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Do the Woo - A WooCommerce Podcast

93 Episodes

40 minutes | 4 days ago
A Diverse Web Career Leading to WooCommerce with Sharon Yates
Thanks to our community sponsors Sharon has been around the web for a while, working in variety of roles, some of them in corporate. When she made the move to start her own business, WordPress was the centerpiece, followed closely by WooCommerce. She shares a lot of twists and turns as well as the experience of working in a male-dominated space. A Chat with Sharon Yates from Creative Mouse Studio In episode 91, Mendel and I talk with Sharon about: Her interesting journey through tech and how she ended up using WordPress and WooCommerceHer experience in a male-dominated industry, from early on through todayHow Sharon positioned herself to break the “glass ceiling”Why she chose to learn WooCommerce vs. just WordPress The challenges that stand our for her with WooCommerceWhat she would like to see fixed or added to WooCommerce in the futureThe pivotal moment when Sharon discovered she had found her place in the WordPress ecosystemWhat she loves most about being a builder and a coachThe shifts she has seen in the eCommerce space over the last yearWhat she would do as a freelancer or business owner if the web didn’t exist Connect with Sharon Creative Mouse StudioSharon on LinkedInFacebook Page Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everyone. Episode 91. And I'm BobWP. This is Do the Woo Podcast with my very fine cohost Mendel Kurland. Mendel, how are you doing? Mendel: Hey, what's up, Bob? Do you think I can go by MendelWP, or would that be ripping off your name? Bob: No, actually I've had people email me and ask if it would be okay if they add a WP to their name and I said no problem. Mendel: Wait, I could do yours backwards. I could be BobWP. And you could be BobWP. Bob: Yeah, that makes sense. Mendel: Because BobWP is the opposite of BobWP. Bob: Yeah, it is. They can tell us apart. Mendel: Who knows, but I'll sleep on it. Bob: Okay. Yeah. Tell me later what you decide on that one, we'll find something. Anyway, we have another great show as we always do another great guest, but before I get into that, I'm just going to thank our sponsors, PayPal, who is continuing to be our sponsor for a few more months here in the new year. And yeah, just I'd say it's time for all those builders out there to look at their client sites and say, "You know what? This'll be a good fit for the pay later on the PayPal extension." So yeah, give some thought to that. Think about it. There might be some opportunities that you can actually even look better in your client size. WooCommerce. 4.9 came out Tuesday, minor updates to the admin, to their blocks and some other fixes. So it wasn't a huge update, but it's 4.9. I'm not sure what's going to happen with 5.0, that seems like a very ominous number. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. What do you think Mendel, does this sound ominous? Mendel: It sounds terrifying. But you know what? I will say, if you pair WooCommerce 4.9 with PayPal pay later, how could you put together a better solution than that? Those two things together. Amazing. Bob: Yeah. It's like the rest is history. Mendel: That's right. Bob: Dollars will roll in. Mendel: Yeah. Watch out for 5.0 that could be, I don't know, like 2020. Not that bad. Bob: Alrighty. Well, this is it. This is the show and today we have Sharon Yates. Sharon, I came across her as she had presented at a meetup. I believe it was a Chicago meetup. Somebody had said, "Hey, you got to talk to this person. She knows her Woos." So I thought I'm always looking for somebody to do the Woo. Sharon, welcome to the show. Sharon: Hi Bob, thanks. I'm excited to be here. Bob: Now, as we always start it, I've already said it already, but how do you do the Woo? Tell us a little bit about yourself and WooCommerce. Sharon: And I'm sorry, Mendel. I did not mention you, but hello to you also. Mendel: Hello. Sharon: Let's see. Gosh, I don't want to take too long with this, but I basically do the Woo obviously for clients, but my background has been basically starting with the web when it came out. So that does convince my age a little bit older. And so I've started out working with companies. Most of the companies I've worked with were all in telecommunications. Now that I think about it, didn't realize that until I started looking at my history. But then I moved on to some financial and healthcare and other types of industries as well. But most of it I've always worked with groups to do enterprise apps and stuff. I'm just was used to that. And then when I decided to start working with WordPress and I hate to admit this, but the only reason why I started working with WordPress was to find something else to do. I was at a particular job that I had a controlling managers. So I was bored and throughout my career, I had always kept side clients. I had full-time job, but I always wanted to one up my skill and then ship, I guess. Especially with me at that time and age competing, both of you are men, but I had to compete with a lot of men. And so my skill set had to be even better. And so I would dedicate myself to not be an expert in one area, but in all areas, because back then we really did have to know all areas. If you were developing on the web, you didn't just specialize and it wasn't until later that you could specialize and commit to design, commit to UI or UX. Mendel: Sharon, can I stop you there because I want to hear more about that. If you're willing to talk more about that experience of coming up in very much. Bob and I are very aware of.. Sharon: Yeah, the glass ceiling. Mendel: Yeah, the glass ceiling, as far as, many industries, unfortunately, but technology specifically, and not to say that there weren't, and there haven't been in there aren't many people that aren't men that contribute to technology or to the web, because there are many unsung heroes in that respect, but what was this idea of diversifying and being good at everything? What was the reason for that? Or how did that help you position yourself in I guess a more advantageous way? Because I think that entire experience, hopefully that'll be something that my children and my children's children never know anything about, they just read about it in textbooks, but unfortunately I don't think that's the case.I think that common experience is nice to at least talk about or touch on quickly. Sharon: Sure. I have to probably say at that time, I really didn't think about it. I think it was just something I felt like I had to do in order to keep moving up. When I got in the industry before I actually had a full-time job as a developer, I was actually training people. I was training people at professional, excuse me. I would go to different locations around the United States and train them on how to get on the web and how to work with websites and stuff. And then I kind of got tired of the traveling and just decided, I might as well get into what I'm teaching and get a real job. So when I got into that, I found that it was very competitive and I don't want to say, there was a lot of backstabbing, but women just weren't welcomed. Or at least the industries I got into, women just weren't welcomed and did not, they did not want to hear what I had to say. And I had a distinct talent of not being too geeky. I was very sociable with people and I could speak to CEO's and other laymen. Mendel: Your socialized geek. Sharon: Yes. Bob: That's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. Sharon: Yeah. I could speak better with the layman terms and to make the corporate officers understand better what we were doing instead of talking geek, like all the time. So I think that's how, what got me ahead and I had to understand the back end as well as the front end. So I think that's why I did that was so that I could communicate and give me a one leg up that most people didn't have. Mendel: It sounds like not only did you have the technical acumen, but you also had the EQ, the emotional Intelligence to be able to talk to the right people at the right time and tell them the things that they needed to hear to be successful, which is a pretty powerful combination. Sharon: Yeah. And it was not just what they needed to hear, but they also wanted to understand. I think a lot of people try to talk over the executives heads where they just are confused and baffled and they don't understand what actually needs to be done on there yet. I think if people would take the time to understand their position and try not to talk over their heads, so that just give them a lot of understanding what needs to happen. Mendel: Cool. Sorry to interrupt. We we were talking about how you were making your way to WordPress and you were bored and you had a super annoying boss that it was their way or the highway and you started doing other things. Sharon: Yeah. So I just decided that, I'm just going to take on more clients and it was also, it's weird how all of this meshed together. But I had determined, I don't know, maybe a year before I was into this job about two years at this point. And I had decided, I think during my second year that this was going to be my last corporate job and I was going to make a retirement plan to retire from the corporate world and go out on my own. So like I said, I had already had some side clients, so it wasn't like I was starting from scratch. But at the time that I started to look in to doing things on my own, I did some research and WordPress obviously was coming on as the big tool to use. And so I decided to dwell into that. But also since I knew a lot about the retail side and working in enterprise industries, I just decided, better learn WooCommerce because this seems to be something that I would rather have a niche in than just WordPress websites. Mendel: Why did you make that distinction? Because it sounds like you have a lot of intuition, which is super cool, but I think it's nice to know why you have that intuition. Sharon: Anyone that has started their own business knows that you need to have a niche to sell yourself. At this time, I also saw that there were a lot of people competing against each other as freelancers and contractors or whatever. And I just didn't want to be in that number. I wanted to be outside of that number. I wanted to be specialized. I know that from my own experience, I would always pick up clients that had worked with somebody that didn't know what they were doing. And so I just wanted to help people more and try to get them out of these situations and show them that I was worth what I was charging. And so that helped, I think, in fact, I'm working with a client that I picked them up after they had been working with someone for two years and never launched their site. That could tell you what kind of clients I usually pick. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Bob: So was the e-commerce WooCommerce part of it almost at the same time as when you started with WordPress? Or was there a bit of an interval there that you made your way more towards the e-commerce part of it? Sharon: Obviously I picked up WordPress really easily because I was already a web developer. I already knew some programming skills and I already knew how to write CSS and HTML. I knew how to write code from scratch. WordPress, wasn't that hard for me to pick up. I did want to learn everything from obviously just installing it, but also plus what I would consider the backend, how the hierarchy is built, how the installation is built and stuff. So I took a little bit more of a geekish approach instead of wanting the regular people who's trying to do the website on their own. I did try to make my knowledge a little bit more than standard. And I guess everybody is normal, but there's some of us that want to get one leg over, I try to, at least, especially if I'm trying to promote myself as an expert, I can tell people all day long that I'm an expert in HTML and CSS. This is what I've done all my life. But nobody really knows you're an expert if they don't know it. Bob: So as you were moving along this transition. You have a diverse background and you've been in the web for a long time. Has there been anything around WooCommerce that you felt were, especially in the beginning or challenges for you with WooCommerce and how do you feel? Have they panned out over time? Or is this something you're still having to work around? I just always love to hear what challenges people face. Sharon: Yeah. I think the biggest challenges are plugins and getting what the customer actually wants. When I take on a customer, obviously you've got them. I'm assuming everybody vets their customer, their clients, to try to make sure you understand what they want, what their needs are and what they're trying to accomplish. But what I try to do is also get them to talk a little bit more, not just do, like I did start with a page of questions, from what I was used to working in the corporate world, I knew that I needed to get so much information for requirements and it, but a lot of small businesses that are starting, which is what I work with. They don't understand what they need to give to us as their requirements. So you have to walk them through and be able to do that. Requirements obviously was a big deal for me and when I started working with WooCommerce, I noticed that one, it doesn't come with everything you need to do. You have to obviously search for plugins to do what you want to do. And yes, WooCommerce has grown in providing those plugins but when I started there, wasn't a lot. Obviously I had to customize and learn to do that in the web hooks and everything else that goes on. So there's been a lot of improvement. I think the easiest thing for me was that I knew from having to program this on the old days that I knew what the customer needed. It was trying to interpret, okay, what I need to figure out, is there a plugin for this or do I need to figure out how to code it? That was the biggest thing I think. WooCommerce has gotten better by providing a lot of the plugins. And of course, there's third parties, but in my opinion, I try to work with as much as I can with WooCommerce plugins, provide it unless I know that there's something better. Mendel: Along that vein, WooCommerce in the future, let's talk about, forget about 5.0. Sharon: Yeah. Mendel: What about like 7.0. Where would you see WooCommerce being at some point, or what do you think should be added or fixed in WooCommerce to bring it in line with the expectations that you see over and over and over with customers pre WooCommerce and customers now. Because I'm sure there's stuff that needs to be added and fixed in WooCommerce. Sharon: Yeah. Some of the basic stuff, like, for instance, why can't WooCommerce provide the PayPal or the Stripe gateway included in the package? Why do we have to go get a plugin for that? WooCommerce is made to sell? So why aren't you providing that gateway that we already need basically to sell? Mendel: Indeed, to sell online. They give you the ability to check out like COD and you're like, who has ever conducted e-commerce business COD, like that. Sharon: Yeah. If you're going to provide a package, give us the whole thing and what we need, I can understand it does include the shipping because not everybody's probably going to do the same shipping. My last customer I'm telling you, I probably used every shipping there was. I had to provide them weight, shipping by weight. I had to provide them shipping across international plus nationwide, plus across Hawaii. I had to provide a lot. And plus FedEx, plus being able to use their own shipper, allowing the customer to use their own shippers. I can understand why something like that is not provided because that is definitely an area where not a lot of developers understand. They're having to work hours and hours to figure out how to provide the shipping. But again, I have to say WooCommerce is very good with their documentation. I find that whatever plugins I use for them, their documentation is really good. I think the payment is definitely one that I would like to see included in a basic install. Give us something. There are going to be specialty customers like again, my last client, they had their own payment gateway. Naturally, I have to use the API. That's not a big deal, but I don't know a lot of newbies don't understand stuff like that. Mendel: Yeah. And they've started to walk in that direction with WooCommerce payments and adding that in as a simpler alternative. But yeah, it begs the question, why doesn't that come standard? And you have to disable that. When you install it, it's enabled and then, they probably will at some point and then the community will be angry about it being installed as a default and on and on we go. Yeah, so that's interesting. So payment is an interesting one. Anything else that you can think of that in the year 2030, we should see installed automatically or features that should exist in e-commerce? Sharon: You just mentioned something that reminded me about being installed as default. And that's the one thing that bothers me as this Jetpack. I Would rather have the option, but... Mendel: It's a line that you have to tread. Do you install it automatically and make it easier or do you not install it automatically? It's tricky. It's got to be tricky as developers to decide what are people going to want and what are people going to be allergic to? So I totally get that. Sharon: Yeah. And because that, it ties it two, a wordpress.com account. And I have tried to set up all of my customers outside of my business, because I've actually gotten charged once from a customer for their shipping labels. Mendel: So some logistics need to be figured out with all that? Sharon: Because obviously I have my own wordpress.com account, but every time I do that Jetpack installation, and if I'm still signed in, to my wordpress.com, it's going to take my, and then it is such a pain to straighten that out. I'm telling you, I've spent my WooCommerce was very helpful. WordPress was very helpful, but I've had to work with both to get this one account so that it was off of my credit card. Sharon: There's some issues that I have with things being automatically installed and Jetpack was one of them. Because I was trying to figure out, why do I need it? There's services I get, but there's also a plugin for the services. So, why am I installing Jetpack when I can just install the services? And avoid the whole issue of the wordpress.com. So any other, it's hard to say. Because not every customer is the same. Obviously there's the one element you're trying to sell online. You're trying to create an online shop or whatever, but I work with customers that everything is customized, I would say. Being that these clients that I work with are very customizable, I don't really have any recommendations on that end because you just don't know what people want all the time. Mendel: Yeah. Makes sense. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Bob: I want to flip back over. As far as when you, the whole concept of, we start with, you hit the ceiling. As you're in the WordPress space and you're getting into WooCommerce, what do you consider one of your, I don't want to call it a win, but one of those pivotal moments, because you're a very determined person and you were set to, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to make this business succeed. And I know how I'm going to do it. But was there any moment that you really sit back and thought, "I'm starting to get into the groove of this community," that you thought this is where I belong and I think I made the right decision. Sharon: Yes. I'm very determined because I have to say this was from a guy in one of my jobs, I worked. This guy actually told me you're not going to amount to anything you might as well just get married and have babies. I think I went home that day and I said, that is never happening to me. And I will support myself no matter what. So yes, there was a determination that always drove me. It wasn't out of spite. I think it was something that I had in me that I just knew that I could succeed on my own. I didn't need to be supported by somebody else. I have worked with guys that have been tremendously wonderful. And one of the jobs that I had was at a casino and there were two guys that were in the tech department and I was actually coming in to build their training before the whole casino was basically training everybody that needed training. Mendel: It's funny how that works. You're the one training everybody, but you're also getting grief from people. Sharon: But the two guys that I worked with there, they were awesome. And I can't say our director was, because he came from a military background and he yelled at us all the time. But he was a softie at heart. But the two guys I worked with in there, they were the ones that gave me the most confidence. I learned a lot of stuff under them. And this was back in the days where there was, I'm not sure if I'm probably saying names, you guys have never heard, but Novell NetWare was one of the products that we use. So I learned a lot about servers- Mendel: Were you talking a token ring adapter or something else. Do I get credit for that? Sharon: Yeah. I learned, I'm telling you, whenever somebody gave me the opportunity to learn, I took the advantage of that. I learned everything I could, not that I wanted to learn anything about servers and hardware, but I did. I learned it and at least I knew something about it, which also gave me the ability when I was working with regular websites, how to actually host them on web servers. Because I knew about servers. I had a little bit more knowledge than most people that want to design and develop. That always helped me out when I decided to move forward. Mendel: Let's talk about present day. We've talked a little bit about the past. We've talked a little bit about the future. Sharon: Yeah. Mendel: Let's talk about what you're doing now. You're an expert, you're a coach. You're also a builder, which do you enjoy doing the most? Sharon: I'm starting to get into some coaching. I'm trying to teach people what I do, pass on my skills to others that want to start their own business. I really enjoy that. I think that's going back to my training days that I used to do. And I really enjoy just teaching people and seeing them see the light of where they want to go is really awesome sometimes. Obviously there are some that think they want to do this, but they're not putting in the effort that I would like to see. I think there's, I'm assuming Mendel you're way younger than I am. So- Mendel: It's because I shaved off the beard. Bob: He looks like a little boy now. Mendel: That's right. Sharon: Bob might be around my age, but there's a generation thing. There's those that want to work, and there's those that just want to, I don't even know how to say that. Just do the minimum and get paid or something. I don't know how to say that, but that's what I recognize. I recognize those that come to work want to take the credit, but they didn't really do the work. Today, I do still love developing. I still have clients that I keep on retainer and I do work for them. And I just have this one really huge client I still do work for them because we're not completely done. They had one of the biggest product line I've ever seen. So we're still trying to pull that all into, that was an integrated website with a third party because their products were already in a system at their office. So I had to integrate their system into WooCommerce. That was a little bit of a huge undertaking. And plus, like I said, they have so many products. We're not even at the full field yet. Bob: Have you felt the shift in e-commerce online? Obviously you sound like you already have quite a few clients that are already wanting to sell or are selling online or potential clients. Is that side of things, both in the coaching and the developing, are you seeing more growth for yourself and opportunities to build online stores versus brochure sites? That type of stuff. Sharon: Yeah, I think that obviously 2020 is going to be a huge reminder of people trying to pivot. A lot of people, a lot of businesses are now pivoting to put themselves into a more online selling feature than just be in a a boutique brochure. So yeah, I do see that. And of course there's a lot of people that lost their jobs that are trying to find a way to create income. Those are the people I'm hoping to reach. I can teach them how to build and help them figure out how to market themselves. I'm trying to pivot myself to capture a lot of that as well, to help people get their income back. I'm hoping to at least use my coaching for some good. Bob: All right. How about a last profound question from Mendel. Mendel: Here it is. I'm going to get close to the microphone for this one. Let's assume that the internet didn't exist today, that you still had all of your experience from everything that you've done in your life. All of the clients you've helped, but the internet didn't exist anymore. What would you love to do for work as a freelancer or as a sole proprietor off the internet? Sharon: I would be a scuba instructor. Mendel: There it is. Sharon: And that's one of my passions. That's what I do when I don't work. Mendel: That's awesome. Sharon Yates. Nobody knows this about you until now, but you are the internet WooCommerce expert/scuba instructor. I only have to wonder if you're down in, sorry, you're not a scuba instructor. You're a scuba diver who would be a scuba instructor. But I have to wonder if when you're down there, you're like, you're looking at starfish, you're looking at crazy plans or something like that. And then all of a sudden, a new idea pops in your head about some site you're working on. That has got to be some sort of place to reflect. Bob: There's got to be an app created for that. The underwater, when something occurs to your app. Mendel: That's right. Sharon: No, but it has happened Mendel. It has happened. Because, you have to understand as, if you have not dove before, I will tell you it is the most zen-like place you can be. I have been not everywhere that I would want to be in the world, but I have been to most of the places. I've been to Indonesia to dive and I've been to the Pacific. I've been to Fiji, I've been to Haiti and of course all over the Caribbean. But it doesn't matter which place I'm at, when you're just in all of this beauty and it is beautiful. It is so beautiful and it's so comforting. And there are just times where you're one with yourself because you're just breathing and admiring all of your surroundings. And yes, I do get ideas while I'm diving. I have to make sure I have, a lot of us have something to write on underwater, but it does allow you to be creative while you're diving. Mendel: That's awesome. If you happen to see some designs of Sharon's that seem to be inspired by waves or something like that, you know where it comes from. I can't thank you enough for being on the show today and talking with us a little bit about what you do and what your journey has been and how you do the Woo, and how you came to do the Woo. So thank you so much for being here. I want to take a quick opportunity to give a shout out to our sponsors. Then we'll ask you where people can get in touch with you. WooCommerce, I don't know if you know who they are, everybody. But they are an incredible e-commerce platform that sits at the top of WordPress. And if you haven't looked at WooCommerce, it's a good thing that you're listening to this podcast because that's where you should go next. Is go to WooCommerce and download it and install it. But remember, if you are using WooCommerce right now and you haven't updated to 4.9, update 4.9. Because that's important. It's important, right, Bob? Bob: Right. That's always important. Mendel: I love to update all my other plugins first and then update to WooCommerce the latest version, just to make sure everything's up to date and compatible. So that's cool. There's a cool compatibility checker too. If you didn't notice that when you update WooCommerce. Anyway, I'll stop talking about WooCommerce, but WooCommerce, our sponsor. Our other sponsor and you may or may not have heard of them, but if you haven't, it's time to hear about them, PayPal. Now, you got to check out the new PayPal extension. It's on the WooCommerce marketplace. And when you download it, you can do a whole bunch of really cool things, including paying for, which is super cool. You can allow your customers to pay in for payments and there's really not a whole lot of risk to you. And it's super easy to set up. It took me about five minutes. So check out PayPal, thank you to both PayPal and WooCommerce for being sponsors. Anyway, Sharon, where can people get ahold of you? Sharon: They can get in touch with me through my email or on LinkedIn. And I'm on Facebook too, but where else? I think I'm too spread out on the social. I need to narrow down, but my email is Syates, S-Y-A-T-E-S @creativemousestudio.com. Mendel: Cool. Awesome. Sharon: And I'm on LinkedIn as well. Mendel: Cool. And please accept our thanks for being on the show this week and bantering with us. We really appreciate you being here. Sharon: Thank you. It's my pleasure. Mendel: Cool. Hey, that's all for us. Consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts, make it a five star review, but you can talk as much trash about me in the comments as you'd like. Bob, thanks a lot for letting me muddle around in another one of your podcasts. And I guess we'll see you the next time. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
