WordPress in the Enterprise.
The Top 10 WordPress agencies in the UK are changing fast with a new breed of digital agency in the top 10 – gone are the smaller players.
Until the last year, the top 10 WordPress agencies list was populated 50/50 between digital agencies and freelancers but the growth of WordPress as an Enterprise platform has changed the landscape forever.
WordPress might have come from the hobby end of the market but it now controls approximately 16% of the enterprise web platform world. And an enterprise loves to buy services from larger digital agencies but they have an entirely different approach to the smaller WordPress customers of old.
Risk and return
Less concerned about the actual cost of providing digital services, enterprises are all about the value that is brought and how that is secured over an extended period of time. They crave:
- Long-term partnerships, not short-term builds
- Full WordPress service offering, a one-stop shop
- Commercial-grade support, project and account management
- Strategic guidance and direction at the C-level
- Balance between technical and commercial skills
- Here tomorrow
And that marks Enterprise Agencies out as very different from smaller, development-driven companies. It also marks the start of enterprise agencies dominating the Top 25 WordPress agencies list in the same way web design agencies got ousted in the late 1990’s by the full service digital agencies.
What makes a Top 10 WordPress Agency?
It’s difficult to produce a definitive list but speaking from the experience of being on that top 10 list for a while I would suggest a combination of the following:
- Experience in depth and breadth. Using WordPress in the Enterprise is quite new so there are not that many agencies who’ll have blood on their t-shirt.
- Good client history. Enterprise corporates will favour buying services from agencies with similar corporate history.
- Stability and longevity. It’s a worry for the corporate if they’re buying into a company that only started yesterday. An agency that has been around for 5+ years is more likely to be around and doing good work in another 5. Too many agencies go bust after less than 2 years, as many as 75% go pop, fail, or get bought for staff value.
- Strong financials. It’s easy to borrow and grow, harder to consolidate and payback. It’s also the second biggest killers of agencies (the first being lack of sales).
Subjectively there are lots of other measures including location, trust, support networks, referral and even brand. But all of this boils down to corporates wanting to understand what makes the agency tick, and trusting they can deliver the right basket of services, in a timely fashion and with due diligence.
What does Google think?
Arguably more important than awards, Google ranks organisations based on thousands of variables so a simple search on Google might be the place to start. Enterprises needing a WordPress agency are likely to start their search there, it’s also the easiest place to appear if you are a good agency – as Google is probably a better judge of companies than most curated lists!
By Penny Driscoll
