WordPress has made a huge impact on the website world – in a sense, it’s democratised the internet for people who may not have had the capability or resources to have a website, giving them a simple, affordable and flexible platform to be competitive online no matter what business they have.
But what’s the future for WordPress? All businesses face competition from time to time, and in the world of internet development and ‘drag ‘n drop’ website tools things move fast.
WordPress competitors like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy and Webnode offer alternatives that customers will review and may select, but the reality is that WordPress still offers a far broader and more flexible designs, templates and plugins to develop more functionally complex (but creator-friendly) websites.
To reinforce that point, it’s worth noting that more than 40% of all websites on the internet are powered by WordPress!
But like-for-like competitors are not WordPress’s only threat – as the world of Artificial Intelligence gathers pace and momentum, and more and more customer-facing applications begin to integrate AI into functionality, the broader question for WordPress is ‘how do we stay relevant and ahead of the trend?”.
There are already companies offering AI-based website building capability (some better than others) in which web-based applications ask users a series of questions, draw data from external resources and design a website based on the criteria and input given by the person requesting the website.
The results are still fairly rudimentary, and the reality is that these are not true AI-based websites (they’re effectively working within human parameters rather than creating websites from an organic, intuitive position).
But nonetheless, as with any and all technological development, things iterate and develop quickly. If, in a few years’ time, anyone is able to whip up a website using nothing more than a quick interface that asks you what you want and then generates it for you, what use will WordPress be?
Simply put, WordPress is by nature an evolving platform and one that makes good use of its community of developers to stay on top of the latest technologies as they evolve.
AI is another of those available (and evolving) technologies so the likelihood is that WordPress will simply continue to give users AI-based options as they come online – there are already a few AI-based plugins available on WordPress helping sites with functionality like translation, spam filtering, chatbots, SEO and more.
How fast fully-intelligent website building functionality will come into view is hard to predict but it’s almost certain that when that becomes a reality, WordPress (and other site building platforms) will be at the forefront of making AI-based website builders available to the general public.
For now at least, WordPress is here to stay and continues to give businesses a cost-effective, flexible and highly-functional option to get online.
Find out more about Realnet’s WordPress development capabilities, call us today on 01223 550800 or email info@realnet.co.uk.