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Building WooCommerce Community and Stores in Nigeria with Mary Job
Thanks to our community sponsors Mary Job works full-time for Paid Memberships Pro. But she also serves the Nigerian and larger African WordPress and WooCommerce community through her site HowDoYou.Tech. Oh, and she has also built a community for WordPress and WooCommerce as well. In a lot of ways, Mary knows how to Do the Woo and in this episode we learn them all. A Chat with Mary Job from HowDoYou.Tech In episode 89, Brad Williams and I talked with Mary about: About her journey to WordPress and WooCommerceHow she connected with the community in Africa and specifically, in NigeriaWhat kind of eCommerce growth has she seen amongst her peersThe biggest challenge that faces store owners in her part of the worldHow important training is when running a WooCommerce businessWhat Mary feels is the first things that needs to be said to clients when they want to start building their own WooCommerce site Of course, each one of these went into a deeper conversation and if you want to learn about the passion behind a community, you need to listen to this podcast with Mary. Connect with Mary On Twitter @maryojobHowDoYouTechMaryJob.com Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. Transcript Email Download New Tab Brad: Welcome back to another fun episode of Do the Woo. I'm one half of your hosting team, Brad joined by Mr. BobWP. You know him, you love him. How's it going, Bob? Bob: Good. And it's good to have you back Brad, you had some stuff going on and then of course we had the break. I kind of forgot what you look like and sound like, so now it's all coming back. Brad: Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome for a little break from me, but I'm back. Let's just say I'm glad 2020 is over. I'm excited about the new year and all the possibilities that it could bring. So, I'm very excited about this episode number 89, and we're getting up there, aren't we Bob? But before we get into the episode, before we bring on our awesome guests, I want to thank our show sponsors as always. So first we have PayPal. Maybe you've heard of them. Probably have, if you're selling stuff with WooCommerce. Definitely check out PayPal. We want to touch on their eight and four service, which if you're not familiar, it's super easy. It allows your customers to buy something from your store and pay across four payments in equal payment every two weeks. So it makes it much easier for some of your customers to maybe buy a little more expensive item or maybe buy multiple items that add up to a little bit more because they can spread out those payments. PayPal takes all the risk on that. You get paid upfront. And if you're already using PayPal, you just have to turn it on. So, it's a pretty amazing feature. We actually had one of the PayPal execs on, just been a couple months ago, but if you want to hear more about it, check out some of our older shows. And also WooCommerce 4.9 is right around the corner. In fact, it's slated for, I believe January 12th, is that right Bob? Which is next Tuesday. Bob: Yeah, I believe so. Brad: So be look out for that. RC 1 is out the door so now's a great time to test it out, especially if you have your own WooCommerce site or if you are supporting somebody else's site it's a good time to get in there and start kicking the tires. It's much more stable than the beta. It's very close, release is imminent within the next week. So check that out. There's some cool updates coming like the updated blocks, plugin as well as a lot of additional enhancements, performance fixes, and even a dashboard update, I believe. So, go check out 4.9 RC 1 over on woocommerce.com. And with that, let's bring on our guests. So today, we have a really fun guest Mary Job. Mary, welcome to Do the Woo. Mary: Thank you, Brad. I've heard a lot of exciting things about this show and I've listened to some so I'm happy to be here. Brad: Well, hopefully it was all good, exciting things that you heard and not the bad things that we hear about Bob's though. Bob. It's a new year. I'm teasing and got to put a few jabs in. Bob: Yeah, really. Brad: So we always like to ask our guests when they come on the show, how do you Do the Woo? How do you work with WooCommerce? How did you get there? Maybe tell us a little bit about your story and then obviously about the business around that you work in. Mary: Awesome. Thank you again, Brad and Bob for having me on your show. So how do I Do the Woo? This is interesting. So I'm just going to go over a brief background of how I got into WordPress because first you have to know about WordPress before you discover WooCommerce which is interesting that is. So I got into WordPress full time in 2015, and back then, I didn't even realize you could do so much with WordPress, I just thought it was a writing platform where you could write stuff, that was all. And little by little, I found myself diving deep into building sites with WordPress site, which is exciting at the time because I was still looking for a job in human resources department and it failed. I didn't think that I would be working online or working remotely at best. I thought I was going to work physically in an organization. So discovering that I could build site with WordPress was new for me. So in Nigeria at that point, if you wanted to have a store on your site, it was pretty difficult because you have to cough up a lot of money to be able to connect a payment gateway with your site. I mean, you had to pay a lot. And I remember then I always wanted to sell stuff online and I would be, I can't afford this. How am I going to do this? Then I discovered you could use WooCommerce and then we had this payment gateway company, Paystack You may have heard about them. Stripe bought them. They came into the picture. Then one of my colleagues built a plugin for the Paystack gateway. So, it didn't cost much to go online and have this store and be able to sell even as a small business. So that was exciting for me because it meant the average person selling on the street can easily get themselves a website, have WooCommerce on the site to sell and then collect payments on their sites. So that is how I started Doing the Woo. Last year, I got in touch with Jonathan. We discussed how we could build the WooCommerce community in Africa. And that was also exciting because I've been doing that with WordPress. And WooCommerce and WordPress are like scissors, you can't have one without the other. The same community that powers WordPress also powers WooCommerce mostly. It was exciting because I was interested in that because for me, one of the things that drew me to the community, because I volunteer a lot with the community, the WordPress community that is, is the fact that you're able to meet up with like minded people all around the world without having to physically meet them. And last year it was very hard on everyone because of the fact that we are grounded in our homes. That was very tough. But thankfully, we could still connect virtually with everyone. In fact, I think in a way made it possible for us to be able to connect with more people as opposed to physical limits in them, because now all meetups were online, all events were online, so you could easily meet up with people from all of this. So these are the two ways that I Do the Woo, one by building websites powered by WordPress, WooCommerce, Paystack for Nigerians. And the other way, be part of the community and seeing how we can grow WooCommerce in Africa. Brad: That's awesome. You made some great points. I mean, I love the fact that you mentioned how WordPress can help. Helps a lot of us connect via WordPress and through the community all over the world. I think what we're doing right now on this show is a perfect example. Bob's out West in the Northwest. I'm here in Philadelphia and you're in Nigeria. So the fact that we're sitting here talking about WordPress. I mean, it's still kind of blows my mind when I take a step back and think about the cool technology that we have available to us. And not just the technology to do this podcast today but also the technology that we're talking about, which is WordPress and WooCommerce. And the fact that there's such a global community, as you said around it. I mean, I will never get tired of thinking about and hearing about that type of stuff because it's so neat to see how far we've come with WordPress, with tech, with the web, with technology and just connecting the whole world. It's fascinating. Don't you think Bob? Bob: Yeah, I certainly do. It's one of the great things about podcasting. I think it's a great thing that we are connecting with people, especially in these days, online. Everyone you can talk to no matter where they live. I know in past podcasts I've done it numerous times and I never tire of it. So that's probably why I love podcasting so much. Now what I'd like to do, before we get into building with WooCommerce and what you do there is talk a little bit about community. Can you give us a little insight on how you built your community in your region. Was it WordCamps, meetups, just reaching out and finding like-minded people. Can you tell us the backstory on that? Mary: I think one of the driving points for me, or one of the key motivating, one of the things that lead me to really want to have people to connect with over here, who did WordPress was the fact that I was getting into WordPress from, I mean, I was coming from a non competent background. I had no idea I would walk in tech, so to say. So I remember I just asked myself one day, I said, but there has to be other people around me who are doing WordPress in one way or the other that I could ask questions instead of going to Google. I mean, there has to be people I could physically meet up with. So I found myself on make.wordpress.org. I always tell people that I wasn't told about it. In the process of Googling to see where can I find a community, I found myself on make.wordpress.org. And then I remember that was looking at all the options, all the different ways you could contribute. And I was asking myself, I don't know what call is. I don't know what CLI is. I don't know what design is. And then I saw committee and I was, okay, wow, I think I could fit in here. And that's how I got into the community really. I just told myself, even if I don't know about the software in that I could start learning and I could start meeting people. And then we just started doing meet ups and it just went wild from there because I guess there were a lot people out there like me who were also looking for people to connect with. At a point, they always were using it wasn't... It didn't contain us because we're always so many at the meet ups. We had to break our meetups into five sections in a day. That was how much people showed up. And then the colleagues over at central were, "why don't we just have a WordCamp because you're already... At meetups, you have over 70 to a hundred people showing up. So just have a WordCamp and that's how we had the first WordCamp and the second WordCamp. We couldn't do a WordCamp last year because of Covid. But for me, I think what drove me was just, because I always have this idea that I can't be the only one looking for a certain thing in a geographic region. There has to be other people who are looking for this. And so how'd you find those people? You find them by putting the word out there so that even my mom knows what WordPress is. My daughter knows what it is. Everybody around me knows what WordPress is. Anybody who sees me, "Oh yeah, Mary, you are into WordPress." So I think it's about finding a champion to carry the news around everywhere you go. And then other people will begin to, "Oh yeah, you know I also use WooCommerce, I also use WordPress, let's talk about this" WhatsApp status, Facebook, I mean, I opened a Twitter page, whenever we had meet ups, I would broadcast it everywhere. And funny enough, it's WordCamps that got me going to East Africa for my first time. I've only been in West Africa. It was even WordCamp that got me to South Africa. That was the first time I traveled out of West Africa. It was through a WordCamp. That was for me eye opening because I remember at WordCamp, Cape Town. There were so many women. That was something because back home it was usually six of us that are females and then you have 70, 80 guys. That was incredible. So going to WordCamp Cape Town seeing all these women and all this, I mean, old, young. So I thought we could do something like this back home. I'm sure there are people like this also back home. So I came back home with that thoughts and we just moved from there. Brad: So we have BobWP and we have MaryWP it sounds like. So you say Mary WordPress and people know who you're talking about. That's awesome. I love hearing that. The story around WordPress and just the community. I mean, a lot of people will ask, what's one of the best things about WordPress and so many of us say the community and while it sounds maybe a little cheesy in a sense, it's absolutely true because it's a very inclusive community and a very opening community. And I strongly believe it's just the nature of open source. If you want to contribute back to a software project in some way, then there's something about you that wants to help other people. It's just in your DNA in a sense. And that's why I think the community is such an amazing community. Brad: It's so inclusive because of that, because we all just want to ultimately give back and make a better WordPress product, and build amazing websites and help a lot of people. And we want to help each other do it. And that's that's how a lot of us got into WordPress and met people in the industry. That's how I got started. It was going to a WordCamp and meeting people. And I'm so glad that the community is as strong and vibrant as ever. And it's really fun to hear stories like you just shared in other countries because I don't get to hear those as often. And your kind of perspective, and like you said, seeing more women at a WordCamp kind of was eye opening, which is really cool. It's diverse, it's inclusive. It's an amazing community and something I'm really proud to be a part of. I think we all are. Mary: Yeah, I am. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Bob: I'm going to bop over from community to building and specifically, more geographical, because it's always interesting. We're all in our little areas and working with Commerce and doing the online stores. It sounds like you have a lot of touch points with people over there. You're obviously hearing a lot in the WordPress space and people that are doing it. So this is a two part question. Have you seen more growth in e-commerce and people wanting to get online more because of this last year. I'm looking at it because that's what we're hearing from everybody. And secondly, geographically, do you have any challenges or do store owners have specific challenges there? Mary: Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. I think last year, because when the lockdown started, we initially we thought one month, two months, everything would die down and then it stretched to a whole year and a lot of people had to move over to selling their products more online than offline. And in some physical stores were doing, you have to order online and then they have to deliver, you can't come to the restaurant or to the shops to buy the item. They have to deliver to your door. So, definitely. I remember that we had this client from the previous year who wanted a WooCommerce store and we were practically giving her the reason why she should get an e-commerce store because she sells very well physically. And we were the one chasing her to make sure the site is up and running. Last year, she came to us and said "I think I still have left over money from the previous time." I'm, "no, no, no, you don't. You have to start all over again." So I think it made people realize that you have no choice. If you have a physical so you have to balance it with an online store. If you don't have a physical store, the best way to sell these days is an online store. So definitely a lot of people are moving their businesses online, even over here. And then over here, it's more difficult because off the top of my head, I would say about 75% of the civil services, the government services are offline. Because they tried to move them online but for so many reasons, they don't want the adoption to work. But I think last year has made people realize that it's better when people process these things online than when they have to physically come to the office. That kind of open because of COVID. Because they would lose revenue from not, I mean, if I have to come to the office to process my driver's license, for instance, then you'd be losing money compared to if I could process it online and then come over to pick it up. So a lot of people are moving around. This year people are eve taking it more seriously because this year is uncertain, we don't know what is for you to happen yet this year. Everybody's on edge, let's us get our online platforms ready and set to go just in case something happens and if nothing happens, well, we still have bought stores, physical and online to work with. So we're good. And then the second part of your question was challenges for people with WooCommerce stores. I can't speak regional wise. I'll speak only for Nigeria. The Nigerian market is just different. If it works in Ghana, it won't work here. So I'll speak only for this region. Bob: Yeah, we have to realize that Africa is kind of big, so it would be hard to speak for everyone there. Mary: Yes. I think the major problem here that I see is to deal with logistics and delivery, the connectivity. For instance, as I am here, I'm not in Lagos, which is a major city. I should be able to sell my mug to somebody in Lagos without having to go through the stress of going to the park, looking for a driver, giving it to the driver, it's unpredictable. The time the driver is going to get to Lagos, the person might not get the item today, the item might get lost in transit. So I think logistics is a major problem. The connectivity, being able to send an item from here to say, Kano, to Abuja or to Enugu. For me, that's a major problem. We have Paystack and the likes for the payment gateways, but the shipping is still missing a lot. There should be a plugin I could put on my WooCommerce store to be able to ship from point A to point B where all I have to do as a merchant is go drop off the item and the company handles the shipping, they track the item, that is still missing. So if you sell online right now, you have to figure out a way to handle delivery by yourself. Well, except you used the other options, the ones like the Konga and the Jumia. Those are the ones that are equivalent to the Amazon. Where you have different people selling items. So that's not WooCommerce and that's not WordPress. So that's a problem for us right here, right now. Brad: That's an important challenge. I mean, for obvious reasons, but just thinking, we've talked about the pandemic a bit and Bob and I have talked on the show and past episodes about how it's really shifted, and you kind of mentioned it to Mary, but it's shifted the mindset for business owners of online first. And then, brick and mortar, or at the very least making sure you have a site to compliment your brick and mortar store. And then if you don't have a store obviously online. But being able to ship, not just to outside of Nigeria, but outside of the country to other countries, really, I mean, that really opens the door to being able to sell worldwide, obviously. So not having a really easy way to implement a shipping carrier that could support that even at the local level, but certainly at the international level, that's a tough thing to be missing. And I'm sure it's a tough challenge to solve, which is why it's challenging, but that's tough. Brad: Because just being able to, like you mentioned the difference between trying to do an online store, what was it, five years ago, six years ago or so. And now where there's an option for a nice payment gateway that's reasonable, there's WooCommerce, there's WordPress, it's all relatively inexpensive. And you're just paying when you make sales, mostly other than some basic hosting and things like that is the shipping. So, that's an interesting challenge to tackle. Mary: Yes it is. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Bob: Now let's head back to what you are doing and your own site. Mary: I currently work full-time with Paid Memberships Pro. We also Do the Woo there because we have a WooCommerce integration, which allows you to sell a membership on your site as a product. And when I'm not doing that, or first, when I'm not doing a PM Pro, I'm doing How Do You Tech. How Do You Tech is a company site, is my company site, howdoyou.tech. And my personal site is maryjob.com, but I'm not selling anything on my personal sites. Bob: I notice on your site that you have, building sites, training and support. I'm just curious, how much of what you do is training? Mary: When I was starting to learn how to build sites. I noticed that a lot of people, when they're building sites for people, rather a lot of people that I knew were building sites that I went to for advice, they would usually host the sites for the clients, buy the domain for the client. And if the client wanted to do something on the site, they would still have to reach out to them. And I did not want that when I start to build sites for people, I wanted to be able to teach people how to manage their sites. As I am building the site, let them know how to log into their site, how to change a simple picture, how to add a product, which is why we say that we don't just build a site. We also teach you how to manage the site. Should you now decide to pay us for support, we would more than happy, be willing to support you, which is what we do us.howdoyou.tech. Because I find it not empowering when I build a site and I just handed over to the client and they probably don't do anything to it, they just leave it there and make it informational when it could be so much more. I always tell people, your site can be so much more if you can master how it works. Even if you have to employ somebody to manage it for you, then you know what is expected from that person. So they don't just sell crap to you. You know that this is how you do backups. It's just that I'm outsourcing it to you to do it for me. But I understand how my site works. When you understand how it works and it makes more money for you or it brings in customers for you. If you don't know how to do all of those things, I consider it wasting money, you're just throwing money away if you're not learning how your site works. At least know how to log into your own site. So we bonded training. When we charge a client to build the site, we bonded the training with it. So as I'm building the site, most times I'm recording my screen and make it into short, sharp videos just for the clients. But we're hoping to not have to do that anymore with the Academy site, which we launched last year, although it's not online. We're hoping to put up short courses for people, really short videos, how to log into your WordPress website, how the product works. I know there are YouTube videos, but if we have it on our site, or if we have it hosted on academy.howdoyou.tech we can easily push that to the client and say, everything you want to learn about how to handle your site can be found here. It's free. You get membership, you can access it that anytime you want, you can ask us questions if you are stuck. So training is a big part of what we do. Bob: And you're creating that comfort level already with those clients. So instead of sending them off and they're thinking you are you sending me off to some 21 year old that's going to talk over their heads and they can't understand what they're talking about. They already worked with you and are much more comfortable learning from you as well. So that's a great offer.. Mary: That's one thing that I've noticed in the tech space is that it's not deliberate but a lot of people who are extremely techy tend to use more techy words when they are explaining to clients. When all the clients wants to hear is just simple English. They don't want all the jargons. They can't keep up with that, it's like you're putting too much, they have to run a business and now they have to deal with the jargons, no. Brad: There's a fine art being able to speak to your audience. We talk about this a lot at our company and even in our meetup and our local communities and stuff, we talk about this, just speak to the audience. So if you're in a very technical setting and you're speaking a technical topic then great, geek out and talk tech and whatever. But if you're training someone that is brand new to WordPress, don't start talking to them about the GPL license and what that means. They don't care. Here's how you log in. You don't tell about the drama of Gutenberg and how many years it took to get live, they don't care, just tell them how to use it. Mary: No, they just want a useful and a functional site. All of that you're stressing the client. Brad: And I love that, what you mentioned of, if you understand how things work, ultimately you can make more money. Even if you're not necessarily the one doing it. I think that's a very good point because you're right, that you don't have to necessarily be the one doing those backups. But as an owner of that online store, that business, it's important that you understand what a backup