This is the last post of 2022. Again, it has been a year full of uncertainties. Although the pandemic seems to have disappeared, the current context continues to be complex and full of difficulties for many people, but also with positive points to highlight.
As usual at the end of the year, we like to take a moment to recap everything we have done and experienced in 2022 at Nelio Software.
I leave you here the summaries of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 in case you are interested. It’s even funny to re-read the expectations David wrote about 2022 earlier this year. It’s time for a recap, so here we go…
The Family Grows…
It’s never a good time to have children. There are always going to be difficulties, or so they say. So when we found out at the beginning of the year that 2 of the 3 founders of Nelio were going to be parents (don’t get me wrong, each one with his own partner), we realized that the end of the year 2022 was going to be a real shock.
I’ve been working with David for so many years that we’re in sync even when it comes to procreating 😅. The two births were expected within a few days of each other. But finally Dani and Emma made their appearance almost a month apart. So we were able to cover our backs better than expected.
Fortunately, we have been able to keep up with the current pace of the business and have been able to maintain it without any disruption. In fact, our customers probably didn’t notice anything, which says a lot about our commitment to Nelio.
Our Website in Numbers
As always, we are going to start this review of the year by taking a look at the numbers on our website.
Nelio A/B Testing
Native Tests for WordPress
Use your WordPress page editor to create variants and run powerful tests with just a few clicks. No coding skills required.
Content Publishing Pace
Our website and, more specifically, our blog are the main advertising and communication channel that we use at Nelio. We have always opted for an inbound marketing strategy, creating content that may be interesting and useful for you in order to help you and, incidentally, make ourselves known.
Our current publishing pace is one post per week. We publish every Thursday, both in Spanish and English. And despite the fact that unforeseen events always happen throughout the year, having our editorial calendar has allowed us to achieve the target pace.
Throughout 2022 we have published 53 posts, one per week, with the exception of the week of Black Friday, in which we published an additional post to announce the offers we had at that time.
We are never short of ideas to create new content that we think may be of interest to you.
Feedback and Comments
Writing a post and receiving comments related to it is something that adds energy to the blog and encourages us to continue writing.
This year 2022 we have received 134 new comments. Last year there were 163 and the year before 142. As you can see, these are similar numbers.
Also this year we have focused on writing posts with less general topics and more related to our products. For this reason, we are receiving fewer comments about WordPress related issues.
The Most Popular Posts
We have made a ranking with the 10 posts this year that have been most popular and that have brought the most traffic to our website. Here are the winners of 2022:
- How to Create Custom User Registration Forms in WordPress
- JavaScript on WordPress is Hell… and Here’s Why
- How to Automatically Post to Instagram from WordPress
- How Do I Change My Website to Full Site Editing (FSE)?
- Why and When to Use WordPress Group, Row, and Stack Blocks
- How to Create Better Components with TypeScript and React Hooks (II)
- What to do When a Customer Cancels Your Service
- How to Create an A/B Test of Existing Pages on Your WordPress
- DevTips – How to Compile Your Assets Efficiently
- Comparison of 10 Plugins to Create Popups in WordPress
As you can see, there is a bit of everything on the list. As always, those posts that talk about technically complex issues, or that deal with problems that the regular WordPress user can face, tend to be more popular.
Full-site Editing
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but another change we’ve recently made to our web has been to update the theme. Our new theme is based on the Twenty Twenty-Three, to which we have applied several modifications to adapt it to our needs.
We had been wanting to modernize the web a bit for some time and we thought that this was the perfect opportunity to do it and to learn more about Full Site Editing because, indeed, this theme is fully compatible with this new WordPress feature.
In addition, we have modernized some content, such as the landing page, which is now much more modern. This process has not been without problems, but we will leave that for a future post.
Participation in Events
Throughout 2022, our participation in events has been minimal. With the pandemic on its lasts legs, only Ruth was in the mood to participate in the Cincuenter event to which she was invited in Oviedo, northern Spain.
