Competitive Research Report
Milan Milićev
May 2021.
Perform and present a detailed SWOT analysis for Elementor, and for 2 competitive website building platforms of your choosing – one from within the WP ecosystem and one non-wordpress. Include a short introduction for each platform, and provide high level information.
Make sure you cover:
- Main target audience
- Value proposition
- Product benefit
- Business model
- Product gaps and frustrations
- Anything else you feel is important to note.
Create a one-pager website in Elementor, and recreate it in the 2 platforms you chose for the previous question. Include any element or feature you feel is important and valuable.
Present a feature-by-feature comparison addressing 3 feature types:
- Feature parity
- Elementor superiority
- Competitor superiority
Read through the latest quarterly report published by Wix, and provide 3 insights regarding their product, business & growth focus for 2021.
Task #1
Perform and present a detailed SWOT analysis for Elementor, and for 2 competitive website building platforms of your choosing – one from within the WP ecosystem and one non-wordpress. Include a short introduction for each platform, and provide high level information.
Make sure you cover:
- Main target audience
- Value proposition
- Product benefit
- Business model
- Product gaps and frustrations
- Anything else you feel is important to note.
competitor within WordPress eco-system
non-WordPress competitor
Elementor
The world’s leading WordPress website builder that delivers high-end page designs and advanced capabilities.
Company: Elementor
Type of business: Private company
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Number of employees: +300
Elementor
Main target audience
Built for Professionals from Freelancer to Agency
Value proposition
Take your design vision and turn it into a stunning custom-made website with the world’s leading WordPress drag and drop website builder.
Product benefit
Take control of your website from header to footer and everything in between with a powerful Theme builder, 80+ design elements, Popup builder, Dynamic content, and integration with other marketing tools.
Business model
Freemium
5 Subscription per year plans
- ESSENTIAL – 1 Pro Website
- ADVANCED – 3 Pro Websites
- EXPERT – 25 Pro Websites
- STUDIO – 100 Pro Websites
- AGENCY – 1.000 Pro Websites
Product gaps and frustrations
- Code can be seen as bloated compared to some newer Page Builders
- The exponential growth of Elementor has led to a problem with support scaling
- Some 3rd party plugins have been known to use up the hosting resources or cause conflicts, resulting in Elementor editor being unresponsive.
Strength
- Good balance between features set and ease of use
- By far, the world’s most popular Page Builder
- Large ecosystem of addons and integrations
- Big and active community
- A large number of tutorials
Weakness
- Code can be seen as bloated compared to some newer Page Builders
- The exponential growth of Elementor has lead to a problem with support scaling
- A smaller number of official templates compared to some major competitors
- A large number of competitors have a Lifetime deal.
Opportunity
- The recent pandemic has pushed more businesses to go online and with WordPress dominating the market with 40% (66% of all of the new websites), Elementor is the most popular way to visually create websites.
- Creating a marketplace for web designers to showcase and sell ready-made templates
- Empowering community members through support, education, platform tools, and acknowledgment to help other members to solve their problems.
- Develop a deeper relationship with current addon and themedevelopers and marketing tools. Also, reach out to new potential partnerships.
Threat
- Some 3rd party plugins have been known to use up the hosting resources or cause conflicts, resulting in Elementor editor being unresponsive.
- 3rd party plugins depend on Elementor code structure, which prevents Elementor from making drastic changes in the code optimization and technologies being used.
- Elementor as a plugin depends on WordPress and clients Hosting provider.
Interesting stats
0
m
number of active installs
0
5 star reviews on wp.org
0
th
most popular WP plugin
0
k
Facebook group members
0
k
Facebook Fan page likes
0
k
YouTube subscribers
0
k
Instagram followers
0
k
Twitter followers
Divi
Divi is more than just a WordPress theme, it’s a completely new website building platform that replaces the standard WordPress post editor with a vastly superior visual editor. It can be enjoyed by design professionals and newcomers alike, giving you the power to create spectacular designs with surprising ease and efficiency.
Company: Elegant Themes
Type of business: Private company
Founded: 2006.
