{"id":22443,"date":"2017-01-09T10:30:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=22443"},"modified":"2025-05-12T17:20:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T22:20:53","slug":"top-innovations-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/case-studies\/top-innovations-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"WP Engine’s Top Innovations Of 2016 To Help Move Customers Ahead Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

At WP Engine, we are passionate about helping our customers stay ahead of the curve with their online business. Over the last year, our innovation horsepower drove several new additions to further our path as the global leader of managed platforms for WordPress.<\/p>\n

Our innovation themes for the year encompassed performance, security and customer experience. Read on for some top ways in which we helped move our customers ahead online\u00a0in 2016.<\/p>\n

Site Performance<\/h2>\n

A faster site means better SEO, more conversions, and a great user experience. On average, a one-second improvement in site speed<\/a> improves conversions by 7 percent, pageviews by 11 percent, and customer satisfaction by 16 percent.<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re all about helping our customers grow their audiences and their revenues, we work relentlessly to ideate on how to make the sites we power perform lightening fast regardless of traffic spikes or server downtime. This year we delivered several new solutions to deliver on our promise:<\/p>\n

We added Performance Intelligence to our User Portal<\/h3>\n

\"page-performance-hero\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2016 we launched our first Performance Intelligence solution,\u00a0Page Performance<\/a>, giving all of our customers the ability to quickly and dramatically improve the speed of their websites with data and recommendations we surface.<\/p>\n

With Page Performance, you can schedule recurring tests to get performance insights delivered to your inbox, on your schedule. This can be particularly beneficial to assess the speed and performance impact of new site additions like plugins to sites.<\/p>\n

We Launched a New eCommerce Solution, Including WooCommerce Optimization and One-tap Payments<\/h3>\n

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In 2016 we also developed a new ecommerce solution that optimizes the performance of WooCommerce when traffic is high to ensure sites gain the maximum possible conversions.<\/p>\n

Sites on the WP Engine ecommerce solution perform on average two to three times faster at peak load. Translation: two to three-times more possible adds to cart and conversions.<\/p>\n

In addition, we released one-tap payments<\/a> that improve the mobile user experience with Google\u2019s one-tap payment API.<\/p>\n

So why’d we focus here?<\/p>\n

According to a Google study, nearly two-thirds of mobile purchases are made on mobile sites vs mobile apps, but conversion rates on mobile sites remain only 33 percent of that on desktops.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s multi-tasking digital world, we can\u2019t be slowed down. Especially on mobile! (See 11 Ways To Combat Shopping Cart Abandonment<\/a>)<\/p>\n

We Rolled Out HTTP\/2 Support<\/h3>\n

\"wpe-banner-blogfeatured-650x270\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This past summer we rolled out the latest version of HTTP to our customers\u2019 sites. HTTP\/2<\/a>, or simply \u201cH2\u201d helps to accelerate the transmission of data over HTTP, reducing web page latency and improving SEO. Our customers can now enjoy the benefits of a faster site and better web page rankings.<\/p>\n

We Launched the PHP 7 Compatibility Checker Plugin<\/h3>\n

\"php-7-compatibility-checker\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a service to our customers and the millions of WordPress users across the globe (27 percent of websites now run on WordPress!) we built the\u00a0PHP Compatibility Checker<\/a>\u00a0plugin to help the world get ready for PHP 7.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t learned about the impact PHP 7 can have on a website,\u00a0it\u2019s quite dramatic. Sites on a PHP 7 environment use 30 percent less memory consumption and operate two to three times faster \u2014 an absolute game-changer for driving SEO, conversion and audience retention. In less than a year, we\u2019ve seen over 28,000 downloads<\/a> on 7,000 active accounts!<\/p>\n

We took our enterprise platform to new heights<\/h3>\n

\"wp-engine-enterprise\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To serve our Fortune 500 customers, we launched new high availability enterprise WordPress hosting<\/a> solutions architected with multi-zone redundancy and advanced fault tolerance. What does this mean? It means that failure of one component doesn\u2019t mean failure for the entire system to maintain uptime.<\/p>\n

Being an enterprise customer at WP Engine is about more than server performance. Our enterprise customers receive white-glove service from our enterprise customer success team. This includes dedicated account management with technical onboarding guidance, strategy planning and the best of our WordPress experts on hand to help at any time.<\/p>\n

Customer Service<\/h2>\n

Our customer success team is truly our secret sauce. Their dedication to our customers earned them a Gold Stevie Award<\/a> in 2016, their third award over the last three years.<\/p>\n

We made our world-class support team even more accessible with a Global 24\/7 Live Chat service<\/h3>\n


\n<\/a>\"wpe-banner-247chatavailablenow-blogfeatured-930x386\"<\/a>
\nAll WP Engine customers around the world, whether they own a blog or run a large enterprise site, can access our award-winning WordPress experts on their schedule with our 24\/7 Live Chat. Our average response time since launching is less than\u00a0two minutes. Now that\u2019s peace of mind.<\/p>\n

Site Security<\/h2>\n

Hacking is certainly the topic du jour. The potential impact of cyber attacks on democracies and businesses alike is very distressing. Keeping our focus on business, take a look at some startling numbers on how attacks impact companies small and large.<\/p>\n

Kaspersky Lab<\/a>, award-winning cyber-security firm surveyed 400 companies in 25 countries last year on security practices and the cost of security incidents. They report the average cost of recovery from a single incident was $86.5K for SMBs and $861K for enterprises. We take security very seriously at WP Engine. Last year alone, we blocked 1.6B attacks across our customers.<\/p>\n

We launched a few additional security features too:<\/p>\n

We made Let\u2019s Encrypt a free, one-click install for all WP Engine customers<\/h3>\n

\"lets-encrypt-ssl-hero-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Committed to protecting our customers\u2019 online business, in 2016 we released automated and free SSL with Let\u2019s Encrypt<\/a>. With Let\u2019s Encrypt, users can expect a more secure site including protection of site visitor credentials (especially important when entering sensitive data, like credit card info!).<\/p>\n

We added Two-factor authentication to the WP Engine User Portal<\/h3>\n

\"wpe-banner-twofactorblogfeatured-650x270-v01-jc-copy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To enhance the security of your site, this year we added https:\/\/wpengine.com\/resources\/two-factor-authentication-wordpress\/<\/a> (2FA) to the User Portal. 2FA is a security method that requires you to enter a second factor beyond a password in order to gain access to your account. This second line of defense helps keep the bad guys out to better protect your account, your sites, and your business.<\/p>\n

Looking Forward…<\/h3>\n

Expect much more exciting launches from WP Engine in 2017. We will continue to advance the developer experience as we build the WordPress development environment of choice, deliver more insights for developers and site owners, and ensure remarkable digital experiences on the 500,000-plus WordPress sites we power around the world.<\/p>\n

We encourage you to make a New Year\u2019s Resolution to ensure any site you own or represent is performing at its highest capacity. If you\u2019re not a customer yet, test your site speed with our handy\u00a0Speed Tool<\/a>. Record the number, and if you join us you\u2019re likely to see a two-times\u00a0to four-times improvement that drives better SEO, more traffic, more leads, more memberships, more conversions, and more ad revenue.<\/p>\n

Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At WP Engine, we are passionate about helping our customers stay ahead of the curve with their online business. Over the last year, our innovation horsepower drove several new additions to further our path as the global leader of managed platforms for WordPress. Our innovation themes for the year encompassed performance, security and customer experience.…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":22539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-updates"],"yoast_head":"\nWP Engine's Top Innovations of 2016 Help Move Customers Online<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last year our R&D team drove several new additions to our platform to better meet your business needs. 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