Neither David nor I have attended face-to-face events. We hope that soon we can meet again in person with the rest of the WordPress community. Maybe at the next WordCamp Europe?
Business Status
We will now discuss what we have been doing from Nelio’s point of view as a company. But first, let me show you how diverse and global the WordPress market that we are targeting is with an image:
These are the sales of Nelio products by country. As you can see, by attacking a global market, you depend less on the possible sociopolitical conflicts that are emerging in the world. That is why I encourage you that if you start a WordPress-related business, do not get stuck with only local clients. Try to reach the global economy.
Nelio A/B Testing and Nelio Content
As we have already explained many times, at Nelio we offer two premium plugins under a subscription model: Nelio A/B Testing and Nelio Content. The first is a plugin for creating A/B tests in WordPress and the second is a plugin for managing blog content and promoting it on social networks.
In 2021 we renewed both plugins by re-programming them practically from scratch using the new WordPress JavaScript-based stack, with React components. Well, in 2022 we have converted the JavaScript code of these plugins to TypeScript.
TypeScript is a statically typed programming language that is based on JavaScript. Static typing means that when you write your code, you specify the expected data types for each variable and check wether they are true during compilation. This is especially useful in large and complex projects like these two plugins that we develop. With that we achieve greater security and clarity in the code, and make sure to avoid errors.
Having a more robust code helps us on reduce the amount of support we need to provide to users. And having happier users from the beginning has allowed us to increase our revenue during 2022.
Inlexa
Inlexa was our first serious foray outside of the world of WordPress. We expected that during the year 2022 many companies and organizations would be interested in integrating it into their processes.
Inlexa ensures that all communications are written in an inclusive language using artificial intelligence. And as Ruth says in her post/rant on the subject, “promoting Inlexa was very easy: it is an innovative product (talking about inclusive language is trendy) at a very affordable price, easy to use and safe, developed by a team of Barcelona led by a woman… in short, it had a lot of ingredients to sell well”.
Therefore, the results obtained have not met the expectations that the people with whom Ruth contacted had generated us. Although we have some companies using Inlexa, the number is much lower than expected.
Nelio Popups
We started 2022 by adding a new plugin to our product portfolio. Nelio Popups is a plugin that allows you to create and manage popups in your WordPress in a simple way and taking advantage of all the possibilities that come with the block editor.
It is a very simple to use and intuitive plugin. Before its existence, whenever we have had to put popups on our website, the experience has been really bad. Having to deal with poorly-designed popup builders is a nightmare. Not to mention the myriad of complex and hard-to-understand settings you can find out there.
We wanted Nelio Popups to be the first native popup plugin for the block editor, and we succeeded on this goal. For us, this plugin has a long way to go, even though the WordPress popup market is very competitive. Achieving relevance on this area is very difficult, but a challenge.
The comments we are having about it are positive, although we want more. We will see how it evolves during 2023.
Nelio Forms
After releasing Nelio Popups, we took advantage of the codebase of this plugin to introduce Nelio Forms, a plugin for creating WordPress forms using the block editor.
The forms market is another highly competitive market, and going from scratch in 2022 means that you start at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. However, in a very short time we have been able to include a set of features that is very close to what you can find in other existing solutions.
The greatness of both Nelio Forms and Nelio Popups is that they are exquisitely developed. We use TypeScript and have our code structured in such a way that adding more functionality or making improvements is a programmer’s delight.
We have really enjoyed developing these new plugins, and we hope that during 2023 they will grow in popularity, although the WordPress ecosystem is not something that facilitates it (which is something we can further elaborate in another post in the future…).
What to Expect from 2023
The main wish for 2023 is that we are able to continue growing. We have put a lot of love and hours of work into the company, and we believe that we still provide significant value to our customers and blog readers.
So to conclude, I would like to wish you a happy holiday season and a good start to the new year. May 2023 bring us everything we ask for. In the meantime, I hope you will continue to visit us for another year.
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