Headquarters: San Francisco, USA
Number of employees: +115
Why Divi?
In the general WordPress community, Divi is considered to be Elementors closest competitor, give its similar featured set and popularity. When someone decides to use a WordPress Page Builder, Elementor and Divi are, most of the time, two main solutions to consider.
Divi
Main target audience
Divi is made for: Freelancers, Agencies, and Website owners
Value proposition
Divi makes building websites faster, more efficient and it gives you the freedom to bring your own visions to life.
Product benefit
Anyone can jump into Divi thanks to its visual editor and hundreds of pre-made designs. Build unlimited websites for your clients on a single membership.
Business model
Subscription
2 Subscription plans
- Per year / Unlimited licenses – $89
- Lifetime / Unlimited licenses – $249
Product gaps and frustrations
- No free version
- The number of options can be overwhelming
- Code is considered bloated
- Less modules that the main competition
- Some code remains after removing the plugin
Strength
- A large number of ready-made templates (215 Layout Packs / 1584 Total Layouts)
- A/B Split test functionality
- Both plans include unlimited licences
- Has a Lifetime offer
- Has a marketplace for templates
- Has good chat and email support (praised on Trustpilot 16k 5.0 reviews)
Weakness
- No free version
- Higher learning curve than the main competition
- Code is considered bloated
- Fewer modules that the main competition
- No pop-up builder
Opportunity
- With its growing Marketplace for Templates, Child Themes and Modules, Divi has another steady revenue stream (Divi charges 30% to creators).
- Divi partnered with 3 large hosting companies (Pressable, Flywheel, and SiteGround) to deliver a better customer experience and to make sure that the hosting is compatible with Divi. In the future, Divi could increase the number of partner companies, with the benefit of cross-promotion.
- Being located in San Francisco, they have great opportunities to acquire new talent and funding.
Threat
- Lifetime plan that they offer may be a good deal for the customers in the beginning, but it could backfire on Divi as time goes by. They may be overwhelmed by support tickets and not having a recurring revenue stream to invest in further development.
- More and more new competitors come to market with the main focus on speed and performance, which Divi is lacking.
Interesting stats
0
k
number of customers
0
k
5 star reviews on Trustpilot
0
k
Facebook group members
0
k
YouTube subscribers
0
k
Instagram followers
0
k
Twitter followers
WiX
Wix is a platform that gives you the freedom to create, design, manage and develop your web presence exactly the way you want.
Company: WiX
Type of business: Publicly traded company
Founded: 2006.
Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
Number of employees: +5.000
Why WiX?
WiX is by far the most popular hosted no-code website builder, it holds a 31% market share. It has been in the market for a long time since 2006. and managed to position itself as an easy-to-use website page builder.
WiX
Main target audience
Build mainly for business owners and graphic designers.
Value proposition
Discover the platform that gives you the freedom to create, design, manage and develop your web presence exactly the way you want.
Product benefit
CMS, hosting, domain, e-commerce, SEO and marketing tools conveniently all in one place.
Business model
Freemium
2 categories of plans
Website Plans
- Connect Domain $4.50 / per month
- Combo $8.50 / per month
- Unlimited $12.50 / per month
- VIP $24.50 / per month
Business & eCommerce Plans
- $17 / per month
- $25 / per month
- $35 / per month
Product gaps and frustrations
- Not truly responsive
- No export options
- Hard to change the theme
- Tricky pricing (free first year)
- No Custom Post Type
- No ability to change page width
- Everything is position absolute
Strength
- WiX has full control over the hosting, CMS, and add-ons.
- Good insights into its users through sign-up process survey.
- High-quality video ads and influencer marketing (with a large marketing budget) and recently creative and aggressive Wix vs WordPress campaign.
- A large number of quality ready-made templates.
- Additional Canva-like graphics and resources.
- Guided process for creating a website with useful reminders.
- Additional tools like Logo maker, Video maker, AI text suggestions, POS integration, and Invoicing.
Weakness
- With the free domain/hosting plan, Wix users created a large number of low-quality websites.
- Bad reputation for low SEO and speed performance.
