPress origins with passing scores for i Core Web Vitals based on geographic area. Japan is the leader with 52%, followed by Canada (49%) and Germany (48%).
"It is also worth noting the large disparity between geographic areas, with Brazil at 10% overall compared to Japan at 52%," Wold said in the report. “Brazil at the low end is growing however, improving 100% year over year. As we evaluate next year's dataset, it may be worth further investigating low-end performers to identify potential causes and opportunities for improvement. "
Check out the full report in CMS chapter for more data on major platforms. The Web Almanac 2022 It also includes a mine of information on broader web topics, including accessibility, security, sustainability, interoperability, and more, thanks to the efforts of 108 volunteers.
