WordPress founder and CEO of WooCommerce owner Automattic Matt Mullenweg kicked off WooConf 2016 in Austin with the first ever State of the Woo address, during which he shared an insightful look at WooCommerce’s past, present, and future.
The Woo Journey
WooCommerce, From Zero To Hiro
More than 37 percent of all eCommerce sites use WooCommerce, making it a de facto in the industry. It hasn’t always been this way, though. Mullenweg pointed out that when it started in Sept. 2011, it had zero downloads, six official themes, and only nine official extensions.
Just one year later, in 2012, however, the plugin grew to 310,000 downloads, 24 official themes, 145 extensions, 30+ third-party themes, and 30+ third-party extensions.
Then, in Nov 2013, WooCommerce 2.0 was released. At the time, WooCommerce had more than 2 million downloads and over 250 extensions. Just one year later at WooConf 2014, WooCommerce had more than 5 million downloads, more than 350 extensions, and 380,000 installations.
Earlier this year, WooCommerce 2.5 launched. The first release under Automattic’s new leadership, WooCommerce 2.5 includes support for refunds, UX, REST API, and speed. WooCommerce now has more than 13,800,000 downloads, a million site installations, and more than 400 site extensions.
Mullenweg also highlighted several other stats from Woo’s growth:
- There are 76 people on Woo Team across 18 countries
- There are currently 433 contributors
- WooCommerce Meetups: 40 groups with 5,270 members
- WooCommerce is fully translated into 26 different languages at 100 percent
- There are currently 22 “WooExperts,” hand-selected experts that understand WooThemes’ products
What’s Coming
Storefront 2.0
Before WooCommerce 2.6, a new version of Storefront will be released — which will include a more modern look and make it more responsive than ever.
WordPress And Woo Planning
In January, team leads from Woo and Automatic went to Capetown and hashed out the things that will have the biggest impacts on WordPress and Woo, like the REST API, for example, Mullenweg said.
The team will be focusing on localization, language, currency, and other country-specific extensions in the future. Mullenweg noted how eCommerce stores, like ColourPop, are growing with Woo and doubling down on scalability will also be a focus as they move forward.
Mullenweg said Automattic plans to address the stumbling blocks users encounter when getting started with WooCommerce, like payments, shipments, taxes, and more. He alluded to a Jetpack-like bundle to be released in the near future, which would leverage the lessons Automattic has learned through the evolution of Jetpack, and enable “anyone to be an entrepreneur with WordPress.”
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