- Not truly responsive.
- No export options.
- The user doesn’t own any of the content and design on Wix.
Opportunity
- In February of 2020 Wix introduces Editor X, a Webflow-like visual builder for more advanced users, which has positive reviews and can significantly improve Wix brand recognition as a tool for professionals.
- Wix continues to invest in AI technologies (Rise.ai acquisition) and implement in its product – Wix ADI and Wix Facebook ads AI Algorithm
- Wix switches focus from Portfolio website to full eCommerce solutions with Payment, POS integration, Shipping, Cart abandonment, Order Management, and Analytics.
Threat
- Wix being an all-in-one solution is a closed system, presents a risk for new users, not being able to export content or edit code freely.
- Wix has Wix ADI for beginners, Wix Editor for business owners, Editor X for designers, and Velo for developers (all base on the same infrastructure) – in trying to be the solution for everybody may lose focus and direction.
- Wix has 300 integrated apps, but users have a lot of needs and there are specific solutions in different parts of the world. Compared with WordPress repository of +58.000 free plugins, can be a decisive reason for users to go with WordPress.
Interesting stats
0
m
number of WiX websites
0
k
number of WiX e-commerce stores
0
m
number of paid customers
0
m
total funding
0
k
Facebook group members
0
m
Facebook Fan page
0
k
YouTube subscribers
0
k
Instagram followers
0
k
Twitter followers
Task #2
Create a one-pager website in Elementor, and recreate it in the 2 platforms you chose for the previous question. Include any element or feature you feel is important and valuable.
Present a feature-by-feature comparison addressing 3 feature types:
- Feature parity
- Elementor superiority
- Competitor superiority
Task #3
Read through the latest quarterly report published by Wix, and provide 3 insights regarding their product, business & growth focus for 2021.
Product
WiX product development is going to focus on two main categories: WiX eCommerce solutions and Editor X.
They are going to increase their efforts in supporting small and medium businesses by setting up an online presence powered by WiX Payments. This is the fastest-growing segment which is part of their business solutions. This accompanied by WiX POS and integrated Facebook and Instagram ads are proven to be very appealing to small business owners.
WiX is known for its simple drag and drop builder based on templates, which is most attractive for small business owners and beginners. With the introduction of Editor X they are appealing to the other specter of web creators, to designers and web agencies. In doing so, they believe that they would come full circle and have a solution for every type of user and every type of business.
Business
WiX is enjoying a steady increase in revenue from its Creative Subscriptions, with the all-time high in 2020. But Wix’s fastest-growing segment is what it calls business solutions. This segment grew sales 76% in 2020, driven by tremendous growth from its Wix Payments product.
Gross payment volume (GPV), which is the total dollars flowing through Wix Payments, grew 126% to $5.4 billion in 2020. The company expects to hit $10 billion in GPV in 2021. Furthermore, WiX sees a lot of potential in areas out of North America, especially in Europe, so they plan to invest even more in localization and partnerships with other payment solutions.
Growth
WiX plans to make incremental investments of approximately $60 million in 2021 to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. This incremental investment will be focused in the following areas of interest:
- Continued expansion of Customer Care to address the current and future demand and to expand support dedicated to Wix Payments. They plan to hire at least 600 more Experts in 2021
- Advancing the evolution of the Wix Payments platform by improving the user experience, expanding to additional geographies and offering new capabilities for its users
- Building their team and infrastructure necessary to scale and globalize the Wix Point of Sale (POS) solution
- Growing Account Management team to provide the high level of service expected by Partners and high-volume online commerce users
Conclusion
Website creation space is developing rapidly with new products coming to market and well-established companies investing more in developing their products. Elementor is in a good position with a great balance between a set of functions and ease of use.
The next steps that I would suggest would be to do more in-depth research into other popular page builders, but also new and upcoming, which are more agile.
One additional angle that could be interesting is do a report based on Elementors sales funnels with different SWOT analyses. Top of the funnel with people who are considering Elementor, middle of the funnel with people who use Elementor (the free version), and bottom of the funnel customers who use a Single license plan.