The 0.2% statistic that is reported at https://www.blocktivity.info/ is just one measure of scalability. The RAM requirements for full nodes to operate (as well as exchange nodes) has been increasing at an unsustainable rate for some time now. There are some details in this post. Solving scalability before we do things that will drive a large number of new users to the platform seems like the right order to do things in.
I've been here for longer than 10 months and the only changes we got in that time are custom banners and a laughable redesign of the front end and the logo (this could be done in a day).
Condenser (the code for steemit.com) hasn't seemed like a super high priority, but that doesn't mean nothing is getting done. Look at the development activity in GitHub. There is a lot of development activity going on in other projects.
Apps like busy and steepshot have more development in a month than steemit in 10. Why?
They are more focused on the front-end. Steemit seems to be working on more framework and back-end applications.
Also the lack of development on SMTs is causing us to lose a lot of potential partners and if it continues that way all of them will soon go to EOS or ETH if they are really unpatient and want to take compromises to go live sooner.
There is not a lack of development. Again, check out the GitHub repository. There has been a lot of SMT development going on for the past ~6 months.