HTTP Archive has released its annual State of the Web report, the Web Almanac 2022. The report contains data on page content, user experience, publishing, and content distribution, along with contextual insights from subject matter experts. It draws from a dataset evaluating millions of web pages and is continuously updated monthly. The June 2022 crawl metrics used in the report are publicly queried on BigQuery.
The CMS section is of particular interest to WordPress users and product developers. The HTTP Archive dataset, based on Wappalyzer's CMS definition , identified more than 270 different CMSs. WordPress continues to lead the market with 35% adoption on mobile devices, followed by Wix (2%), Joomla (1,8%), Drupal (1,6%), and Squarespace (1,0%).
In contrast to W3Tech's statistics, which show WordPress's market share declining from March to June 2022 and then remaining stable, Web Almanac shows WordPress increasing 1,4% over 2021 on mobile and 0,2% over 2021 on desktop. The methodologies differ in that W3Tech only includes the top 10 million websites in its statistics, as defined by the Alexa Top 10 Million list and Tranco Top 1 Million list . The Web Almanac dataset includes 8.360.179 websites, of which 7.905.956 are mobile websites and 5.428.235 are 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.
Web Almanac also released Core Web Vitals performance data , and results vary widely across 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 achieving CWV scores above 1%. TYPO3 (62%), Jimdo (61%), and Drupal (50%) aren't far behind. WordPress, which surpassed 19% last year, is expected to reach 30% in 2022 and is catching up with Joomla (38%) and Wix (39%). Achieving a consistently high Core Web Vitals score is more difficult for CMSs that are primarily hosted independently on the web than for a centralized SaaS platform, so 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%).
Web Almanac also released data for WordPress origins with Core Web Vitals passing scores by region. Japan leads the way 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 the CMS chapter for more data on the major platforms. The 2022 Web Almanac also includes a wealth of information on broader web topics, including accessibility, security, sustainability, interoperability, and more, thanks to the efforts of 108 volunteers.