means. Hopefully you understand how to run a backup if you want, understand how to get to those backups and just the concept of what that means and why it's so important, especially for a commerce site that has transactions and why that needs to be more regular, probably more real time then, once a day or once a week. So I love that point because I think it's extremely important. Doesn't mean you have to do it as a business owner, but you should understand it. Because you're going to be paying someone else to do it. And if so you don't even know what they're doing and you're paying them to do it. How are you going to know if they did it? Oh, that's awesome. I love the training aspect because I think that's as much a reason why WordPress is as popular as ever is because of the intuitiveness of it. But it isn't as intuitive as we all think because all three of us are in WordPress every single day. So we take things for granted because that's all we look at. It is intuitive though, compared to some of the other platforms, in my opinion. But that, and just the educational factor of, like you said, you're doing training. There's a lot of great information out there. There's videos or books, there's all sorts of stuff. But just that education piece that people are comfortable going in and editing their website because if they're comfortable with their site and they were, wow, I can actually make changes and see those on the front and not write code. That's going to blow their mind the first time they do it. I'm sure you've seen it. And that's probably the fuel that keeps you going too is that excitement you see in some of your clients as it clicks. Mary: Yes. Bob: And I've noticed that a lot of people who build sites have been talking about in this new year, they're more focused on documentation. The need to provide more learning experiences on the client side. And that's whether they're doing products or websites or whatever. So I think it's starting to drill into more and more people just how critical that piece is and if someone uses a product, they probably prefer to learn how to use this extension on their site versus Bob talking about it on his site. They prefer it coming from the original source. Mary: That is interesting. I'm going to also ask them that you're talking about here right now in Nigeria. Bob: So I think that's a big one. So let me just throw one thing out here. I don't know if Brad has anything else, but I was just thinking to close this out, since you are actually the official first episode of the new year, which is kind of cool because we're in a new year. If somebody sat down with you after this show and they said, you know I want to start building WooCommerce sites. I know WordPress, but I want to start building WooCommerce sites, from your experience, what would be your first piece of advice for them? Mary: I think the first thing I would ask them, which is a first thing I ask all my clients who told me they want a website is, are you willing to set aside some time to learn how your WooCommerce shop is going to run? If your answer is yes, then we can get started talking about any other thing. But that's the first thing for me. Are you willing to put in the time to learn how your shop works? Because it's your product at the end of the day, your service. You'd know more about the product or service that whoever is going to build a shop for you. If the person who is building the shop puts in the wrong product description, it's your job to fix it, which means you have to put in a time to make it what you want. So that's the first thing I would ask. Are you willing to put in the time? If you're willing to put in the time? Well then yes, why not? By all means let's get started. But one thing I also love is... So I don't always tell clients that, let me build this for you, no, no, no, no. I always ask them, would you like to build this by yourself? I have my reasons. Because most of my friends will say, you just throw the market out there or I recommend some other person. And I will tell them that, it takes a lot to teach somebody how to do something, even when you're building the site for them. I mean, if the person's answer was no, I'm not willing to put in the time. I'm definitely not going to recommend myself to build a site for them, no. We can't be on the same page. So if that answer is yes. Do you want to do it yourself or do you want somebody to build it for you? And then are you willing to invest? You need equipment. You need a good smartphone. If you have to buy a product box, you need it. You can't afford to be paying all the time for a photograph, also for taking product photos. I mean, I'm speaking here now because I'm thinking small business owners majorly, because for me anything I do, I mostly like to make an impact. So, if the person who is selling physically in a small shop by the side of the road is able to leverage that kind of technology to sell that. It makes me happy. But of course, if it's somebody with a big outfit, then I go pay somebody to do it for you. But if it's a small business owner, I'm more than happy and willing to guide them and help them from the beginning to the completion. So long as they're also willing to put in the time. Mary: But you have to be willing to put in the time. I think that's the most important thing for me because the products are trends and I presume you're not just sending one thing all the time, you want to have more products to your line or have more services. You should be able to do that without having to reach out to a developer. That's prospecting. That's the way I see it. Bob: Yes, exactly. Brad anything else you want to touch on? Brad: No, that was great. I completely agree with what you said. I think putting the time is, especially as a small business owner. And honestly, I think most of all business owners are willing to do that because if you run a business, I would hope that you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty, put in some sweat equity. And I'm guessing most small business owners have already done that. So I think that's great advice. Bob: Well, Mary, this has been great. Brad: It's been fun. Bob: It's always great to hear from someone way across the pond, as they would say. And what's going on in the Woo world over in Nigeria. Where is the best place for people to connect with you? Mary: That would be on Twitter, but right now I'm on break, that would be on Twitter, Mary Job. I usually take a four months break at the end of the year, so I'm not back yet, but my website is always up, maryjob.com. You can send me an email at anytime. My mailbox and me, we have a relationship that I don't... I'm trying to not get addicted to my mailbox but I'm not sure if that's going to work. Bob: Alrighty. Well, let me just thank our sponsors one more time before we wrap this up. There's PayPal. You may have installed the PayPal extension for over the holidays on your clients site, but if you haven't, you want to check that out. And then of course, WooCommerce 4.9. It's coming out shortly. Lastly, I would love for you to go over and leave a review on the podcast on Apple podcasts. Well, I think that does it Brad, like I said, it was great to have you back. I've I missed your smiling face even though people can't see it. Brad: Glad to be back. Let's have a good healthy, successful year this year. All three of us. How about that? Bob: Sounds like a plan to me. And Mary, thank you very much for coming on the show. Brad: Thank you Mary, this is great. Mary: Thank you Bob. Thank you Brad. I really appreciate having me on this show. Brad: Hopefully someday we'll get to meet in person when we're all out to travel again. Bob: Really. Mary: Yeah. Bob: And yeah, that's another wrap. Thank you everyone and continue to Do the Woo in the New Year. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
24 minutes | 20 days ago
WooCommerce Builder Tips from the Pros for 2021
Thanks to our community sponsors More than often, in end-of-the-year podcast episodes, highlights from the past year appear. But since I am more of a look into the future kind of guy, instead, I am giving you some tips for 2021. Tips for Building WooCommerce Sites and Products We start the podcast with some insights into WooCommerce in 2021 Allen Smith, Developer Advocate at WooCommerce – Allen shares some insights into what will be happening at WooCommerce over the course of 2021. Tips for agencies Robert Windisch, Inpsyde – Robert gives his advice about embracing the blog editor and multi-site. Follow Robert on Twitter @nullbytes Brad Morrison, GoWP – Brad urges you to look at ways to diversity your service offerings. Follow Brad on Twitter @MBradMorrison Tips for Product Builders Adepju Oduye, WooCommerce Marketplace – Adepju shares three insightful tips for Woo builders. Alex Denning, Ellipsis – Alex brings his perspective is and emphasizes, more than even, to build what people need. Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexDenning Kathy Darling, Kathy is Awesome – Kathy drills it down to listening and finding that niche solution. Find Kathy on Twitter @Kathy_Darling Patrick Rauland, Nexcess – Patrick points out that when it comes to selling products, data can tell you anything. Follow Patrick on Twitter @BFTrick Bigger Picture Tips Jodie Riccelli, WebDevStudios – Jodie walks through some tips on what you can do with your site to ensure the best, possible user experience. Follow Jodie on Twitter @Jodie_Riccelli Tavleen Kaur, Build WooFunnels – Tavleen gives us some thoughts on whether you should go for ads or choose the organic route for building your traffic. Follow Tavleen on Twitter @NotJustTavleen A Solid Business (and Personal) Tip Kandace Brigleb, Needmore Designs – Kandace keeps it simple, yet powerful. In 2021 her advice is to make room for your humanity. Follow Kandace on Twitter @kandacerae Enjoy the podcast, Happy New Year and see you in 2021. ~ BobWP Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everyone, BobWP here and welcome to Do the Woo, episode 88. Well, this is the last show of the year and I wanted to do a little something special. Typically, podcasts will do a year-end highlight from past shows. And although I do like that idea, it’s always hard for me to pick and choose from so many great guests. Also, I am more of a look ahead kind of guy vs looking at the past. It’s just my nature. So what I have done is asked some pros in the space to give you some tips around building websites, services and products, all in the Woo ecosystem. But before I do that, I would like you to listen to Allen Smith, Developer Advocate for WooCommerce give us just a glimpse into woo in 2021. Allen Smith: Hey everybody. I'm Allen Smith, the Developer Advocate for WooCommerce at Automatic. And I'm here to share just a few updates about what we've got in store for WooCommerce developers as we head into 2021. First, I'd like to point out a couple of things that are currently in progress. The first is that we are working hard to prep WooCommerce core for the end of the Brexit transition period, which is happening January 1st of 2021. It's a very complex overlap of economic, political and geographic domains, but we're working hard to make sure that WooCommerce core can continue to support merchants and developers who are doing business in and around the UK. The next thing I'd like to mention is the fact that we are working hard to make sure that WooCommerce supports WordPress 5.7, which will be released in the new year as well as PHP 8, which has been phased in over the past several months. We're still kind of working on making sure that we are compatible all across the platform there. A few things to keep an eye out for: we will be standardizing the labels in many of our public facing repositories on GitHub, which should help streamline the triage process. It should make a more consistent developer experience for anybody who contributes to these projects or files issues, submits pull requests, things like that. The other thing I'll point out is that we've been doing lots and lots of work around our testing infrastructure and quality engineering, making sure that WooCommerce core continues to be a reliable platform that is built on standardized principles, quality engineering, things like that. So all of these efforts have led to a lot of new utilities, new tooling that we have put together. We're going to be releasing some of that. Some of it's already released, which is really exciting, but keep an eye out for that as we head into 2021. A couple of things that we will be working on to keep an eye out for, things that we're going to keep doing, I should say, we are going to keep doing developer office hours. We hold those Wednesdays at 1400 UTC in the developers channel of our community Slack. If you haven't checked those out, I would encourage you to do that. We're also going to keep doing our monthly community chats, which typically happen near the end of the month. Although we shifted them around ... We try to be a little bit flexible with those based on release dates and holidays and things like that. Three big initiatives that we are going to be doing, we have some process improvements that we are implementing in the new year. We're going to be sharing these things called developer advisories. You may have seen some of these already come out in the past few months. We're going to try to do those more consistently, more frequently to make sure that developers are aware of any changes that affect their code. We're also exploring options for helping developers support each other in more efficient and scalable ways than just helping each other one-on-one in Slack. That has limitations. It's a great platform for connecting with each other, but there are some limitations there. We would just want to make sure that that developers have the resources they need to support each other. I've mentioned this several times already. We are going to be working on some authoritative guides for developing ... for different key areas of WooCommerce. So that might be building an extension or building a theme or building an external app that integrates with WooCommerce. These guides, again, they're going to be authoritative. They're going to be forward facing, so they're going to respect that react based environment and workflow that we see in a lot of the new features that are coming out and WooCommerce. But we are mindful of the fact that there are lots of developers who are veteran PHP WordPress developers. We want to make sure that we bring you all along for this transition as well. So we want to respect that with the guides that we're putting together as well. We're also looking to put together some guidance that lets people use some of the tooling that we've put together over the past year or so, as we have built out our testing infrastructure and our quality engineering practices. And finally, I'm a little over time here, but finally, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be measuring developer satisfaction as a dimension of our overall platform and ecosystem health. And now we're still ironing out some of the details of this, but we are going to put together a developer satisfaction score. We're figuring out how we're going to measure it when we're going to measure it and how we're going to go about analyzing that feedback and taking action on it. But one thing to be on the lookout for is that you're going to be hearing from us more frequently in 2021, asking for more specific feedback on what you need as a developer and how we can help you build with WooCommerce. Bob: That was great hearing from Allen, now let’s listen to a couple of tips for those of you who build Woo shops. Robert Windisch: Hi, I'm Robert Windisch. I'm the CEO at Inpsyde. As a WordPress agency, we know that urge to not always jump on new things. But I can convince you that every minute spent on the blog editor is well-invested time. You can create more appealing content and help your clients to get ahead of the competitors. With more peoples and companies joining the eCommerce market, you and your clients can profit with the upcoming flexibility of the WooCommerce blogs. If you might be into podcasting, check out the Gutenberg change log, where you have a deep dive into the makings and decisions of changes for the blog editor. And if you're looking for a hidden champion feature in WordPress, that not everyone has their eyes yet on, it's multi-site. Having one installations to serve multiple different sites gives you an edge from many use cases. For example, you can spin up a new project or shop based on an existing one and quickly start a project for a new demand. For example, we use multi-site often to help clients translate their pages or products. Brad Morrison: Hi, I'm Brad Morrison from GoWP. One tip I'd share with WooCommerce agency owners is to constantly look for ways diversify your service offering, specifically with upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Extend your current services with premium options and offer new, related services to your existing customers. For example, if you sell recurring maintenance or support plans, you can offer a VIP option at a higher price point and give a faster turnaround time? In many cases, you can just tweak an existing workflow instead of having to add staff or incur new expenses. And if you're already providing web support, maybe you can leverage your help desk tool and support staff to offer a new white label eCommerce customer service plan to help your clients, customers giving you a new revenue stream. I suggest loading up a spreadsheet with new upsell and cross-sell ideas and then scoring them objectively to see which are worth pursuing. Best wishes for a happy and profitable new year. Bob: Before we heard the rest of these great tips, I would like to give special thanks to my community sponsors, WooCommerce and PayPal. Without their support, I would not be able to do all I do on Do the Woo. It’s more than just the podcast. Helping me to keep on top of Woo through news and other content, as well as connecting with builders worldwide, either through the site, the upcoming WooCommerce Builder Meetup or in one on one conversations. So please support both WooCommerce and PayPal, because without them, I wouldn’t be able to Do the Woo. Moving into the product space. Let’s listen to a couple of tips if you are thinking of starting to build products for WooCommerce in 2021. Adepju Oduye: Hi, my name is Adepju Oduye, and I manage business development for the WooCommerce marketplace. Here are three quick tips for extension builders who want to get started in 2021. Number one, consider building a theme. Every merchant pretty much needs a theme and it's one of the key first purchases when setting up a store. Plus, themes are critical for engagement and conversion. According to digital marketing firm WebFX, 75% of a site's credibility comes from design. It builds well on the design and code fronts, starting with a theme can be great business. Number two, focus on the core need and product quality. Once you've identified a merchant need focus on the core features or functionality and build it really, really well. Many of the marketplace inbound submissions we received don't make it past code review. But beyond trying to get the code as lean as possible, also aim for user flow that makes sense. Products that simply function as they should, are easy to navigate, and don't break sites are already at an advantage. Number three, outsource if and where necessary. One of the amazing aspects of WooCommerce and its open source model is a large community that drives it. So don't feel the need to juggle all roles when building or maintaining your product. Many of our vendors start selling in the market places, individuals or lean teams and use agencies, contractors to fill the gaps or keep focused on the task you prefer. So there you have it, three quick tips when you're getting started in 2021. Alex Denning: Hey this is Alex Denning. I am the founder of Ellipsis Marketing, which is the marketing agency for WordPress businesses. Bob asked me to talk about building new WooCommerce products in 2021. My role is to look at this from a marketing point of view in the ecosystem. I think the main thing that is true in any year, but especially next year, is to make sure you're building something that people need. There are all sorts of problems which could be solved around WooCommerce, and some of them are big and some of them are small. And that's one of the exciting things about being in a high growth ecosystem. The important thing to think about when building your product, though, and thinking about which opportunity you want to solve, and which problem you want to solve, is to make sure that it is a thing that people recognize as a problem and are going to spend money on solving. If you can link your products more directly into revenue, then that can make it an easier sell. You can make a revenue justification. You might also solve a problem that's more of an anxiety that people have about their store. Maybe they're concerned about reliability and that's keeping them up at night. There are all sorts of problems that you could sell, but you need to link them together to the need in order to do that. You might do that through customer research. The important thing to listen out for there is the need behind the need, as we call it. Someone will tell you a surface level reason why they're worried about something or why they would be interested in the problem, but you need to go one level beyond that. What is really at play here? So if the customer tells you that they're worried that their orders won't go through and that's a problem, the need behind the need could be all sorts of other things. If they're doing client work, they might be worried about getting an angry phone call from their client. I'm losing the client for something that they don't perceive to be their fault, but the client has them on the hook for, and they know that they need to solve that problem. In that case, you would approach that differently to, say, the store owner, who is concerned about their customers down and risking their reputation. There are all sorts of needs behind the needs that you might find. But just thinking about it through that mindset usually helps uncover a bit more insight. Do that, you'll be able to differentiate your product. Even if you're doing something that someone else is already doing, if you can link it to these needs behind the needs for your customers, then you're in a good place. There is all sorts of products you could build in 2021. And hopefully that helps you find the right thing to build and then have a basic way of getting it in front of the right people and persuading them that you're the solution for them. Kathy Darling: Hi, Do the Woo. This is Kathy Darling at Kathysawesome.com. I'm the author of WooCommerce Name Your Price, Mix and Match Products and Free Gift Coupons. If you are looking to enter the marketplace in 2021, my top piece of advice would be to be a good listener. If you talk to businesses, ask them what they are struggling to do right now. All of my products emerged from things my current clients needed to do. While the marketplace is a lot more saturated than when I started, I think there's still space for releasing new products. You can always build a better mousetrap, so to speak. I'd especially recommend looking at the in-between spaces of the marketplace. If a store owner is using three to four plugins, a handful of custom snippets to cobble together what they need, maybe something more specialized would serve their niche better. I hope that helps. And I look forward to seeing what you all come up with. Patrick Rauland: Hey there, my name is Patrick Rauland. I'm the Product Marketing Manager at Nexcess. I also create courses for LinkedIn Learning on all sorts of eCommerce topics and WordPress topics. I run WooSesh. I organize WordCamps and I also do consulting for clients. And my tip for you is this: data can tell you anything. So I'll give you a 30-second story here. I was looking at some sales data from one of these clients. And at first glance I saw that basically we got a whole bunch of extra sales from my promotion. And basically the promotion increased our sales by roughly 10%. That's pretty good. And based on the success of the sale, I'm like, "Great. We had a good sale. Let's do some more on black Friday. Let's do some more around Christmas. Let's do some more around Easter or whatever." And then a few months later, for a completely different reason, I was basically looking into adjacent data, data for a different purpose, but I decided to look at them again. And I noticed that one product increased sales by 20% and another product didn't increase at all. And then I looked, once I realized this was weird, at the revenue, and I realized that not only did the sale not boost numbers, but because of that one product that didn't move at all in terms of units, we didn't sell more units of this product, I was basically giving away money by offering a sale on that product and no one extra was buying it, just the same people who would have normally bought it. Fun fact, that's called a subsidy cost. So my tip for everyone out there is from time to time, and maybe right now, when it's hopefully the holiday season and things are slowing down a little bit, do the occasional deep dive into your sales, make sure that your overall sales go up. That's pretty obvious. Most people do this. Then make sure that you aren't increasing your costs too much. So if I just see an extra 10% sales, you need to make sure your costs also don't go up by 10%. Or in this case, basically, if I see sales go up by 10%, but then I'm giving away 10% of my revenue, that might even out to about a 0% increase in total revenue because the extra sales don't offset the cost. And then make sure that each product is contributing. And this is something to think about because certain products ... So basically sales are really good. When there's people who are hemming and hawing, they're like, "Do I want this product or not?" That's when sales are great. It takes someone from a, maybe to a yes. But there's many products that sometimes people just don't need. Like, I don't need an extra smoke alarm. So a sale and smoke alarms isn't going to help me. So for people who sell different types of products, make sure that each product is contributing to the sale. And then I have a mini bonus tip here: learn how to use pivot tables, and pivot tables exist both in Google sheets and in Microsoft Excel. They will really help you uncover this data. They're really good at taking one set of data and then being able to sort of visualize it and sort of combine the numbers in different ways on different sheets, but you still keep the original data in intact. So mini bonus tip, learn pivot tables, but the bigger tip here is from time to time, do those deep dives on your sales data. You want to see sales numbers go up. You want to see revenue go up. And you want to make sure that all of the products in the sale are contributing. Bob: I know that the next year is going to be ripe for those product builders, so take heed on those pieces of advice. When it comes to Woo, often tips given to store owners are also powerful tips for you as a builder or products or services. Let’s listen in to a couple of those. Jodie Riccelli: Hi everyone. It's Jodie Riccelli, Director of Business Development at WebDevStudios. I'm thrilled to be a part of this edition of Do the Woo. I wanted to talk to you today about some things that you can do for your WooCommerce website that can ensure the best possible user experience for your customers. I