Wordpress

Fall/Winter 2015-2016

ADMS 4245 Digital Marketing

Social Media Assignment

WordPress

Instructor

Professor Marius Dobre

Prepared by Group 8

Le, Trinh Ai Le

Nguyen, Thuy Duong

Muhammad, Irteza

Liu, Gary

November 5, 2015

I. SITUATION ANALYSIS

        According to Web Technology, WordPress is the fastest growing content management system as of September 2015^[1]. WordPress is used to power over 15% of the world's 1 million largest websites and almost 55% of all websites running on a content management system (CMS)^[2]. WordPress is an Open Source content publishing platform which is developed by and for the user community. Originally WordPress was introduced as a blogging system. To this date WordPress has become a full content management system which offer plugins, widgets and themes^[3]. On the WordPress.org website, customer can download and install a software script named WordPress. It is free, 100% customizable and the site lives independently on its own. Customers host the website themselves and responsible for maintenance. WordPress.com is the commercial hosted version of WordPress platform. The sites created by WordPress.com is fully maintained, controlled and hosted by WordPress.com. Hence customers have less customization power and not as much flexibility compared to WordPress.org.  Customers can switch between .org and .com as needed with some required adjustments. WordPress.org will be the main focus object in this paper since it is the home of the platform.

        A. Strengths

        Easy to use and learn: WordPress does not require PHP nor HTML knowledge^[4]. Customers do not need to have an extended knowledge in web design nor hire a web designer. It is easy to use, manage and control with a user-friendly design.

        Flexible and Extensible: There are thousands of plugins, widgets and themes available that allow customers to customize their website as they wish. Extensive variety of thousands of themes, plugins and widgets at free or premium cost.

        Strong community support: WordPress has a huge and very supportive community. Customer service is offered through forums and live chat. There are plenty of e-books, blogs and

online video tutorials that are devoted to helping users get the most out of WordPress.

        SEO friendly: WordPress is written using standard compliance high quality code and implement a number of search engine friendly techniques. Also, there are many plugins available for support and improve search engine optimization rate.

        Multilingual: WordPress has options for users to build a multilingual site by using plugins. Having a multilingual site can create opportunities to reach different clients, readers, and markets on a global scale.

        B. Weaknesses

        Plugins: As WordPress is open source, it is constantly receiving feedback and improvements from the development community. However, many of the plugins available sometimes are not as quick to adapt to the updates, which can make them not operate correctly and lead to compatibility issues^[5].  In terms of performance, WordPress can be very slow if overloaded with lots of plugins.

        Security: WordPress itself is not secured. The script of PHP and many other applications are not protected. A number of plugins are vulnerable and cause even more security issues. However, there are support plugins and steps needed to increase the security rate of user's site.

        Graphics modification and Formatting: Quick.cms and Joomla are two direct competitors of WordPress. Compared to these two application, it is more complicated to modifying and formatting the graphics and tables in WordPress. To create a unique look and completely customize these features, it need users to have certain knowledge of CSS and HTML.

II. OBJECTIVES

1. Continuously improve the product and services to address the weaknesses in performance.

2. Improve internal communication to increase the cooperation between WordPress developers.

3. Increase brand awareness and enhance customer relationships through multiple marketing media.

4. Increase 30% sales of WordPress VIP and capture 10% more market share within 12 months.

III. OPTIONS

1. Status Quo

        Target market: Blogs, Corporate websites, Small-Medium sized websites

        Technology: WordPress usually has minor upgrades with each update versions. There are new upgrades monthly and 2-4 new versions every year. Whether users choose to update or not monthly, it may or may not affect their site depends on the plugins, widgets and themes they use.

         Performance: Problem solving based design dedicate to create a user-friendly environment. In contrast with Joomla or Drupal, which target the advanced professional customers who very knowledgeable about web design and coding.

        Price: WordPress itself and many plugins, widgets and themes are free. Premium and VIP account options are available with extra cost. Many premium plugins, widgets and themes also available with extra cost.

2. Advance Technology

        Target market: Expand to E-Commerce, Social Networks and Large sized websites.

        Technology: Invest and develop more advance update version instead of small changes every updates of the software. Match with Joomla and Drupal technical advancement and ability to build social networks^[6].

        Performance: Develop and introduce a version with much higher technical power and strong ability to grow to capture the professional web designers market.

        Price: It should still be free in order to compete with Joomla and Drupal.

3. Increase Price

        Target market: Blogs, Corporate websites, Small-Medium sized websites.