WordPress, Wix & Squarespace Show Best CWV Rate Of Improvement via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A comparison of January 2024 core web vitals scores of the top content management systems (CMS) shows that all platforms are improving, with Squarespace, WordPress  and Wix showing the strongest year over year rate of growth in improvement when compared to the previous year.

Core Web Vitals is comprised of a suite of metrics that represent how fast a website performs. The Core Web Vitals Technology Report shows real-world performance scores organized by CMS. The scores come from the Chrome UX Report (CrUX) dataset which is a record of actual scores and from the HTTPArchive dataset comprised of lab measurements of the exact same sites in the CrUX dataset. The two dataset scores and measurements are combined to create the Core Web Vitals Technology Report.

This article compares the year over year rate of growth in core web vitals scores of Drupal, Duda, Joomla, Squarespace, Wix and WordPress for the months of January 2024 and 2023.

All performance scores discussed in this article are from measurements of websites visited with mobile devices.

The growth rate of the improvements between two years is a percentage of the increase between two values representing the 2023 and 2024 scores and were calculated with ChatGPT and double-checked with Google Gemini.

The growth rate percentages differ from the absolute differences in rates (which is the difference between the two years in actual number of percentage points).

The growth rate formula is expressed like this:

Screenshot image by ChatGPT

YoY Growth Rates Of Improvement

The year over year (YoY) improvement scores shows how fast each CMS is improving.

1. Squarespace

The rate of growth increase from 2023 (34.7%) to 2024 (54% ) is a whopping 55.62%.

The meaning of that percentage is that there is a 55.62% increase when comparing the 2023 score of 34.7% to the 2024 score of 54%.

Another incredible data point is the absolute percentage point difference between 34.7% and 54% which is 19.3 points.

2. WordPress – 28.29% Rate Of Growth

The hard work of the WordPress Performance team, which coordinates performance best practices with the core development team, continues to pay off with a substantial increase in site performance over the previous years score. In fact, WordPress has the strongest year over year performance improvements out of the four CMS compared.

The percentage of WordPress sites showing good core web vitals performance in January 2023 was a total of 30.4%. The percentage of WordPress sites with a passing score in 2024 jumped to 39.0% of sites. The difference between 2023 (30.4%) and 2024 (39.0%) represents a percentage increase of 28.29%. The absolute percentage difference between 2023 and 2024 (30.4% vs 39.0%) is 8.6%.

3. Wix – 19.07% Rate Of Growth

In second place is Wix. In January 2023 49.3% of Wix websites had a good CWV score and the January 2024 score came in at 58.7%. That represents a rate of growth percentage of 19.07%, placing second behind the WordPress rate of increase of 28.29%.

The absolute percentage difference however for Wix is 9.4% versus 8.6% for WordPress.

4. Joomla – 15.46% Rate Of Growth

Joomla ranked number three in year over year rate of growth. The percentage of Joomla sites with passing Core Web Vitals scores is 40.1% in 2023 and 46.3% in 2024.

The difference between 2023 (40.1%) and 2024 (46.3%) represents a rate of growth percentage of 15.46%, just behind Wix.

Expressed as an absolute percentage difference, there is a 6.2 percentage point increase between 2023 and 2024.

5. Drupal – 10.78% Rate Of Growth

Open source CMS platform Drupal came in fourth with a rate of growth of 10.78% and an absolute percentage point difference of 5.5%.

6. Duda – 7.50% Rate Of Growth

Duda is ranked #5 in the rate of growth from 2023 and 2024. The difference between 2023 (70.7% passing CWV) and 2024 (76.0%) represents a percentage increase of 7.50%.

A possible reason for the slower rate of growth is that websites created with the Duda platform haves extraordinarily high core web vitals scores, the highest of all the platforms in this comparison.

Despite the incredibly high number of Duda-built sites passing the core web vitals measurements, Duda still managed to improve their scores year over year.

Changes In Number Of Measured Sites

An interesting twist in Drupal’s scores is that the higher 2024 scores are based on less measured websites. There were about 129,000 Drupal sites measured in 2024 versus 147,000 in 2023.

That correlates with usage figures reported on Drupal.org which show a year over year decline in usage between 2023 (981,659 sites) and 2024 (795,595 sites), a total decline of 186,064 Drupal websites.

The WordPress were also based on slightly less measured sites, a difference of 20,368 measured WordPress websites.

Joomla experienced a decline of 30,243 measured websites while the amount of measured Duda sites remained stable (with only a slight decrease of 52 measured websites).

Wix and Squarespace are the only platforms in the group that had an increase in sites measured (between 2023 and 2024) by the Core Web Vitals Technology report.

Top Core Web Vitals Champions

While WordPress had the highest rate of growth of the six content management systems reported by the Core Web Vitals Technology report, the actual top performers are ranked in a different order, with Duda continuing to wear the crown for top core web vitals scores.

Top Ranked CMS By Core Web Vitals Scores:

While WordPress has the lowest number of passing websites, the rate of growth statistics show that it is rapidly improving, which is a notable accomplishment considering the thousands of third party themes and plugins that aren’t necessarily optimized for page speed.

View the official HTTPArchive report:

Core Web Vitals Technology Report

Featured Image by Shutterstock/G-Stock Studio