think in the year 2021, one thing that we probably learned more than anything in the website world is that having a website and having an online presence is absolutely essential. There were so many businesses this year that had the opportunity to find out how they could create the best experience for their clients and for their customers through an online presence. That was one of the exciting parts of this particular year. But now that you have a website up and running and sales are starting to come through, what can you do to ensure a continuously good experience from this point going forward? Well, I think that the options are really limitless, but when I want to talk about today specifically is making sure that your site is performant and secure. These are things that happen in the backend that sometimes maybe we take for granted because things seem to be going so well on the end. It's important to do security checks on your website to make sure that it's in the ultimate health and then also making sure that the speed of your website is what it needs to be for your client base. The thing about an eCommerce website that I think is probably more important than any other website is that people are not going to spend money unless they trust the website. Because of this, that's where security performance really comes into play to create that experience for your particular users. In addition to that, making sure that your site is continuously maintained is also very important, as WordPress and WooCommerce and plugins continuously deliver updates that sometimes contain very important security patches. We have the responsibility to make sure that all of those things are updated on our website, again, constantly contributing to the ultimate experience for our client base. I hope and I wish everyone much success with their WooCommerce websites going into the new year. I think we're going to see a Renaissance age of online eCommerce and I'm very excited to be a part of it. Tavleen Kaur: Hi, I'm Tavleen Kaur, Chief Marketing Officer at Build WooFunnels. And if there's one advice that I really want to give to all those who are starting out, their WooCommerce store this year, that's this: there is a lot of debate around whether you should invest in paid ads or whether you should go the organic route. And my advice over here is, well, do a mix of both. There isn't a this versus that. There is actually both of them together. If you are creating content, thoughtfully written blog posts around the title, around the topic that you're selling products for, then go ahead and spend some money in putting those pieces in front of the right people. So just do invest in advertising and do not ignore the copy bit. Again, there is a big myth in the industry that when you are advertising on social, it's the images that matters. It's the videos that matter. But that's not true. It's also the copy that goes along that really matters. So make sure that you do invest time in learning how to craft a compelling copy, an enticing copy for the products that you're selling, and make sure that you put some money on it to bring them in front of the right people. So that's my one advice for you. And if you're starting out, well, all the best to you, and I think 2021 is a great year to start selling online. Bob: As Woo builders, here is one last important tip to remember. This is good advice for any business, inside or outside the Woo space. Kandace Brigleb: Hi, I'm Kandace Brigleb, a partner from Needmore Designs in Portland, Oregon. While there's a light at the end of the tunnel, we're all living and working under incredible stresses and unknowns right now. In 2021, my advice is to make room for your humanity. Allow more spaces for kindness and flexibility for both you and your clients. This may take the form of more generous timelines, more forgiving schedules, or it could be something as simple as adding 10 minutes of chat to the beginning of each meeting agenda. Whatever it is for you, make space for your clients and for you to be human, with all that is beautiful and flawed about being a human in this time. Bob: Well, that does it, 2020 is a wrap. I’ll end this with a thank you to my sponsors, WooCommerce and PayPal, but also a huge thanks my Friends of Do the Woo. Their added support for my efforts is invaluable. And of course, I cannot forget you. My listeners. My readers. Those of you who build awesome WooCommerce websites, products and services. You are what makes this cool community of builders. So cheers, Happy News year and I’ll see you on the flip side. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
38 minutes | a month ago
Resilience with WooCommerce Products in 2020 with Colin Daniels
Thanks to our community sponsors Colin Daniels, co-founder of Grenade and maker of Foo Sales and Foo Events, talks about moving from a bootstrapping agency to creating products. But what if these two products took a hit from 2020’s pandemic? Event ticketing and management and point-of-sales were hit hard in April of 2020. This is the story of not only how his team took a negative situation and turned it around, but how customers used the products to satisfy unique needs in creative ways. A Chat with Colin Daniels from Woo Sales and Woo Events In episode 87, Mendel Kurland and I talked with Colin about: The journey for Colin from the early days of WordPress to creating products for WooCommerceHow they funded and started products while bootstrapping their agencyThe challenges they faced in 2020 with two products: one for event ticketing and the other for point-of-salesHow their business and others have adapted to the new way of online eventsWhen and how they saw the need to reevaluate Foo Events and bring in Zoom integrationWhat they have done as a company and what others can do to harden issues around in-person events and unexpected shiftsWhy point-of-sales is starting to rise with the new eCommerce business and what the future holds The overwhelming solutions available and how Foo Sales and Foo Events have differentiated themselves Connect with Colin Colin on LinkedInColin on Twitter @youngBLOODGranadeFoo SalesFoo Events Don’t forget to check out my new WooCommerce Builder Global Meetup Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. Transcript Email Download New Tab Mendel: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Welcome to Do the Woo, episode 87. Hey Bob, how are you doing? Bob: Doing good. I like it that we are so inclusive of all ages. Mendel: Yeah. I was going to add in like, monsters and Klingons and Stormtroopers. By the way, I know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. Nobody send any hate mail Bob's way for me, including both of them in that example. Anyway, I hope things are good with you. Things are good with me. I'm super excited to get into this show, especially because we have Colin Daniel's with us. But, before we do all of that... I want to say thank you, a million times over, to PayPal. Because, hey, they have paying in four. And it's super easy to throw onto your site. Super amazing. And, it's something that you should try out... If you haven't tried it out. So PayPal, thank you. And everybody else go download the PayPal plugin and install on your site. Super easy to do. There's no reason not to do it. If you're doing eCommerce and also WooCommerce. Now, I know many of you on a WooCommerce podcast may not know what WooCommerce is, but today I'm here to tell you, all you have to do is go to WooCommerce to check out WooCommerce. And you can also check out the latest update on the mobile app. You can now add products, simple groups, and all other types of products using the WooCommerce app. So check that out, download it. It's free. Isn't it, Bob? Bob: Yeah, it is. So you can't go wrong there. Mendel: Because it's crazy. How is WooCommerce even free? Nobody knows. It's wild, the magic of open source. Anyway, without further ado, I just want to welcome Colin Daniels to the show and ask you, because I'm super curious. How do you Do The Woo? Colin: Thanks for having me on the show. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Grenade and we make products for WooCommerce. Mendel: That's simple enough. I dig it. And so, specifically, you work on Foo Events, right? Colin: Yeah, that's correct. So, we've got two products. One of them, which is our first successful product, is Foo Events. Which is an event and ticketing extension platform for WooCommerce. And, the other product is a software as a service point of sales system called Foo Sales. Mendel: Cool. So I would love to get into exactly what those products do and are, so that everybody can kind of know a little bit about Foo events and Foo Sales. But, before we do, we'd love to hear about your journey to become a WooCommerce person. And, to build a products company and now a product-as-a-service company based on open source eCommerce. So, how did you get started? And, and what's, what's kind of your origin story? The Early Days of WordPress and Moving into WooCommerce Colin: Well, I think it goes back... Pre-dates WooCommerce. I was quite an early adopter of WordPress back in 2003. When I was still a student, I installed one of the first beta's and started playing around with blogging. Then, proceeded to help friends and family set up blogs and got into a bit of freelancing at the time. Just to make an extra buck or two. And then my career path kind of merged into digital publishing. And I went to work for a couple of media companies and help them sort of commercialize and set up blogging and multimedia platforms based on, on bolt-on-WordPress, which at the time it was very early days and it was kind of quite a taboo. WordPress was just seen as a blogging platform. So to get, like, listed companies to accept it into their kind of realm and open source, to be accepted, was quite a big deal. So it required a lot of education back then and then kind of fast forward to 2012 when I started Grenade with my co-founder Robin. We started as a digital agency. That's, that's how Grenade started, which I think is a common theme amongst many of your listeners. And we basically became experts in WordPress and WooCommerce. And focused mostly in the media entertainment and publishing space. That was where we specialize and helped a lot of brands, build sites on WordPress and WooCommerce. We saw a lot of opportunities. We got a lot of feedback from clients in terms of extensions that they needed, and we just couldn't find them in some cases. So we dabbled in a bit of products. Most of them failed, but through events, , was one that really stuck. And that was based on a client need for a ticketing extension. And we couldn't find one that met all their requirements. That's when we decided to just build our own and the client was incredibly happy with it. It was just a single plugin at that stage. And we decided just to put it on Code Canyon and see if anyone would buy it. The uptake was amazing and it's kind of evolved from there and to eight extensions now. So, it really is its own platform. And we've recently added a booking extension so that people can also sell bookings and reservations on these sites. Bob: Cool. One of the things, and this is, I think we're going to kind of go back and forth between these two products because the Foo Sales and the Foo Events, and I know you had mentioned the whole idea of omni-channel. First of all, what have you learned specifically about that with Foo Sales? And secondly, with Foo Sales, being a point of sales instrument, what has played out with that particular product over this last year with the challenges? The 2020 challenge with Foo Sales and Foo Events Colin: Yeah, it's a great question, Bob. And it's something we never really anticipated when we launched Foo Sales. So, if I just take it a step back in terms of how, how Foo Sales came about. About a year after we had launched Foo Events, we were sort of browsing for ideas and we came across many of the WooCommerce community that were sort of asking for a point of sale system for WooCommerce, which nothing existed. So, the basic origins was to build an app-based native point-of-sales system for WooCommerce. So, that idea came about in about 2016, but it took us until 2018 to, to launch the product. And yeah, the concept was that it needed to just be a simple native app based point-of-sale system for WooCommerce that would allow store owners to capture orders, edit products, do very basic kind of things like that, in a much nicer interface than if you had a computer in front of you at your store, for example. So we launched the free beta for that in 2018, basically to collect feedback and to try and get product market fit. And that was a very useful experience. It was free for a number of months whilst we figured this all out. And some of the things we learned was that firstly, people were very suspicious of a free points of sale system. I mean, how can it be free? How are they making money? It's obvious that you cannot trust them because it's, it's something I'm building my business on, essentially. So, that was one of the things. And then the other thing was that people wanted more enterprise functionality in the points-of-sale system. So, we thought that just having a basic, nice, easy to use app based interface would be enough. And ultimately we learned that the market was hungry for more hardware integrations, payments integrations, different tailored management, store management, all these things that were way out of our comfort zone, at the time. And, but it told us that we were onto something. So what we've really seen materialize over this past year is obviously there have been some weird months where stores were kind of shut down throughout the world. And, you kind of wonder if life is ever going to return to normal and whether they'll ever need points-of-sale systems again, but we've seen two very distinct types of customers emerge that are starting to use Foo Sales, which is very interesting. The first kind of group are existing WooCommerce online store owners that are looking at moving into the kind of real-world environments, physical environments, by opening up pop-up shops or selling their goods at fairs or things like that. And, that has started to pick up again that that did go very quiet in the middle of the year, but we're starting to see a lot more people moving their online stores into physical stores. Either for promotions, for promoting their brand, or just to reach more customers, which makes a lot of sense. So, that's really picked up and then the other interesting one are new businesses that are looking for solutions. They don't necessarily need to know about WooCommerce. They're looking at launching a new business. They might've been laid off and they've had a few business ideas and they are looking for something that can essentially allow them to sell online and also sell in person. And that's how they've come about Foo Sales. So it's interesting. We thought that WooCommerce would be the gateway, but in actual fact people find Foo Sales and some of them, it converts them into WooCommerce. So, it's very exciting for the growth of WooCommerce in the sense that something like Foo Sales and obviously there are other services that can do similar. It's turning WooCommerce into a legitimate omni-channel eCommerce platform. There's a lot of scope for growth there that we've seen. And, as I mentioned, we've decided to double down on integrating, doing real enterprise point-of-sale types of integrations with things like card payment systems, scanners, cash drawers, print, thermal printers. All these types of things, which we never anticipated doing. And, at the moment Foo Sales is on three platforms. We've got a web version that was also based on customer feedback. We didn't think that there would be demand for a web version and we thought people would just use their WooCommerce site.But, a lot of stores would be running cheap, kind of, MacBooks and they want a much nicer points-of-sales experience then the back end of WooCommerce. And then we've got native apps for iPad and Android tablets. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Mendel: Yeah, I think we've talked about this on previous shows. That there's this really interesting trend to make your WooCommerce site, your point-of-sales. To integrate very closely with your web, your website, or your web store. Part of that is inventory management, right? That's super hard for a physical store that wants to go online or an online store that wants to go physical. And I think I've also seen this trend that there are a lot of people that are starting to build out pop-up shops and the like. Adapting online events So, it's super interesting from a web sales perspective. I'm curious what you're seeing on the events side too. Unfortunately, you have to two businesses that have had to adapt in a very interesting time. And so, I'm curious how maybe the online events stuff has changed and what you're seeing there as well. Colin: Well, I think for us, it was interesting because within a space of two months we had our best sales month and our worst sales month, in our history. So, that was something I never thought that I would see happening. But yeah, literally, in February, , we hit our first kind of record. We've had a series of record months for Foo Events this year and got all excited. And then, by April, we had some sleepless nights and yes, one hundred percent right, Mendel. Both our products rely on in-person types of activities. And, that's something that we've really had to adapt to. And, with Foo Events especially we're very agile as a company. And once we saw what was happening in terms of lockdowns happening around the world, and we could see ourselves starting to drop, we made a very quick call that we needed to move into virtual events. The Zoom integration So, within a space of about two to three weeks, we managed to fold in Zoom integration to Foo Events. And that was, that was a really big move for us because it required, , we had never really considered that. It wasn't even on our roadmap up until that point. It hadn't really even been requested that people would want to sell tickets on their own website for virtual events. So that was, I would say one of the biggest moves we made in the early part of this year and it's worked incredibly well for us. And one of the trends now that we've seen on that front is that obviously virtual events are all the thing, and will probably be around for a long time. But, we also see in people, changing their business models. Events, organizers, conferences, actually changing their business models now where they will, in the future, be able to sell tickets off their physical events. Instead of just capping an event, there'll be able to sell tickets for, , virtual stream at the same time. Which I think that's one thing this pandemic has taught us is the borders have definitely been dropped. So if we'll allow anyone to attend events, that aren't allowed to go... That can't make it in person. Harden your business for future issues around in-person events Mendel: I always think that's interesting, how adversity sometimes strengthens business models, right? In your case, it seems like it's, it's created some resilience, right? That you've actually created a new opportunity for yourself in business. And you've also figured out how to harden your business against future issues that might impact in-person events. As we know in the past, however many years, whether it's terrorism or whether it's natural disaster, whether it's a pandemic, there are new challenges, unfortunately, for in-person things. It seems like a really awesome call to fortify your business in that way. I've seen this happening in local businesses, too. Like restaurants or bars that start to sell the flour from their providers. To sell baking goods and things like that out of the front of their shop. And they're figuring out how to adapt in the face of uncertainty. And I think that's a really cool way to go about things and also probably the sign of a business that's here to stay. So that's super cool to kind of hear how you've adapted the business. Colin: Yeah, thanks. I agree with you. And I think another example of that is with our new booking extension that we launched. We are in the process of also integrating that with Zoom and that will then allow anyone from consultants to tele-medicine, to yoga studios, pilates studios, that type of thing, to be able to sell bookings for virtual events or virtual one-on-one in-person sessions. So yeah, hundred percent. For us, it's also been very encouraging to see how these types of businesses have adapted, because it's one thing for us to adapt, but an event organizer that maybe organizes four in-person events a year... When something like this pandemic hit them and they didn't have any contingency plans, you think, well you're dead. You're dead in the water. But, we've really seen the true resilience, especially, of small businesses globally. Because we have got our customers all over the world and has been so encouraging to see how they've adapted their business models. Firstly, by starting with say a virtual... Running virtual events instead of fully canceling their physical event. But now to see them planning running different streams of virtual and physical events into the future. So yeah it's amazing how resilient, as human beings, we really are. From bootstrap agency to selling products Mendel: Now you're a hot shot now, but before you were bootstrapping your own business. So how did you get from bootstrap business focusing on only agency stuff to actually selling products? Colin: Yeah, I think it's been a very tricky road. We started the agency because it was easy. It required very little capital. And I think for many of us out there, it's a great way to get into WooCommerce and WordPress, into the community. If you've wanted to start your own business, that's probably one of the easiest, cheapest ways to do it. Especially if you've got some contacts, some clients, you get money in immediately and you get to learn and see opportunities. So, that's why we did it in the first place. Our heart always told us that we wanted to do products. And the challenge though was, how did we get there with our capital? And I think that's something that many listeners face. We've always enjoyed bootstrapping. We've enjoyed being in control of our own destiny. So when the opportunity came with Foo Events starting to hit some traction and we moved it across to our own website where we started selling the plugins instead of just on a marketplace. Really starting to market using ad-words and Facebook advertising... Concentrating on SEO, the usual things. The revenue started to come in, but now it was about balancing the scales because we had an existing client base on the agency side we had retainers in place. So, it was a very tricky and slow moving act where we had to start to put more time into our products without losing too much of the agency revenue. But I'm happy to say that we finally have arrived at that point where we didn't need that revenue anymore, but it required us to make quite a few sacrifices. I mean, we closed on our physical office in 2017. Downsized a little bit too, and went completely remote and distributed... Which has helped us in these times too. I think having practiced for the last three years has really put us in good state for what happened this year. But yeah, it required a lot of changing our processes, finding different tools, things like Slack and Zoom. We were quite early adopters of those. Different project management systems and then also balancing time zone differences because we spread across North America and South Africa. So, it hasn't been an easy task. I think the cash flow has been probably one of the trickiest things to manage because you're dealing with completely different business models. And obviously when you're an agency, you selling your time and if you're busy it, doesn't leave you with much time to focus on your products, but you need that time to bold your products so that they eventually become your main revenue stream. Colin: So it's been a work in progress, but I can honestly say it's been a very rewarding journey. I think if hadn't done the agency thing, we wouldn't have seen the gaps in the market. We wouldn't have learned from our customers who gave us the ideas for our products, essentially. The next transition for point of sales Bob: I hate to be flipping around back and forth to these products, but with the Foo Sales... I was reflecting on what you said as far as, kind of the new businesses that are looking at both of your products. It seems as if now, before with point-of-sales, maybe you had a brick and mortar, how do I use a point of sales here? How do I use it as I get more mobile or whatever, but now you've got this entirely new industry of people starting up at home. When we go back to whatever normal is, at that point, that could almost bring an uptick in that particular product. Because those people that are working at home may not be, yeah... They don't want to go open up a brick and mortar shop somewhere, but they may be looking at other opportunities, like you said. Whether it's events or something where they can sell that. So that could possibly be a future trend. Moving back up is a whole new industry of people saying, how do I get out there and make in-person sales, but without having to rent or lease a building to do it. Colin: Exactly Bob. And I think, yeah, if one good thing comes out of this pandemic, it's that it's encouraging people to be more entrepreneurial. I think all of us, even people with day jobs, have had a lot more, kind of, time to think at home. To think about opportunities that they might not have had if they were sitting at a desk in a busy public office space, for example. Yeah. I think obviously we're not through the dark times just yet, and we still got to get through this, this pandemic. But, I'm really optimistic and excited about the future for the world and for businesses as a whole. Because, I think there's going to be a lot of exciting businesses that we're going to see being both now and in the next five years are going to be the new Googles, for example, that have come out of this adversity. I think what's very exciting for us, as WooCommerce builders is that we're building for an incredibly popular platform that still has so much room to grow. I mean, we've seen huge growth in eCommerce platforms in general this year because of people launching these stores. But I think for us, as builders, adding products and services on top of WooCommerce. There's an incredible amounts of opportunity. And if I just use the points-of-sales example, I mean, here, you've got WooCommerce, which has millions of online stores... People running their online stores on it already that are thinking about pop-up shops, markets. Being able to, just out of the car, run a business. Pull out an iPad and make some sales running on WooCommerce. I mean, it's we wouldn't have imagined this five years ago, for example. And the best part is, that one of the biggest advantages that WooCommerce has over, say a traditional points-of-sale system, is that you've got this incredibly active community and literally thousands of extensions built for it. Which a traditional point of sales system can compete with. That's one of our biggest challenges, as a business, is how do we integrate with the popular ones, because that's what people want. They want integrations. So, that's definitely something we're going to be focusing on. We've also seen huge demand for advanced integration with Foo Events on the Foo Sales side. So, people want to be able to actually have a box office solution where they can sell tickets for their events or their theme park or museum or whatever it may be. Online, on their own website, but then also be able to sell tickets at the door and have them printed out. That's something, once again, in the past year, we wouldn't have imagined that there would be such an overlap between our two products, but I think it's all got to do with what's happening in the industry and these trends and all these new businesses that are just emerging. It's created a whole bunch of opportunities for all of us. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. What differentiates Foo Sales and Foo Events Mendel: Well now, I'm going to ask you something that's going to put you on the spot a little bit. But, a lot of people are looking for event solutions and sometimes they go to places like the events calendar and things like that, right... And ticketing solutions. Then, on the POS side Oliver POS and other types of POS that are available and you can get them from Code Canyon. You can get them from woocommerce.com. You can get them from, , all of these different places. Why, why Foo Events? Why Foo Sales? What's cooler and better about your product? What differentiates you? And I'm not asking this to be super obnoxious and ask you to define yourself. The reason I ask is because I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding the different benefits of the different platforms. And I don't think everything's made for everybody. Right. It's a cool opportunity for people to hear straight from you what makes your software special? Colin: Great. No, it's a very good question. If I could maybe start with Foo Events, I think what makes Foo Events so special is that it's actually... It's not just the plugin or extension. It's a platform, which is something quite unique. So, as I said, it's got these eight extensions for Foo Event, so it's incredibly flexible. We find, , we've got over 10,000 customers using it for just about everything under the sun. It constantly amazes us what solutions people can hack together using Foo Events. People are running multi-site ticketing services using Foo Events, for example. People are selling tickets for track days. People selling tickets for karaoke bars, for tattoo artists. So it's essentially not even what we designed it for. Which was more for traditional events, conferences, workshops, that type of thing. People are using it for passes now. I think the reason is, because of its flexibility, you can basically buy individual Foo Events plugins that add different functionality to the core plugin. Or, you can buy the bundle, which allows you to do a lot of different things. As time has gone by we've introduced free check-in apps, which is also something that we feel gives us a bigger advantage. Native event check-ins apps for iOS and Android, which are really cool. They support QR codes and barcodes and allow event organizers to quickly scan in attendees. Free themes. We've got free ticketing themes. So there's quite a lot that comes with it. Then of course the virtual events stuff is also something that I think is quite unique. I feel like our integration is possibly one of the best with Zoom and, that's been incredibly popular over this past year. So, I think as a platform, that's what makes Foo Events so special and its flexibility. So, for a pretty low price, you could build an entire business around Foo Events, if you've got a good idea. That's how we feel about it. And of course, it's all unlimited ticketing and it's commission free. So, when we compare competitors outside of the WordPress WooCommerce space, like Event Brite, or some of those platforms, we find a lot of people moving across to us. Which is great, because that means also they're setting up WordPress and WooCommerce sites, , as opposed to just say using Event Brite and the main reason is if it gets too expensive. Once you're selling a lot of tickets and they're taking commission on your ticket sales, it really does eat into your profits. And some businesses have very small margins. That's another benefit, are the fixed costs. So yeah, that would be Foo Events. On the Foo Sales side, while I think the fact that we've got native apps. The iOS and Android apps are completely native and there's no bridging software or middleware, which is one of the biggest reasons why we launched Foo Sales. Was that, there were other solutions, there was some kind of plugin that would sync different orders and products between WooCommerce and the payment system. And that would cause a lot of problems for people. So, the fact that it's all seamlessly integrated into WooCommerce. So, in real time, when you place a sale on Foo Sales, it deducts the inventory on your website, for example. Creates the order in WooCommerce, that's very slick. It works offline, as well, because it's app based. So people can go into the desert and have a party when the pandemic settles and be able to sell t-shirts there with no internet access. Then when you get back home, you can sync all your orders. I think that's a huge benefit. And yeah, and then a lot of the other solutions are only web based. So, that's another thing. We have a web version, as well, as I mentioned, but really we seeing the biggest demands with the apps because of the flexibility and the, the user interface and the user experience and the ability to integrate with hardware. I think that's something else that, , we've already integrated with the Impact, which is a Star Cash Register printer thing, which has been very popular. But we've got a lot more integrations lined up and integrations with payments systems as well, which we're quite excited about. Bob: Yeah, I can attest to the... On the Foo Events side of things. Because, I know that consultants and coaches that do bookings often will also do events, vice versa. When I was doing both coaching and, consulting and events... I had a booking plugin and I had an events plugin, and I had to have two systems, two separate things in that. And at that point, nothing worked. This was before even Foo Events came out. It always drove me nuts. Because I'd shift between those two a lot. And I didn't have just one nice interface that I could depend on. So that, yeah, that is... And a lot of times those booking things can come naturally with some kind of events, whether they're either virtual or in person. So yeah. Cool stuff, for sure. Yeah. We could talk all about virtual events forever. I think with maybe someday we'll actually remember this and remember when all we talked about was virtual events, right? Colin: That's definitely one of the buzz words of 2020, that's for sure. Bob: Yeah. This has been great Colin. I look forward to getting you on and, , hearing about the products and hearing a little bit more about yourself... And, Mendel may be having a lingering thought as well. Who knows? Mendel: I don't have any thoughts. But, I think it's super cool to hear about both of these products and kind of how you there's so many companies that start as an agency and then make their way to products. And, it's cool. Cause, I think a lot of people that run agencies have these problems that they solve for customers and they may decide not to productize it. But when you get that request day after day, or if you see in the forums, , day after day that people have these needs, why not? ...Or at least try it out, . And, if you don't have a good product market fit or something like that, you still have your agency work. So I think it's cool to hear that story. And, and I think it's awesome that you're adapting in this weird business climate. And it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure chatting. So where can people find you if they have questions? Colin: So, they can either find me on LinkedIn at Colin Daniels or on Twitter, my handle is @youngblood. Bob: Cool. Alrighty. Mendel: With that, Bob, take it away. Close us out. Bob: I'm ready now. Well, we'd like to thank our sponsors once again, WooCommerce. As we, since we were talking about apps. Yeah. Check out their mobile app. I actually did add a product to my site, although I'm selling it, but I was able to add one quite easily and yeah, it was pretty cool, pretty slick. And of course, PayPal, check it out. Paying four, that is the thing to do, break down those payments, help your customers be able to buy even more on your site. So, do checkout paypal.com and check out the free extension, PayPal Checkout extension on WooCommerce marketplace. And just one last thing, I just want to throw out there. WooCommerce Builder Global Meetup has officially launched. This is a new meetup that I'm putting together. Cause I don't have enough things to do. So I thought, why not do something else to bring this community together? That will be starting in January already discussing some great formats to that. You just go to the meetup.com search for WooCommerce builder global meetup and yeah, join it. And you'll be seeing some diverse and interesting and meetups on the way in the new year. Mendel: So sign me up. Sign me up right now. Yeah, Bob: You're there. Right? You're doing it right now. As we speak. I know you are so you, by the time you get there, you'll see Mendel's little face. They're just smiling at you and he's ready to go. So cool. We are, we are good to go. Everybody have a wonderful holiday season and again, Colin, thank you very much for joining us. Mendel: Thanks for having me on the show. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
47 minutes | a month ago
Solopreneurs Bringing Pride, Experience and Business Smarts to the WooCommerce Space
Thanks to our community sponsors Being a solopreneur comes with a lot of pride, experience and business smarts. Not everyone is wanting to grow into an agency. Cami MacNamara, owner of WebCami.com, loves her business and she is starting to move more and more into the WooCommerce ecosystem. This conversation is filled with insights and stories about what it truly means to be a business owner. Whether you are just starting the solo ride into your business or have been doing it for a while, this is a must-listen-to-show. A Chat with Cami MacNamara from WebCami In episode 86, Jonathan and I talk with Cami about: How her clients’ needs have her moving more and more into WooCommerceWhat it means to be a solopreneur and why all business owners do not want to grow into agenciesReasons to be a solopreneur and the perceptions around itWhy it is important to know your limitationsWhat stands out in the WooCommerce/eCommerce world for CamiThe variety of ecosystems and platforms Cami uses and how she has focused her new growth around Beaver Builder and WooCommerceThe approach she takes as a single business owner in learning new skills Building relationships as a solopreneurWhy she avoids the shiny buttons in WordPress and WooCommerceWhat Cami feels could be improved with WooCommerce to help her in her business Connect with Cami WebCami.comWebCami Cafe on Facebook Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Jonathan: Welcome to Do The Woo, Episode 86. Bob, the year's almost over. How are you doing? Bob: Good. Yeah, it is. I think we have one or two... Two more shows. No, one. One more show. Just one more show and then we're back in January. Jonathan: So I think you haven't missed a week, I don't think. Bob: No, I haven't. In fact, I missed Thursday of Thanksgiving for the regular Do The Woo, but we did a Woo Perspective that week earlier, so one way or another, I'll show up. Me and somebody else will show up on the airwaves, so people just can't get away from us. Jonathan: Right, it's been fantastic. It's been great to see all the folks who've come on this year. The WooCommerce community is already big and growing. It's been fun to see it growing over the course of the year. We've got a great guest coming up today, but first. Bob: We have some sponsors to thank, and these are our community sponsors, they'll be moving in to 2021 with us. PayPal, with the holidays fast approaching, those buy-now-pay-later options. There's still time to get them in there and all you have to do is go get the PayPal checkout extension, install it, make sure everything's connected, toggle is on. It's as simple. So, it might be a good time to pop that in there and see how things go. Then of course WooCommerce, 4.8 was released on Tuesday. Yeah. Minor update, mostly around compatibility with PA WordPress 5.6 and the new default theme coming out. And there was a couple other features, I think two of the features that they got pointed out was, on the home screen you can now choose between one and two columns, and there is now a screen for analytics for variation, variable products. So you're able to track those sales a bit more. So, yes. Good. WooCommerce, 4.8. we're ready to hit the holidays with that. So yeah, I think that's it then. Why don't we go ahead and get into the show? Jonathan: Fantastic. And on the WooCommerce 4.8, it's been great to see us keeping up the release cadence as well, this has been a big year on that side with a new release. Earlier this year we switched to monthly and the team has been keeping that up and running, so, so far so good and it's been great to see the progress. So we have a fantastic guest today. Cami, I'm going to have you pronounce your last name for us. Cami: It's McNamara. Jonathan: McNamara, Cami McNamara. Cami: Yeah. Jonathan: Cami, it's great to have you joining us, you've been a part of this community for a while. And would you just kind of open up and tell us, how do you Do the Woo? Where did you sort of first get started in this world of WooCommerce? How does Cami do the Woo? Cami: Well, my very first introduction to WooCommerce was I believe in 2013 or 2014. And Bob was hosting a WordPress meetup in West Seattle, which is where I live. And at the time I had been using, I started using WordPress in around 2007, just as kind of a blog add on to the websites that I was building or the old school way with HTML and CSS. And around 2010 it was like, wow, I can do my entire business with WordPress and then slowly but surely people started wanting shopping carts. So that's when I kind of started doing some research and it seemed like the best one, to me it's the best options still. And I am a solopreneur, so the scale of shopping carts that I set up for clients are small. I pass along business for large carts just because I don't have the bandwidth to put a 500 SKU website together for someone. So, anyway, I find that it is just incredibly easy for my clients to figure out how to use because they're usually working in concert with me and setting things up. So that's how I ended up finding it through a WordPress meetup that Bob did. Jonathan: So you've been consistently busy over the years. You've had quite a bit of experience doing client service work. How has this year in particular with COVID and folks being stuck in doors and all this stuff. You live on the West coast, how has that affected your business, and particular interests in or not for eCommerce? 2020 for Cami Cami: Well, I will say that I was a little concerned in April and May, I had a big drop in new business. I offer care plan services though, and I have like 150 clients in my care plan service package, and that was still going just fine. Right? And that really helped me get through that couple of months of not getting new business. But by the time we ended up in September or later, I feel like I'm in the year slightly down from last year, but it's been pretty good in terms of new business. And a lot of my existing clients came to me and said, Hey... for instance, I've had a couple aestheticians say, "I want to sell my products online, and I just got a Woo cart to their website. Jonathan: Nice. Cami: So, and most of the time we're using Stripe or PayPal, the setup's been pretty easy for both part. I really have my clients help me with the setup usually at WordPress, because there's a lot of things about shipping and taxes and I utilize the WP101 plugin. Jonathan: Oh, cool. Cami: Pay premium for that and I turn on the Woo tutorials. And that's a huge help to me as well. And also Zoom has been great because it's much easier than trying to get an appointment, meeting them in person. I got them all trained now for me to help them with some of the setup that I'm asking for their help with a shared screen. So that's been great too. So I don't think COVID, I mean, it's certainly, it's been tough to see my clients struggle, and most of my clients are on the West Coast. And just today I took down all the patio, we have this beautiful patio that my clients set up down in California, because they shut all outdoor dining down there and stuff like that. So it's been tough. But more and more of my clients want to sell something, whether it be a gift card or a download, just there's a lot of options for them now. Being a soloprenuer and growing Jonathan: One more thing I'm curious about. So you're a solopreneur. I'm curious to know more about your thinking there, because I'm a big fan of it, sometimes we have this, Oh, you got to grow and you got to get bigger, you got to do these other things. How do you think about that? You've been doing this for a long time, you built up a steady practice. Cami: Right. I'm passionate about the thing that, making it okay for somebody to just do it themselves. And I did a little something with GoDaddy a couple of weeks ago about that, and so many times people make you feel like you're not successful if you're not growing and you're not an agency. And when you go to word camp, a lot of times you're in these talks and they're always for agencies most of the time. But you can do it by yourself. And I've been doing it alone for 18 years, if I work incredibly hard, but I've done a lot of great trainings on how to onboard properly. Like with Jennifer Bourne, her profitable project plan training is great. WPElevation with Troy Dean. The two of those combined made me realize that I can have the mindset of an agency and just have it be me doing the work. So I'm usually working on about 20 new websites at one time, plus I have my care plan business. So, as long as you have systems and habits and you're very regimented, you can totally do it by yourself if you want to. You can outsource other things, you can have, make sure somebody is doing your accounting, get your house cleaned every now and then, have your groceries delivered. There's quite a bit of things that you can do with automation. I feel like I have a whole virtual assistant team just with the automation that I have set up. Jonathan: It was about, I think two years ago or so I read, a guy named Paul Jarvis wrote a book called Company of One. Cami: Yes, I read that book too. It's a great book. Jonathan: There's so much, like you said, there's a bit of a stigma, Oh, you're not growing. And it's, well, yeah, I am growing as I'm learning more things, I'm getting better at what I do, but I don't need to just continue to increase my overhead. And it doesn't mean that if you were to just add more full-time staff and grow, you're not necessarily providing a better product to your clients. Cami: And you're also not necessarily making more profit. Jonathan: Yes, that's the key. Cami: And in my previous life, I worked as an allocation analyst for J. Jacobs and Eddie Bauer, two Northwest companies. And I became a mom and that was a really busy job, so there were three of us that came up with our own polo and trophy gift business. And there were five of us. And when you divided everything by five, it made no sense to do it. I mean, it was okay, but when you become an agency you're going to split the profits. So, I don't do that. Jonathan: Yeah. Being a business owner or a entrepreneur Cami: And that's one other advantage, but I feel like there are certain people that are entrepreneurs. And I think that's a different mindset than a business owner, right? My business name is WebCami, Site Design. And I'm never going to sell that. I have plans in the retirement community to be the one that helps all the people. I'm always going to be WebCami. So I feel like being a solopreneur, it's been great for me and I really want to encourage other people that feel inferior to really embrace what they're doing. And just like the book of Company of One, you can have tremendous success at it. Jonathan: I'm really glad to hear you say that. I agree wholeheartedly. I think that's a big part of a healthy ecosystem, is a lot of diversity. Agencies are fantastic, they're going to do their thing, you're going to have small agencies and big agencies. Solopreneurs, people who have, it's very reputation based, right? And you build a reputation, people know what they're going to get and you eventually get into the waiting list territory. There's so much value there. So that's great to hear and I agree, I want to see more of that, I'm a big fan, having experienced both. I've done a little micro agency, I've done my own thing, I've been in the big agency. They all do different things and they provide value, one's not better than the other, and it's important to people. Knowing your limitations Cami: No, yeah, exactly. I mean, I really admire my friends who run agencies here in Seattle and I send referrals to them a lot. Right? I do have a limit of what I know I can take on and still produce quality work. Right. So I don't hesitate to send them on. But I do wish that there was a little bit more representation at WordCamps and when we get to go to WordCamp again. Bob: Yeah. It's interesting because I think of pre WordPress for me and 17 years running and marketing design business, and Judy and I basically ran that for 17 years, and we would bring in specialty people when we needed, but we didn't have any desire to make it a big marketing agency. And when you were talking about, and I think both of you were mentioning when you have a, you want to learn something new, I was always into photography, my entire life I've been into photography. So I started doing my own photo shoots for our business. And I did a little bit more of this, and I started doing, I did it at a mall once, photo shoots, we got some models and stuff and I did that instead of hiring a photographer, because it was something I love doing, so I thought I'd bring it in, and I brought it into the business and it was actually part of the business. It was an additional thing, it didn't take up more time. I would just say, okay, I have these photo type jobs, they were tied into it, and they actually led to a very interesting job. I was hired by a company here on the West side of Washington State in Kent, it's a smaller city outside of Seattle. To go in for one week and take pictures of every one of their auto parts. They sold NAPA Auto Parts. So I set up this table with lighting and everything, and these two or three people would bring over one part at a time and I do two or three angles. They take it away. That's what I did for five days straight. I think it was, maybe it was even longer than five days. It was the most tedious work I've ever done, I ended up getting a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome when I did it, because of my camera constantly, but it was something I thought I would have never done. And I didn't pursue jobs like that, nor did I get anything compared to that, but I did carry that through and that's how I've even going into BobWP, it was, okay, there's a brand again, I'm going to do this again. And that's kind of just how I roll and it's just the comfort zone we both have my wife and I. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. 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Jonathan: So from my perspective, when I think about, well... so there's a lot of good resources out there, I like this thread of encouraging folks listening, one's not better than the other, right? So thinking about what plays to your strengths, and the thing that stands out to me is like, yes, you does not mean you do all the things. And you made that point, but I just want to really kind of pull that out further. And Company of One talks about this, but this idea of, all right, have someone who does your accounting for you, have someone who does housekeeping for you, if you want that abstracted out, right? And that's a big aspect of making this work, where it's, play to your strengths and where you provide the most value for your clients. For most cases, that's not doing your own accounting. Sometimes it's really useful, it's important to understand those things. But I think that's a part of what makes this work, is that you're like, okay, where can I provide the value for my clients? Where's my interest lies as well? And there's often an intersection there, where can I provide the value? And then for everything that's important, but not aligned. You don't have to do all those things. And in fact, you're better served by connecting with someone over here who can do the bookkeeping. Connecting to some over here who can do something more abstract and part in terms of your delivery. So I'm curious if you have any other thoughts on that, but I think that's an important aspect? Cami: I do. So I am a tenure member of BNI, Business Networking International, right? So I'm in a networking group and there was a graphic designer in that networking group that we call ourselves Laverne and Shirley. Okay. Because we share so many client... I mean, we are a team, she's my agency without us being an agency. So if a customer comes to me and they need a logo, I have a person. If a customer comes to me and they need copywriting, I have a couple people for them to choose from. I have social media contacts. And so I'm constantly filling in the agency gaps with my partners. Right? And I just, I give them referrals, it's totally giving with no expectation of receiving anything back. It's just, I know the best person for you to go to for this. And what ends up is I end up having these people I work with routinely, so we have routines. And I know it's going to go smooth, and that makes my whole part of the process smooth as well. So if you build out your network, then you're also enabling yourself, I'm focusing on what I'm best at and that's building websites with WordPress. It's very true that you can really build that kind of comradery with other people and not necessarily, you're not in business together, you're just supporting each other's businesses. Bob: Yeah, and I think to know your limits too, I mean, I even go back to my previous business, even with the photography, there was times when I would look at a photography job, okay. I can't do this. Cami: Right. Exactly. Bob: This is time to bring somebody in that I know. Marketing, I mean, we were a marketing agency, but I brought in other marketing agencies a lot of times. For example we worked with the mall, and it was a really huge, super mall, and we got somebody to come in and help us with some of that because her expertise in marketing was malls. So it's learning those new things and using them, but at the same time, knowing when you got to step back and say, Whoa, that photo job is not going to... that's not my piece of cake, I know somebody that can do this without any hassle, so there's that knowing that. And that's building these, like you said, partnerships, people you're working with and it still gives you that independence, but you're just asking for help in getting the right people in there to make sure it all works out for your client. Cami: Right. You also become the person that your clients turn to when they need something and they're not sure where they're going to go. Right. So you kind of become a Rolodex, in old terms for those people of what photographer or, I routinely have clients send me selfies with their headshots and I'll just be like, "I do, I have this photographer. And even though we're in COVID, I know they could come in and take uniform photos for your website team page safely." And I'll share a link to a website that the photographers worked with and it's almost always a slam dunk to get them. So my product ends up being better and they're better served than just me not having that resource to share with them. What has stood out for Cami in the eCommerce world Jonathan: That's fantastic. So you've been in the world of ecommerce for a bit now, and sounds that you've focused on fairly basic projects and if bigger things would come up, you can work with others on them. One of the things I'm curious about, I was encouraged to hear you talk about WooCommerce being easy. It is though, it's fairly complex when you get into ecommerce, there's a lot of different parts and pieces, right? So I'm curious about just your experience over the years. What's it been like doing the projects here and watching WooCommerce grow in the ecosystem, anything that stands out to you from the experience that you've had? Beaver Builder and WooCommerce Cami: When WooCommerce was its own, I remember back when I first experienced it, they only had one or two themes that worked with it, right? It was, I'm going way, way back. And so I am most intrigued and the place I want to grow with is figuring out how to use Beaver Themer and WooCommerce. So, the theme building portion of Beaver Builder, which I used StudioPress Genesis themes for eight years, I know this is where Bob and I overlap too, because he was also in that ecosystem. And I switched to Beaver Builder in 2016, I'm consistently learning more and more about it. And the Themer portion of it I know is incredibly powerful and I know interacts with WooCommerce. So that's something that I really want to explore because I feel like I could take on more, if I can get my own system down with it. But I do use it very, for instance I've got a home cleaner that developed her own cleaning products to sell to her clients that she services here in Seattle. And so I'm usually really selling that physical product that the customer, my customer is going to pack up and ship on their own, that type of thing. Although I did reach out to Bob, one client recently wanted to drop ship. And so I just went to the Woo add-ons area and found what the client needed, emailed Bob and said, Hey, do you know anything about this? And she ended up installing it and it's working great. Jonathan: Awesome. So one of the things I'm curious about is, is it a bit about your learning process? Because as a solopreneur, you have to prioritize what you focus on and how you focus on it. So if you take something, on the one hand, yes, you can take e-commerce and boil it down to some pretty simple things, right? It's not overly complex at the high level, it's your customer, one of your clients, they want to sell something and you're helping facilitate that through the web. Cami's approach on her learning process Jonathan: But on the other hand, there are so many different routes that you can go with that, and it's growing all the time. So I'm curious, in the agency world, you might have specialists pretty quickly, right? Okay, this person's going to just focus on this, this person's going to focus on this, which has pros and it also has cons. So I'm curious how you approach your learning process, where it's like, you see the interest increase and more of your clients are asking about ecommerce. And you've chosen some sub ecosystems, right? You've chosen Beaver Builder, you could also be working in say Elementor or StudioPress, there's a number of different things. So do you sort of focus on just sort of staying within an ecosystem and maximizing it? Do you continue to kind of look at what's happening elsewhere, because you also have Gutenberg growing and sort of native themes that don't make use. How do you navigate just the ever-increasing volume of more inputs and ways of doing things with finite time? Cami: Okay. So I've been a member, well, I used to be a paying member of lynda.com, right? And now you can get it for free through the library. That is something that is my go-to and in the beginning of COVID, when I started getting all of the interest from my clients, I thought, you know I better brush up on this a little bit, I'm going to go back where I did original Woo training and rewatch some of those videos. And I did that. I am somebody who definitely works in my own system. I do not have clients come to me and say, Hey, I found this cool theme on theme forest and will you build me? And answer is Nope, I won't. So you're going to get my assistant because that's what I'm an expert at, and you're going to get the best product for me that way. So in terms of what I'm doing now and everything I am doing is small, I can see all the things, you could just be a WooCommerce developer designer and just have that be your whole, I mean, it's huge, it's huge and overwhelming. But my focus is to narrow that to fit the clients in the system that I use. So, but I put training in my calendar. I know I need to stay on top of things and I do, I will pay attention to what's happening with Gutenberg, because I know that perhaps I'll be moving on to something else. I was in the Genesis in StudioPress arena for eight years. I really only built using that, and when I started with Beaver Builder, I used it with Genesis and then I eventually started using it with the Beaver Builder theme. And then I went to Themer. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Changing from one ecosystem to another Jonathan: I'm curious about that, can you talk a little bit about, because from my point of view, I look fairly agnostically at a lot of different ecosystems, they all have different values and different strengths. How did you make that transition? So you were in one ecosystem for a long time, you knew it, you had a system there. What was your trigger for saying, okay, I'm going to change my system? Cami: Okay. So there is a web designer in Duvall, her name is Anne Marie Gill, and she and I run incredibly similar businesses. Okay. And we've known each other for years. I resisted page builders because I thought it was cheating, right? Because I would code everything and I was in the PHP file and I was on all of the Genesis tutorial sites, memberships, had everything had ..... Jonathan: Hooks, filters, everything, yeah. Cami: Yeah. The whole deal. And she kept saying, "Cami, you got to change. You have to take a look at this, they're having the black Friday sale." This is in 2016. So I just trusted her and said, "Okay, I'm just going to buy it." So, I went for the agency level and we met at a coffee shop, she gave me kind of the run through with Beaver Builder and it was really hard to get used to because I was so... But then I found out, well, Hey, there was a place for me to put my own code here. And then when I showed it first to a client, here, we built your website with this, they're like, I love this, I love being able to drag and drop. And I had dabbled in Divi and a couple other things along the way, this was just a slam dunk with the customer. So that was in my mind, it's like, okay, I'm going to switch everything. I'm going to change everything that I do and switch to this. Jonathan: I want to take that point, because I think that's part of the key there. What I see, I guess a concern for folks, especially if you're solo, is that you can get stuck in a certain way for a long time, because it's really important to play to that strength of systems and processes. That's part of what makes it work. Adding in the relationship component So the question becomes, how do you stay with the times? Or how do you reevaluate? I'm hearing a few things from you, there's the training aspect, scheduling time to learn, to just understand more. But the other big factor here is this sort of relationship component, being part of a community where someone else who is like, "Hey, Cami, you got to take a look at this." If you could talk a bit about that. As a member of the community, you talk about a bit of what that's meant to you or what advice do you have? Especially for people who are new, who are like, I think I want to do this. There's so many resources out there, it can be really overwhelming and in my experience, and it sounds like in yours, relationships and being a part of a community is a key way to navigate that. I'm curious for your thoughts on that. Cami: Well, because I've been in BNI for 10 years and that is totally relationship marketing. I think I went to my first WordCamp in 2013, and that kind of introduced me to the local WordPress community. I didn't really get very involved in the WordPress community until a couple of years ago though, just time constraint, other than helping it work. I am on the pro expert panel for GoDaddy, I've been doing that since 2016. Basically because I was a squeaky wheel, and I was having problems after they merged with ManageWP. Well, that led me to be a pro ambassador for them, and they sent me to WordCampUS. So once I got into that arena, and I'm meeting all these people that I know on Twitter, and meeting the various customers that come in the booth. So I'm in the booth at GoDaddy talking to other customers about the products that they have or web developers. And I felt very comfortable doing that because managed WP is the tool I use to manage my care plan. I just started to see, so I see Bob there, I'm like, "Hey, I know you." Right? In Nashville. And that exposed me, so now I'm paying attention to what all the people I admire do. Right? So I think that you can take cues from all the people around you and so many people in the WordPress community are doing trainings, from Amy Hall is somebody who does trainings with MailChimp, and I met her at WordCamp. And I would consider her a great friend. Jocelyn Mozak, another really great friend. And so I've just been exposed to learning how other people do their, are running their business, and it's helped me just pick little tidbits that I utilize myself. Navigation the world of so many shiny buttons in WordPress Jonathan: One of my... not frustration, I won't call it. One of the challenges I see with just how much growth we've had in the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem is how many options, there's more and more options all the time for doing things, right? A plugin for this, plugin for that, how do you navigate? And I personally am optimistic that we're going to do a better job as a whole of curating and guiding people towards better options. In the meantime, what makes it work from my perspective, and I think this will always be key, is there's that sense of community and people who are willing to share what they've learned to put their guidance out there, to write tutorials, to create video courses, et cetera, where they're putting that expertise out there. And that's a big part I think of what makes this ecosystem special, and you still have to reach out. You're clearly interested and curious to your following folks on Twitter, you're looking to see what others are doing. But it's not that hard to satisfy that curiosity and be exposed to more things and develop your trusted sources of input. Cami: Yeah. I think reaching out to even, I can't remember exactly when, but I was upset about something, I just shot off this random email to GoDaddy, and ended up in Mendel’s inbox. Right? And so that interaction led to me being on this customer panel that led to me being part of their traveling team and all of those things wouldn't have happened if I had hesitated at all to reach out to somebody. Right? And I think that there was an openness in the WordPress community that is just waiting for people to reach out to. So I have a little Facebook group, it's called WebCami Cafe and a website to go along with it, and I'm not offering courses, I'm not doing anything like that because I'm a solopreneur and I don't have time. But I have this little community growing that it's a bunch of web designers and we're just all there helping each other and sharing information. And that has just been a really wonderful thing that has happened over the last couple of years. So I don't know if I'll ever do anything with it, but for right now it just serves its purpose of being a place where people can reach out for help. Jonathan: Well, it sounds like you're already doing the thing to do with it, which is creating a space. Cami: Yes, exactly. Jonathan: Sometimes that's all that you need to do. Right. Just creating a space, a trusted space where you can bring people together where community happens. Cami: Where community happens. And I know there's a lot of, but again, in that same vein that people say, you have to be an agency, a lot of people are like, okay, you got to do courses, you have to do this, you have to do that. But the solopreneur knows when they should not do, I can't take away from my client work. So, it's as balanced, but everybody can just find their own balance, right? Bob: Yeah, and I think it's interesting how you mentioned about so much stuff being out there and how do you... with the platform plugins and I look back at 13 years of this and I think everything that, I've tried, yeah, I've built plugins on, I try this and that, but the ones that have stuck with me, the platforms, I went to my Genesis for many years, I went through my Beaver Builder for many years, I've been in Woo many years. I could probably go, this is a very odd way of looking at it, but I could go into the, my plugin page on my dashboard and look at my site anytime and think of the people behind each one of those plugins, how long I've known them, what I've developed as far as relationship with them. Because I probably know, especially the ones that are fairly solid in there, been in there for over the years. I know the company and the people behind this thing as much as I know the plugin. And that's part of the reason, it's got to be a good plugin. I mean, it's got to function. It's got to be good, but it's also the reason that I probably stuck with a lot of this because I mean, WooCommerce, it was WooThemes back in 2008 or 2009 is when I first started there, even got to know the people there. So when WooCommerce was released in 2011, it was a no brainer to me, because I'd already been working with this company. I said, these people know what they're doing. I got to look at this thing. So I'm going to get into this, I'm going to start dabbling in this and it was a natural. So that, I think a lot of times we don't realize maybe not for everybody, but a lot of us realize how much the community part of it plays in that whole scheme of things, how you run your business, the tools you use and stuff, and it's not a bias, just not whatever, it's what works for you and where you're the most comfortable. Cami: Mm-hmm (affirmative). What Cami feels could be improved about WooCommerce for her business Jonathan: Cami, so as you're seeing the interest in eCommerce and Woo particularly grow in what you're doing, as you think about the future and sort of what you're doing, the clients that you're, is there anything that you're interested in seeing more of in the WooCommerce ecosystem or are areas that WooCommerce might improve that align with things that are important to you, and the way that you do business? Cami: Well, maybe you guys can help me figure out if this even exists already, but I am a checklist person, and I have been trying to come up with a way, and this is something that I think will help me in onboarding my Woo clients. Right? So the customers that are coming to me and need a shopping cart, I would love to have the development of having some sort of checklist that is like the, something I can share with them to say, okay, we're ready to put your products on, and here's this quick checklist of things that I need you to supply for me. And I've been searching all over for a simple one or just anything in that arena and I haven't found it yet. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I'm saying more of help for the designer who's working with the client. So we all know that, Woo, there's training on how to use the plugin itself, but how can I better onboard my client to provide what I need to implement the plugin for them? Right. Jonathan: Cami, is it more about best practices and process? More from the business perspective of if you're going to upload products you want to have a product description and the photos and here's some best practices, that doesn't- Cami: Exactly. But it's also, I use Loom a lot, and so I'm considering just making my own little video of walking them through the settings in Woo, and showing them the places where I need them to fill in the information. Because a lot of times there's things that only are customer driven. They've got the product, they're doing the weights and all this stuff. And it comes back to, this is going to sound odd, but when I first started my business to kind of fill in time, when before I was starting to get a lot of web design clients, I sold things on eBay. Anyway, I had a whole checklist of everything that person that was sending me something to sell. So I am definitely a checklist person. And it just makes the process of building their website go better if I've got a checklist of what they need to send me. Jonathan: So we've got a couple of thoughts. So we earlier this year published on the WooCommerce blog. We did one earlier this year and then last year, a prelaunch checklist for... there was one that's focused on the essentials, and then we did one earlier this year that was focused on membership sites. What I'm just curious about, that might be interesting for folks listening. I know that was fairly exhausted. It was more through the lens of the store owner themselves, but I would be really curious for your feedback, because I agree, and that's ultimately an area where I think we've been thinking more at WooCommerce about what kind of education can we provide that's helpful to folks? Where we can take the insights that we learn across the ecosystem and aggregate them and bring them together and say, Hey, here's a set of best practices that's going to get you most of the way there. And you're going to then... you'll adapt it further for what your clients need specifically. But I'd be curious for your feedback on those, that was our starting point. Cami: I would be happy to review this and see if I can take it down to what I'm talking about, not necessarily the setup for my end, but just communicating the setup to the customer and getting them to fill in the needed blanks. Jonathan: Yeah. And I think it'd be awesome if it's helpful for you. And I think this is not unique, this is one of the areas where there's a lot of knowledge in the open source ecosystems that is unintentionally secret knowledge, right? Or it's like someone's worked out best practices. No one's trying to hide it, but it's like the work has to be done to get it out in the open to bring together the best practices from this person and this person and this experience. So yeah, I think, I'd love to see more of that. Cami: Yeah. And I think best practices can easily be translated into it. I think what is the most important thing for the business owner like myself, which is the customer onboarding with the product that I'm using. Jonathan: Yes. Cami: So that any help in helping me onboard my client to, and making the most of this plugin that I've put on their website, the more successful the use of that plugin is. Jonathan: And that's ultimately what we're after. With WooCommerce, the mission is democratizing commerce, and that's helping more people have success in eCommerce. And frankly that's whether they use WooCommerce the software or not, the mission goes beyond that. Obviously we love the software, but at the end of the day, we want to see more people have success. And a lot of it is, education is a big factor of that. What do we learn? It's not just the software, it's the education around it and it's the community of support and sort of connection that you get from being able to share those experiences with others. Cami: Right. And also helping your customer not go down the rabbit hole. I've had a lot of clients that they'll start playing around themselves and they're like, but I found this and then I ended up here and I couldn't find my way back. That's where I like to guide them to just specifically with what I want them to do and what's most beneficial for them now, knowing that they can grow, right? They can always add more features later. Bob: Right. Excellent. Well, I like to always end the show when the co-host gives guests some homework. So, that's always good to do, it's a good place to kind of fade out into the sunset, but no, seriously. Cami: I will do it Bob, I will do the homework. Bob: Yeah, I know you will. I know you will. So why don't we go ahead and, I'm going to mention the sponsors one more time here. First,WooCommerce. I talked about WooCommerce 4.8, but also check out their site, check out our site. Some little news around a male poet and Moo Commerce, a new partnership and some exciting stuff there. So I think you're going to see a lot, you can kind of just read it and dream about what's in the future. And then of course with PayPal do check out their PayPal checkout extension on the WooCommerce marketplace, it's a free plugin, it's not going to cost you anything, plug it in, it not only gives you the buy now pay later, but also gives you the module to put checkout on your sign in, says sending them to PayPal. So you will definitely want to check that out. And Cami, this has been great. As we told you, you never know where the conversation is going to go, it always goes in incredible directions and yeah, we love this work. Where can people connect with you? Connect with Cami Cami: They can find me at webcami.com. That's my business website, but webcamicafe.com is where you could hookup and check out my Facebook group. If you're a freelancer and you're just looking for a supportive team of other web designers across the United States, there's some great people in there and it's a very supportive community to go if you're having issues with a website you're developing or you just want to share some information. Bob: Excellent. All right. Well, everyone do visit dothewoo.io. It's more than this podcast, I have news on there, I have jobs on there, I have, man, I have everything on there. I have a blog on there with all sorts of good stuff on it. So do check that out. And again, we'd just like to thank you to Cami for taking the time to join us today. Cami: Thanks. I had a great time. Bob: Very cool. Well, everyone, till the next time, Do the Woo. 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51 minutes | a month ago
Post Black Friday in 2020 with WooCommerce Plugin Shops
In the WordPress and WooCommerce space likely will be no stranger to pre-Black Friday and Cyber Monday activities. Aside from the typical pitches and emails, as a builder you have likely seen numerous articles on how to prepare for the big sales days. But what about afterwards. There is obviously a lot of reflection to be made and thoughts on what went right and what didn’t. Throw into that mix the fact that with the rise of eCommerce in 2020 and, specifically, WooCommerce, what might be the outcome for general retail across the board is totally different for the Woo product maker. To get some insights into this, I asked James Kemp from IconicWP, Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins and Ronald Gijsel from YITH to have a conversation. The three of them chatted about: What they did differently this time aroundThe predicted trend of success via deep discountsStarting the sales earlier and was Black Friday or Cyber Monday more successfulWhat marketing efforts paid off the best and do emails still workHow much affiliate sales played into the success and if those long Black Friday post lists really workAny specific challenges that came up this year Connect IconicWP.comOn Twitter @iconicwpBarn2.co.ukOn Twitter @Barn2PluginsYithemes.comOn Twitter @YITHEMES Thanks to our community sponsors Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. Transcript Email Download New Tab Hey everybody, BobWP here. And we are actually, this is the official first Woo Perspetive. The podcast will be episode 85, but in the past couple of new perspective, I had my co-hosts. Now I have real guests. So that makes it official. And I'm excited to get into this topic because everybody talks about how to prepare for Black Friday all the vendors out there in the WooCommerce space. There's more than enough information on there. How about what happens afterwards? You know, and I'm actually be lucky to have three very successful businesses in the space, join me after post Black Friday. You know, I'm, I'm not sure if they've been celebrating or if they've been sleeping but I did get all three of them to agree to come in and chat a little bit about how it went. But before we get started, I'd like to thank our sponsors, WooCommerce.com. You know them well they had their own Black Friday thing going, and yeah, you know there's a lot over on WooCommerce. Check it out. Not a lot to say specifically right now, but yeah. Do see what's going on over there. And then PayPal, PayPal has been our sponsor for awhile. They have some excellent buy now pay later options. So if you have clients that running PayPal, hey, you know you might nudge them towards that. Say, given that, give it a try, see what your customers you know, and the beauty of it is there's no risk. So, so do checkout paypal.com and they do have a PayPal Checkout Extension on woocommerce.com that you can download for free to get started on that. One of the things I thought about before I even pushed the record button was, it's interesting all the different predictions people have made for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week whatever you want to label it. And WooCommerce is unique in a couple of different ways. First of all, buying a plugin, most people have a totally different frame of mind to buy a new TV for their family. So, you know, there's some other variables in there and also will WooCommerce by nature has probably seen growth. I'm sure all three of my guests have seen growth this last year because of 2020. I mean, hey, you know that's all you can say because of 2020. So, so that's it. So we've seen that. So that's what made this even a little bit more interesting and intriguing to me is how Black Friday went. I want to have each of my great guests introduce themselves real quickly and then we'll move right into a conversation. Let's start with Katie. Hi, I'm Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins I'm co-founder and run the company with my husband, Andy. We switched from building websites to plugins in 2016 and we've never looked back. And now we specialise in WooCommerce specific plugins that add particular features to WooCommerce. Cool. James. Hey, I'm James Kemp. I am the founder of Iconicwp.com and we also make WooCommerce plugins and is much solely on WooCommerce plugins. Our first one was made back in 2012 and it's still a top seller. So it's yeah, it's been a long run. Cool. And last but not least Ronald. Hi, my name is Ronald. So I'm the partnership manager for YITH. We are an independent marketplace where we sell our own developed plugins over hundreds WooCommerce plugins we have now. I'm also the WooCommerce London meetup host just to add that to that. We've been going since 2009 as a company starting selling themes first and then moved into plugins. And I was solely focused WooCommerce since 2014 slash 15. Cool. Well, so Black Friday, you survived. I'm glad to see you all sitting up awake alive, I don't want to dwell a lot on prep because we already I was saying, you know, we've talked about it, we've been there. But maybe you could pull out one element. Was there anything that you did differently this year to prepare just because have you heard all this stuff coming in from different angles? I'll swing it to Katie first and then I'll let the others to chime in after her Katie, anything that you really really feel like was the top thing you might've done differently? The main change we made was that previous years we've always done 50% off everything. And we just did 30% this year because we noticed last year that a lot fewer people were doing the 50% like two or three years ago everyone was doing half price sales pretty much. And that, made sales go down a bit so thought we'd experiment and see how it went with 30 instead. Yeah, we did pretty similar, actually. We usually do 40, but this year we did 30 but we also, one of the key things that we changed is to have a one landing page where you can buy any of our products, you know, from one place. Cause we use freemium, which means there's no cart system to it. So previously, if you wanted to buy a product you'd have to go to the single product page and add it to cart there and then go to a different single product page and we found out that one landing page was great for just, you know, linking people to it and also convenient for the actual person perks. So yeah, how we did was similar also 30% which we have done for the last few years. And it's interesting to hear that. Not, you don't give more and more discount each year and it becomes like a race to the bottom to get the most attention to your company but actually everybody looks at each other actually we we can do quite well with less percentage and not more a giveaway. So for us, we did contemplate whether we will change the deal. But I think simplicity where you just say 30% off everything seems to work people better in their mind. Well, before I end or they remember it from last year so they sort of prepare themselves a little bit. But I think for us, we in terms of preparation, getting the timing, right because you don't want to start too soon. But I mean some shops have pretty much the whole month of November as a Black Friday sale and it sort of wears off and keep it fairly concentrated on just a few days and don't go over it because at the same time, you don't want to give stuff away that people are going to come to organically anyway. So it needs to keep it special by keeping it short as well. That's interesting because I know that I've just been reading a lot about what everybody so-called predicted. And one of the things I saw a lot talked about was deeper discounts. And I even heard a few people that I know that and they might've been speaking again to the broader retail industry that, you know the only way you're going to survive this year is deep discounts. You know, it's gotta be 50 or more. And I think this again pulls out the uniqueness of the WooCommerce space or even the WordPress ecosystem of plugins is that that isn't necessarily jive with the three of you did. You didn't say, okay, we gonna do 60%. We gonna do 70%, we're just, you know there's a point somebody I had on the podcast, it's insane, you know, it's like, you get up to 90%. It's like, what are you selling? You know, what's the freaking point kind of type of thing. So, I'd like to hear that. And that's what I kind of saw across the board with. I mean, I saw few really deep discounts and most of those as usual might've been hosting, but as far as the plugins, yeah, very cool. Early sales. That's one thing I want to talk about now. I believe I looked it up. I actually did my homework. I believe James and Katie. You both started yours on the 23rd and Ronald started years on the 26th. And again, I saw a trend talking about how people were starting sales earlier for one reason or another. Some even were doing early sales and then doing the Black Friday sales, they were starting the sales maybe early in October, any, you know, method to your madness behind that as far as maybe why you chose to go a few days earlier, or if you perceive that that might be just a better direction this year. Well, we found last year and this year that if we do Monday to Monday, instead of just Black Friday we can literally half the sales come from the Monday to Thursday period. And then the other half are from Black Friday to cyber Monday. So it seems like we wouldn't want to leave that on the table. And two years ago, when we just did the weekend sale we had quite a lot of inquiries from customers in the few days before saying can they have the discount early? And they, that causes quite a lot work for the support team. And cause we tend to say yes, rather than risk losing the sale and that involves manual work. Doesn't it? And interestingly, our first, our best day was Cyber Monday as it was last year by quite a long way. But our second best day wasn't Black Friday. It was the Wednesday and I've spoken to other companies as well who also said their second best day was the Wednesday. So that's more evident than it is worth doing that longer sale. How about the two of you? Did you know, I I'd be curious about that Cyber Monday as well if that was your better day or not? We had a slightly differently Cyber Monday was our best day and by about two times any other day. But we had kind of a U shape where Monday was, you know, the second highest day essentially. And it kind of went down and then went back up on to on Cyber Monday. But yeah, we saw for the first six days, you know, Monday was what's the highest study, the initial sale day. And that's probably down to the facts that the majority of our sales come from our email list and, you know, that's the day they get the first email. And after that, your open rate of those emails starts to go down. I'm really curious about the Monday to Wednesday 'cause we consciously didn't do that purely because you know, I think that people know what's coming up they wait for it because you know the weeks and months before they just sort of keep in mind like, Oh, I really need that. I'll pay it when it's on Black Friday. So we did a Thursday and Friday to start with but those two days were record breaking days for us. And then Monday again was a hit as well, Saturday, Sunday, a little bit less but yeah, it's the email that really drove the big peak. So we did a, you know, we set up an automation that we reminded people that we've unlocked the deal. Then we did a, a reminder for those who didn't open it. And, and throughout the next few days, we had a few more of these conditional automations to really remind people at the right time with some sort of predictive sending. And I think that's, you know the email kit and opening rate that really drove the big peak of off sales. So I think having a good marketing list to target to help you drive that extra sale for sure a lot of the purchases were repeat purchases of previous customers. So I think, you know, to focus on that but then what we also did was try to work with the affiliates beforehand and to get them to gear up with some, you know, you have these hundreds and one best marketing app for Black Friday deals to make sure that people know of us on those, this whoever's sort of working their way through it, but I'm sort of curious whether you've noticed a more of a repeat purchase from maybe customers who are already in your database from previous years. And also if they, you know, if you brought in a lot of new customers as a sort of a new marketing technique. Yeah. I mean, with mine. The actual, I need to go through and analyse the on the set of it, but we had two coupon codes. So existing customers got one coupon code and new customers got a different one they got slightly different discounts. Existing customers got 40% instead of 30 but actually the bulk of our sales were from new customers or at least people using the new or the, you know 30% discount code, which was interesting. Part of the reason that we decided to start the sale early is to kind of bypass the inbox fatigue that people will get. You know, you'll have seen it in your cell phone. Thursday, Friday, Monday, the same many emails coming in. So starting that a little bit earlier although quite a few people are doing that as well now but you kind of, you get the opportunity to be in an inbox when there's not as many people alongside you. That's why we, we did it then. Yeah. Unfortunately I don't have that data about how many were new and returning customers. So I might do that next year have different coupon codes for the emails that we send out versus the ones on the website. And then we can find that out. Yeah, I'm curious, now you both, I mean you just said email fatigue, and this is again both Ronald and James, you hinted towards that. That email was a big part of it. I mean, that was an effective strategy obviously. And I know that I saw it on the, you know I saw it in slacks, I saw it everywhere, moaning and groaning and whatever about emails people were saying. And I'm like, you know, I, every year I go into some conversation, I say, hey, you know have got to make a living, just deal with it type of thing. You know, it's not the end of the world. If he get some extra emails, Katie did, do you feel like a lot of your sales were more as far as the marketing part of things more email driven or maybe, you know, entirely email driven? Yeah. We got a lot from emails. We sent five emails. I negotiated my marketing people down from eight. I think five is quite a lot. And as you'd expect, there were a few opens and more unsubscribes as each one progressed through the sequence, which I think you would expect. But yeah, we definitely got quite a lot to choose from but we also got lots of new customers as well. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Ronald, you mentioned the affiliates and does, I'm not expecting you to give me the, you know, the data but we know how many lists are out there. And I know everybody wants to get on those lists. I mean, it's a, it's a no brainer. They're, they're what really drive things. Do you feel that that is an equal part to the email marketing as far as, you know, getting on those lists, getting your affiliates behind you, does this sales show that or is that kind of a variant, you know, maybe from you. No, it's not a really big part at all. You would, you would think so that those lists really drive lots of sales. I think it's just one of those minor touchpoints that reminds people of the brand or sort of an introduction to, or, you know, keeping in mind. Oh yeah, they do have a sale as well. I need to check back in a few days time or a few weeks time but what did help us to send some advance warning or email to the affiliates and not to all of them either, only to the ones that actually we have had some engagement with in the last couple of months, you know those who've chosen some sales or clicks to our website. So quite specific, a small group of people at the workplace. And then they try to check, you know if they're using the right sort of banner and promotion and so on. So a bit of quality check there. It was new because previously we didn't do that. But I do think, and this is I haven't analysed it enough to compare idea on a year and, you know, percentage wise but I do feel we've increased the traffic from them. So it definitely has worked, but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that affidavit basket for sure. Yeah. How about you James? How's that, how do you see that? Yeah, I mean, we've seen probably two years running now that those lists don't really drive any sales. I think there's just, there's so much information in them that they become kind of useless for the person viewing it and also for the person with the sale. But like Ronald said, they I believe they would be a good way for people to to just know you exist, you know to kind of trigger that memory in them. And if they see your deal again, there'll be like, Oh yeah I saw them, you know, the other day. So it's just, it's kind of that brand awareness aspect of it that I think is beneficial. But last year we spent a lot of time reaching out to individual blogs, getting up, you know deals posted on there. Whereas this year we didn't do that at all to the people that we'd reached out to the year before maybe some of them got in touch and we added, we, you know sent them back our deal, but we didn't actively go out looking for these lists this year. Like we did last year and we actually performed better this year. But affiliates I think, yeah, like Ronald was saying they performed well they didn't necessarily perform well for me this year. But if you really kind of nurture your top affiliates and you know, have some kind of plan with the top affiliates there's definitely a room for kind of good return there. I think. How about you, Katie? How, how did that kind of the same thing? I always thought that was a really good opportunity for Black Friday. And we've always spent a lot of time getting onto all the roundups and everything. Last year, we got onto a 34 roundups this year it was 17 for some reason but both years we've tracked almost no sales at all from those roundups. Some of those figures are designed. We have a really good affiliate programme. The rest of the year. We have some very good quite high profile affiliates that make very good content about our plugins and drive a lot of sales. But beyond that, nothing happened with the affiliate. So for Black Friday and we even tried to incentivize them by offering them unique coupon codes. They would all have been the 30% coupon codes, but specific to that affiliate so that we'd give them $150 bonus. If she's 10 times, well, 10 affiliates asked for this and literally one sale was tracked in total across the 10 codes. It was just terrible. So that didn't work. I wouldn't recommend that we've got sales from affiliates but I recognise just from the content that was already out there about our plugin I have no evidence that it was from anything they did to push out that Friday deal. So I don't know what we'll do differently next year but I am reflecting on that at the moment to think about whether their opportunity to be missed or maybe is not a priority for future sales. Yeah. Well, and the three of, you know because you were on it, I always do one that's just WooCommerce specific. And I do is a shorter list of course. And from experience, I've known that. Yeah. First of all, one of you mentioned that I think it was Ronald, you know these lists are incredibly wrong. I like to do it every year because I think what James said is, you know I don't expect a much sales there, but I'm just it's another thing that if it drives some people's eyes on there, they see you, you know, the different names these are the bonus considered doing that, you know the companies in the space that are doing the sales. These are the ones that Bob, you know whatever that may mean feels good enough to put on his site. So I'm hoping that does bring some brand recognition and maybe, you know maybe somebody will check something out down the road having seen it enough one brand, you know, various places. But yeah, it's definitely, I think it's, I actually I think most of the lists are totally insane, you know and I think, you know, if I was to take myself and say, come Black Friday, unfortunately when I need to plugin, I got to buy plugin by the time Black Friday rolls around, unless I happen to need one that week, I don't buy one just because I bought all the, you know, I bought like four of them up to the month before Black Friday, because I couldn't wait till black Friday. But, you know, I would sit there and go okay, you know, if Black Friday's coming. I need this plugin. And, you know, Katie site has it. Well, I'm just going to go to Katie site because I know she'll have a Black Friday sale, that's it, you know I'm not gonna go and peruse some long list and say, Oh what else is on sale that I don't really need but I might want to buy or, or something like that. Maybe some people do. But anyway, that's interesting to hear. And I... I just want to say two things though, because your list because it's WooCommerce specific, I actually think you know, shorter, but specific lists were better but I was just sort of my feel on it because if you are after WooCommerce, you know if you sort of, you know, building a project, checking it out and seeing what else is out there to sort of compare maybe get an intro to a company that you might not have heard of, or, you know some sort of solution. And I think that can have a positive spin to it. And then also I have the question to you. What do you think, is it worth it, you know to compile a list like that? Is it a worthwhile exercise versus revenue or is it more sort of, well it's sort of expected and if I just get on with it. You know, I would, I guess if I was in your shoes and kind of, like Katie said she's going to reflect on it next year and they didn't work on as many this year as they were last year. I would maybe just look for those lists that you think might get not necessarily referring back to what James said the eyeballs and unnecessary clicks just because you're part of that list. And that's maybe a list like, you know, crazy it is for beginner to have this long incredible list, but, you know they have a lot of people looking at it probably too. So, but I, you know, from this perspective I would say, you know, don't spend a lot of resources getting on it because obviously and that kind of reflects what the three of you said but it doesn't hurt to be on those as James said about you know, kind of the brand, just, you know and you're kind of, you know, maybe I'm to stay on the cool list, because then we're getting to the weird list and the whole WordPress thing and that that's another conversation, but you're, you know you're included on it. You're part of it. And, you know, I usually try to reach out to, you know people I know specifically and say, hey you've got a Black Friday, obviously let me know because you know, this is my list. And yeah, I would say it's worth it and it might be worth for those few extra sales, you know but it's not, I don't think if I have a shop, I wouldn't just having sat in that as an affiliate for years and years, I wouldn't be doing the tonne of reaching out. And as Katie said, if you have those high affiliate those people, you know, that handful, or maybe more people that really generate consistently, you know and they're doing a list and it's probably obviously worth being on their list just as a continuation of the brand. [Narrator] Thanks to our sponsor PayPal in time for the holiday season, PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in Four. This means that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in four interest free payments. This feature is one of two options from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal credit, which gives to our customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices and how when they pay. The second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering these payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they're more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest free payment options and 56% of consumers that responded agreed that they preferred to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card? Well, this seems like a no brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk caused. All you need to do is download the PayPal checkout extension on the marketplace at WooCommerce.com, just head on over click marketplace and search for the PayPal checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks to PayPal for being a community sponsor for "Do the Blue." And now let's head back on over to the conversation. Something I haven't tried with affiliates is getting affiliates who have YouTube channels. So the majority of our affiliates like blog text-based but I do think that YouTube would be a good source of credibility because I know in the list you make hundreds of plugins. They're gonna to list two or three probably per post. And if they're a good affiliate they might even do, you know, a full-on tutorial about how to do something specific with your product. Yeah. So, yeah. Do you think that would be a good one to explore next year We started with some YouTube content and through exploring that we've noticed a few people doing some sort of demos with an affiliate link and few do generate sales. So we're probably really early, but it is promising. So I definitely encouraged to explore a bit more on that and see if that can increase it. Is that people making tutorials based on your own videos or are they doing off their own back of you kind of discuss Yeah, no, no. We have absolutely no idea. You know, they are in sort of person. We can probably track it through the link but I wouldn't specifically recommend those videos either but, you know, within their own group. Okay. Just slowly she knows exactly what's happening. So it's it's yeah. But it sort of works for them and it ultimately it drives sales. And I don't know if we would ever come to that point that we have to police, you know, what people say and do about your, I don't think you can, but it's a obviously have the interest to make the sales. So it is promotional. Interesting. Well, yeah, I like hearing about that because I mean, all three of, you know my Bob WP sites still kind of squanders in affiliate land and stuff, so it's, yeah, the whole industry is interesting. Let me say, have you ever, I'm just curious to have it. And the three of you have ever gone to the affiliate, what is it? Conference. When we used to have conferences remember back in those days affiliate conference, Oh man, I'll tell you if you want to have an experience of affiliate and the mindset of that go to that. I went to a one year and yeah, it was interesting. Let me just tell you they had, one part of the conference was actually called The Meet Market. Anyway, what it was is you would sit down and meet with affiliates and you would basically hash out, you know you were affiliate marketer and they were affiliate and you sit down and wheel a deal and try to hash out incredible deals and whatever. And you'd sit across from each other at these little tables and just, and the people were just like, it was insane. It was the most interesting conference I've ever been to. And I have yet to ever go back to it. Was that specific to WordPress or a general one. It's a general one in fact most what was really cool about it and not to get to I don't want to get on that tangent but it was this huge, you know, they all had it was booths like a regular conference. So you'd walk in there and they were like, you know it's like walking through a booth of car salesman, you know they were very aggressive and they would come out from behind their booths and track you down and follow you and approach you. And fortunately for me, you know, maybe 2% of the companies there would have any interest in somebody that wrote about WordPress. So they'd turn, they, hey, you know, come on 'gotta come and see my booth in Bubba. And I say, I write about WordPress and they go, Oh, and they'd walk away. So it was, you know, that was actually an advantage for me because I didn't have to talk to a lot of them, but it wasn't experienced. So yeah, interesting times, but let's move into, Was there any challenges? I mean, was there anything that really, I mean, we're you know, besides the world falling apart around us and fortunately none of you live over here in the States where I do so that's to your advantage. But was there any challenges that came cropped up during the sale? Pre-sale? That kind of played into just everything else that made it okay. You sat thought, wow, it's 2020. Yeah.Why wouldn't this happened or was it pretty much, you know, smooth sailing? have three challenges, I'd say. One was pure technical. So that was the timing, so the banner was still on, but the deal came off 12 hours. So it was just a bit of coding but that was solved in, I think three minutes or so its literally like, somebody can't get the discount. Oh, sorry. Put it back. That was solved. Okay. Last year, 2019, we were one of the bad ones. However, it was very much over shattered by host from a company point of view, having a little notification inside the admin panel for administrators alone was you know, a very effective way of communicating a deal especially if you had a plugin without a valid licence. So, you know, quite rightly also as a user completely frowned upon. So we had to stay away from that. We did explore different versions of a notification but we also knew that all eyes were on any sort of ping pong on the backend. So we completely stayed away from it. So we, we did have quite a bit of a discussion around. And then we also discussed whether we have pre-sales and sales on chat throughout the weekend. Normally we have sort of a more reduced staff level but we just felt that, you know, lots of visitors lots of things can happen. Lots of questions. So we did put in some extra staff, luckily we could do that for the weekend. So, you know, nothing major for your decisions, but, you know in terms of challenges probably that's as far as it goes. Yeah, I didn't feel like we really had any notable challenges, at least during the sale. We had a similar timing issue with the banner. Ours was actually cashed on the website for like a day afterwards. So people were clicking it and trying to get the deal. Although we did leave it active for a little bit longer anyway, But no, we didn't necessarily have any challenges. It's obviously a slightly different landscape to normal, but that the landscape that it is currently is kind of more beneficial for us anyway because there's more people coming online more people setting up online stores. So yeah, you just have to kind of consider being around a bit more and having, you know, the support capacity to handle an influx from your customers but it hasn't been noticeably in much more support than normal. So it's been okay so far. Yeah. I was surprised that support didn't get busier and we have reduced the increased our capacity recently, but hey stayed on top of it, just fine throughout the sale. And I asked them to prioritise pre-sales and live chats and so on. And that was all fine. A couple of minor challenges. Give lots of refund requests. So it's an after people just buying and then not actually wanting to use it, then an ask for a refund. Not really, I don't find people tend to buy on impulse. Like you might think with Black Friday sales but we do get refund requests from people that have bought recently at the higher price which obviously requires quite a lot of manual work for support. We did agree to that if they were within their guarantee period. Cause obviously they could just say, I want a refund then. So we kind of have to, but that adds quite a lot of work, which happens every year. We do partial refunds in those circumstances. So we'll just refund the difference. Yeah. That's where you lose them. Cause obviously they risk not thing again. Yeah. The other thing that we get is refund requests from people the year before we've just renewed a normal price. We have them, yeah. Yeah. Because I think a lot of the times the people that wait for Black Friday are the bargain hunters. So they're not their life, their span of using your product, isn't gonna be as long as someone who is willing to pay full price for it. When we measure them are lower on the Black Friday period. So if you look at last year, sales, fewer of them would have renewed them enjoying a typical period. But I've used that to kind of justify doing things like lifetime sales on Black Friday. So I really agonised over whether it was a good idea to discount a lifetime deal. But I think it's a bit more justified because if they're less likely to you anyway you want to maximise that initial purchase value. Yeah. And we, most of our, the bulk of our revenue is from bundles and lifetime licences. So it's definitely worth it. So I was going to ask whether you see a lot of Black Friday to Black Friday customers that sort of cancel on every you know, start again because I'm assuming you're like ours the renewal is at full price. Yeah. Yeah. We, we email those customers and say, you know you can renew with these discounted prices. But strangely you find that most of them don't do that. I don't know whether they just don't read the email or, you know, we have tonnes of renewals that are just normal price. Yeah. But there's certainly some who do that every year. I know I do for my WooCommerce extensions, EDD extensions. I do it for tonnes of plugins. I'm just terrible. But yeah. It's not as many as you might think they certainly exist. Yeah. Yeah Do you run any other promos? I was just, I was wondering cause we only do black Friday and Cyber Monday. And if you do any of this for another time of year that's worthwhile or is it just Black Friday successful because of Black Friday? I think, like you say, it's recognised as pretty much anyone is going to do a Black Friday. You get a few companies that aren't gonna do them and I don't know am not so sure how well they do but yeah, we tend to suggest to the Black Friday sale. I can't recall if we did anymore this year, but we we definitely haven't focused on any particular holiday week. We maybe do like a launch sale or, you know a presale before the plugins ready. But in terms of all the plugins being discounted it's usually Black Friday. Yeah. We've done launch sales for specific products but we had never done a general sale at any other time of year. All I do know the owner of one WordPress plugin company who did a sale in May and he said he replicated exactly what he did for Black Friday in May. And he actually got as many sales which I was really surprised by. I think he's got very good mailing lists so he could get a lot of interested people that way. There is there's a WooCommerce days. It was introduced this year I wonder if anybody would like other plugging companies would chime with that, the WooCommerce date. I think is somewhere June or so... It doesn't really send that out. Okay. I seem to remember that. Yeah. I've got a plugin on the WooCommerce marketplace. Now we put it on this year that we also sell on their own website. So it's non-exclusive but it'll be interesting to see if 'cause I believe they have a few more sales than the average WooCommerce store. So it'd be interesting to see how... And that way you can really measure isn't it by having a upload on both platforms, which one? Yeah. I mean we don't don't have a choice when they ever sales so we just kind of have to roll with it. Yeah. So we did Halloween as well this year, we did it every year. And that is again, this year was an absolute record until this Black Friday as a sort of a single day sale. So I'm not sure how many other plugin companies take part in that, but it seems to sort of work for us as an early, maybe a Black Friday sale. Cause it's end of October. But apart from that, we don't do anything and probably not tempted to do either for exactly the same reason as Katie said that. Well, if there's not really anything around it but then this other plugin company what you said, that's interesting. Yeah. I think you're right. Halloween is becoming more of a thing and it's piggybacking on when other people do sales. So that might be a good one to try next. I think as well, WooCommerce did they do a Halloween one? It does ring a bell. Yeah. Yeah, I seem to remember seeing some kind of graphic for it. Yeah. Yeah, I think they did. Yeah. Think you are right. And I know a few of them that evolve had sales on them Halloween and it'll be interesting, I think for everyone next year to compare to this year, just because again, the growth in E-commerce and now I don't think it's going to stop. So it'll be interesting to see how things flow out. What I want to do. I actually had another thought for, that I shared with you for the end of the last thing I wanted to touch on. So I'm going to totally draw that out. And I thought of something else because I have these three brilliant minds from successful E-commerce product companies on here. And I don't always have three of them together. So for those people that are looking at 2021 and saying I want to get into WooCommerce products, I'm gonna get into it. I'm gonna sell. What is your biggest pieces of advice to somebody that is looking at that right now? I'll start with, let's see, I'll let, I know. Probably the three of you have to think about so whoever I call on is going to say, Oh, so I'm going to call Ronald. Yeah, he can swear on that. Yeah. I think it's an ever-growing market and you know, the solutions or the problems that plugin companies need to solve are only going to become more and more complex. So for example here in the UK with 1st of January being the sort of the Brexit sorry for swearing as a sensitive subject, but you know lots of things are changing. So when it comes to ordering and having these extra tax information that now needs to be all implemented within your WooCommerce store. So, you know, that certainly is an opportunity for plugin businesses to come up with something and create a business around it, whether you then specify you know, go around it and other UVAT and other texts solutions with shipping labels and so on. You know, that's why I think is a real classic opportunity. Also, you know in terms of internationalisation or is there's a lot that isn't working well enough. And it's just from, you know, from experience. So 2021 I think is going to be, you know, filling up these little gaps by companies that suddenly have, you know, they're flexible enough to fill in these vacuums, but also with so many different plugins and so many different things and page builders. The room error is also increased. So having the quality top being differentiated from the bottom, which can cause a lot of conflicts. I think it's something that maybe there needs to be a sort of a standard or recognition that these plugins always update the, you know, the up-to-date for the latest PHP. You know, you sort of almost stress-free running your store because that's still, I think for WooCommerce compared to other E-commerce platforms, one of the biggest disadvantages that every time you press update, anything can happen. If you build up your store really well, you and I would do that, but all the other millions of store owner. You cannot quite show what else is sort of in a plugin suite. So that's going to be interesting to see how the market evolves around that. Sorry, that was quite a long answer, but that's probably partly also because of the WooCommerce London I get a lot of feedback on that from different users but yeah, I've got so much more to say about it, but I'm gonna hit glass. Do you have any, anything to add to that? Well, I say for someone wanting to get into selling WooCommerce plugins. The easiest route to market is to find a gap, ideally, a fairly simple gap because the amazing thing about WooCommerce is it's just so huge. So many people use it and it's growing. And so even if you find a really tiny niche you can get a lot of sales and there are loads of gaps in functionality. And the best way to find them is to look on the official ideas forum, which does exist with do ideas, Facebook groups about WooCommerce where people are saying, how do I do this? And having to do custom coding and just building websites for people or yourself. There is so many gaps I've got a huge document, that's feature plugin ideas. And a lot of them are really quite simple things that just are possible. So it's quite easy to get a small plugin written and get that on the market. And because it's something that doesn't exist you can then write about it and get sales relatively easily. Yeah. James, anything left for you? Any thoughts there? Yeah, there's actually, I think there's another side of it that that needs to be considered, which is the, I think you need to come into it with an idea of how you're going to market the product, because it's there's so many products in the space that if you released one just into the other it would just get lost. So, I mean, for me in particular, I started out on CodeCanyon, which was a good place to start but this was like 10 years ago now. But, you know, having that marketplace where they're doing the promoting and they've already got this audience that are coming, looking for solutions was a great way to kind of get off the ground and then, you know, lead into running my own store. So, you know, things like the WooCommerce as marketplace or CodeCanyon or if you don't want to take that route then I think just having a USP in your products and being able to kind of create a buzz around that is important. And like Katie was saying, you know, content marketing and probably starting content marketing from the get-go with posts around how to achieve certain things using your new product, rather than anything too technical is something that would be worth doing Well. I think with the three of you, I can plan on in the new year having you back because there's several topics within that last question that we could just elaborate on. And with this gold mine of experience here, I think. Yeah, it would be good. So we'll definitely be doing that. And so this has been exactly how I wanted it to go. I had the opportunity to bring on three people that are a lot smarter than me and actually talk about this stuff that I can just basically ask questions and get answers. And I appreciate it. It's has been very cool. So before I go, let me just thank WooCommerce.com, PayPal.com, again. My community sponsors, we'll be doing this podcast, kind of taking a break we've got the holidays, but this will be every other Tuesday starting in the new year. Have some fun stuff coming up. I'm already planned in the pipeline. And yeah, I just want to thank the three of you for taking the time. You know, you've done this with me before on the one-on-one podcast with my co-hosts and you know, I'm sure I'll be poking at you again sometime but before we leave, where can people connect with you? Let's start with Katie. Our website is barn2.co.uk That's barn then number 2. Or you can find us on Twitter or Facebook under Barn2 plugins. James. Yeah. We're iconicwp.com and where IconicWP on most things except Instagram where we've got two underscores after it. Ronald. So everything is in the YITH. So Yithemes.com. I think it's going to be quite straight forward to find this on the other platforms. Very cool. Well, again, thank you very much. And thank you everyone for joining us and yeah, as far as this particular episode is you know, like I said, we're gone for the holidays. We have a few more Do the Woo I think a couple more coming up before we get into the holidays but until then everybody "Do the Woo." 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34 minutes | a month ago
Outside and Inside the WooCommerce Ecosystem with Robert Jacobi
Thanks to our community sponsors Today’s guest has taken a deep dive this year into the world of WooCommerce. Robert Jacobi, Industry Analyst Strategist has a diverse background in the web space, and in open-source. Previously, when looking at moving to an open source CMS, he chose Joomla. Much has happened since then. Robert has a pulse on the open source and WordPress space and his perspectives and insights come from what he hears from his clients and a lot of other people he connects with in the ecosystem. A Chat with Robert In episode 84, I talk with Robert about: The interesting path he has taken since the 1990’s to land on WordPress and WooCommerceWhat he is seeing with his own clients as they look to enter or expand into the WooCommerce spaceThe word around the web on the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystemHow companies new to the WooCommerce space are learning about the unique approach it takes to become part of the communityWhat this year has meant to companies when it comes to eCommerce and WooCommerceWhy WooCommerce agencies may be looking to get more into the product space in 2021Robert’s thoughts on static WordPress and WooCommerce Connect with Robert RobertJacobi.comOn Twitter @RobertJacobiAnd you can find him on Slack via Poststatus, Big Orange Heart and WordPress.org Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everyone, BobWP here. We're back to Do the Woo, Episode 84. I am co-hostless. I don't even know if that's a word, but I am. There is no co-host with me today because of a personal conflict. But hey, the beauty about this is that don't stop the podcast because you don't have to worry about it being all BobWP now. It's like, "Ugh." No, I still got a great guest. So we got that guest to basically act as both a co-host and a guest, which he didn't really expect. Yeah, just go with the flow, have a great conversation. We have a very, very cool guest, lots of experience, wide range in his background. But before I get into that, I'd like to thank our community sponsors, WooCommerce. And one of the things I wanted just to mention about WooCommerce that you may not know or you may know that they have this resource that's kind of buried on their site called Customer Showcase. And essentially, that is the chance for people to put their WooCommerce site on there. Now, what does that mean for you as a builder? I like to look at these things as, "Okay, this isn't something that you just want to ignore." One thing is hey, just a chance to get some of the work you do on the site. And secondly, how many times have you had to convince a client into WooCommerce? And what better way than saying, "Hey, did you know so-and-so is on WooCommerce? Did you know that AeroPress, the better coffee press, is on WooCommerce?" It's a great way to look at some of the industries that maybe your potential client is in and say, "Yeah, look at these. These are big sites. They run in WooCommerce." So, keep that as resource. It's under the community tab on WooCommerce.com. And, of course, our second community sponsor is PayPal and I've been talking about that for some time, their pay, excuse me, their buy now, pay later solutions. And it's gotten down to the point where I'm thinking, "Okay, you as a builder, you have lot of clients. You have them using PayPal." I mean, chances are they have PayPal on there. And it's just a nice way to make you shine a bit, whether you're an existing client, whether it's a new client to say, "This might work with your product," depending on the product, but giving them the option to tell their own clients, "Hey, get more customers. Offer the pay-in for." It's no risk to you. The store owners, it's no risk to them. So yeah, do check it out and there'll be more about that later in the show, but I want to dive into the show and I don't have to babble with my co-host. So I'm going to babble with my guests instead. Robert Jacobi, welcome to the show. Robert: Thank you, Bob. Great pleasure to be here. If I knew I was doing double duty, I would have asked for twice as much pay. Bob: Yeah, I know. That's why I always surprise people because I don't pay anything. So, just with glad tidings or something, whatever that is. Now, in your background, I want to get into that a bit, but I want to hear... Tell us what you do right now and essentially how does WooCommerce play into that at all? Meet Robert Jacobi Robert: Great. Thanks. So what I am involved in is being an industry analyst strategist, and what I also call a solution ambassador for customers of mine. I look to help guide them, especially in entering open-source markets, obviously like WordPress and WooCommerce, how to interact with those communities, everything from the community level to obviously at higher market levels. And I wrote a blog about all that as well. It all started in the 1990’s and now, WordPress and WooCommerce Bob: Cool. Now, you have a diverse background. I mean, I go to your about page and I read it and I just like, "Whoa." It is diverse. So give us, and it probably a rather large nutshell, a bit of that background and what paths led you to WordPress and ultimately how even WooCommerce played a part in that along the way. Robert: So we do actually have to go all the way back to the 1990s. Bob: Oh my God. Robert: I know. You remember the 90s, Bob, don't you? Bob: Yeah, I do. Very well. Very well. Robert: One of my first career opportunities was working at a learning management solutions company. We provided training for your day-to-day products at the time, so Microsoft Office, specifically Lotus Notes, variations of Windows, and these were CD-ROM-based products with some development tools that put that all together. I wound up being in charge of putting together the learning management platform as the internet was exploding and we needed to figure out a way to provide content to our customers and user tracking, all these kinds of things that learning management systems do today. So, that was that initial foray into management systems of any kind around... Well, actually, not even around, in 2001, one of the lead developers when I decided to form our own agency called Arc Technology Group. And we focused on Java-based content management. So we would help roll out proprietary content management solutions with our team to small, medium, large enterprise companies. We worked with companies that supported certain brands, like McDonald's. A couple of years into that, we decided we needed to make a choice on whether we were going to support the software or support the consulting. And that's where we came into the open-source space, even though we're using Java, which was open-source-ish. Looking for a good open-source CMS. Joomla? At the time, we were thinking we needed something that was a bit more robust, a bit more flexible, could support the old. If our entire company got hit by a bus, what could you do with the product? And our clients and customers weren't going to be locked into anything. So we actually went with the best open-source content management solution at the time, and that was not WordPress, it was Joomla. People love that story. Bob: Yeah, really. Robert: They were waiting for me to say WordPress. Bob: Yeah, that was it. That went off in a different direction there. Robert: So we did that for a number of years and got deeply involved in the community and all things open source. And it was a wonderful experience. Near the end of that, I actually became the president of Open Source Matters, which for all intents and purposes is the president of Joomla. Serving in that role for one year was challenging, exciting, learned even more about how projects develop, evolve, run. Heck, even half the time, just trying to keep their heads from being underwater. So, that was great. After that, I mostly sold off the agency and began looking at different opportunities. One popped up through someone who I had met on the board of directors at Joomla, and that was Perfect Dashboard, at the time, product focused on end users to help automatic upgrading, updating of both Joomla and WordPress sites. So, that was really that first deep dive into WordPress. It was really, so now we're talking about four years ago, three to four years ago. That's got to be four years ago. I keep forgetting about 2020. Yes, that is a year and we're at the end of it. So, that was about four years ago. We were able to be acquired at the beginning of 2019 by WPEngine. So, that was fantastic. And if you're using WPEngine's auto-updating tools, that is actually now being managed by much of the development team that was also at Perfect Dashboard. So, that was a cool thing to happen. So beginning of 2019 rolls around, what am I going to do? I'm going to figure out something in 2019. And a lot of that just came into speaking, attending work camps, everything from the local ones to Work Camp Europe, obviously, Work Camp U.S. and others. Part of that also being involved in speaking at those events, as well as hosting cons and CloudFest and tangential spaces to actual WordPress. It also requires learning about everything and knowing, "Oh, WooCommerce." So WordPress has this WooCommerce attached platform. What does that mean? How's that impacting the community? Are people using it? How are they using it? So, a lot of this year has been actually a deep dive into understanding WooCommerce also because there's the secret 2021 project that I'm getting up the door that will also utilize WooCommerce. So, that's been very instrumental in learning much about what the tool does. Bob: Oh, a secret project. Now you got me really curious. I'm hoping to get a glimpse into that secret project secretly sometime. Robert: You'll have a second dibs. Bob: Okay. Second dibs. Good. Good. Good. All righty. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. What Robert hears about WooCommerce from his clients inside and outside the space Well, now let's go to what you've been doing lately as far as working with the clients. Basically, you're the evangelist for them and they're obviously depending on you to not only get the word out, but probably to embrace and capture all this information out there, bring it back to them and say, "Hey, have you thought about this? Are you doing this." Obviously, and I know a million of us in this space, maybe there's a million of us, but we've seen this growing interest in WooCommerce over the year for obvious reasons. What are your clients tending towards more new products? Or are they saying, "We have this, but we can incorporate it into WooCommerce. We never really thought the focus should be there," or not necessarily focused on their product, but it should be a priority? What's been going on with it? And you don't have to point out needs specific clients obviously, but just a general feel of what they're thinking and what they are as far as getting into the Woo space. Robert: Sure. And you've actually hit both sides of the coin on that. There are people with existing products and I'm happy to name names, I'm sure they won't complain either, that are looking to get into that space and others that are building that new product offering out and what that might entail. So on the ones with existing products, those are typically SaaS providers that have just ignored, not necessarily intentionally, just the market drove them in other directions initially, other e-commerce platforms. So one of these companies, Omnisend is an email marketing automation platform, so similar to... Well, it's not MailChimp. It's super MailChimp. Maybe something equitable that everyone knows is Jilt. So something like Jilt would be a similar product line. They made their claim to fame in the Shopify space. And so, they've strategically tackled different markets one at a time. So first, it was Shopify. Then it was Magento. Then it was BigCommerce. And now, it's WooCommerce's turn. So that they're waiting for that level of maturity and awareness of just the platform as a whole, and then trying to get people who utilize that platform to be aware of them, as well as understanding the differences in an open-source community. If you're dealing with Shopify or BigCommerce, well, those are very market-driven pretty standard companies. No one's breaking out into it. Everything is very transactional. What's beautiful and what I really love about open-source communities is there's a lot more personal trust and relationship building that occurs throughout that sales partnership pipeline than I would say traditionally happens in more proprietary-based companies. So, a lot of it is also helping people learn how to engage with the community as a whole, because it's not just about, "Here's our solution. You should use it because it's the best." It's about, "We have a solution that we think is really good and can help a percentage of people on WooCommerce. Plus, we want to give back. We want to be at the correct events. We want to send speakers. We will contribute in other ways." And that's just a slightly different mindset from a purely transactional business-to-business connection, I think. And that's what really keeps me in open source. I like doing that. I like to talk to people. I like to be out there. And I find it really rewarding at the end of the day, on top of just the regular got to pay the bills. Companies entering the WooCommerce space Bob: Right. And that's interesting because I find the same thing, especially in larger corporations that are looking to get into the space, WooCommerce. They come in and their expectations, whether it's through a sponsorship or somebody like you, right away, they're going to start laying out the metrics. They start looking at the numbers. There's a real education process there of... And numbers are important. I'm not saying we're numberless in the WordPress space, but there is those other elements layered on as far as those relationships. Robert: Yeah, you can't ignore the metrics. I mean, that's still matters. Bob: Yeah. Robert: But there is an open-source ramp up because a lot of people are in the space not just for the business aspects. They're in it because they like the product and the product is also the community, is also the WordCamp, is also all the podcasts, all the personalities. It's much more than just running over to the grocery store, picking up a ham. You're not in and out. Many of these people are deeply ingrained in the project and the community. There should definitely be a level of respect allocated to those kinds of people, because they don't want to be spammed. They understand what's going on. They want to have that conversation and see if you're legitimately bringing something new to the table versus all of the other spam that you can get. What’s the word on the streets about WooCommerce Bob: Yeah. Now, I want to piggyback on that and maybe even look a little bit in the next year. So on the flip side of it, you're working with these clients, but I know you and I see you everywhere. I mean, sometimes I pop into some meetup. It's like, "My God, there's Robert again. But he probably thinks that I'm following him around or whatever." But I see you. So that's part of what you do and you're very good at it. So you're hearing all these different pieces to the puzzle over a vast array of WordPressness, which is not even a word, but you're hearing a lot. We're looking at 2021 and what's happened this last year. What are you hearing from just the general space out there around WooCommerce? A lot of jumping on the bandwagon, a lot of still, "Oh, do I go WooCommerce? Do I go a platform like Shopify?" Or something like that. But just from your perspective, what are you hearing? I always love it, because you're out there with a lot of feelers. Robert: Well, I got to say that 2020 has definitely, I think, amped up the presence of WooCommerce, just because so many people want to get online and there are so many WordPress agencies that a good go-to is Woo, but they're not necessarily fully tech-savvy on WooCommerce. So I think there's been on the agency side, a big ramp up in just understanding the tech and how it integrates well and what are the best practices around WooCommerce, because there's a lot of stuff that goes on an e-commerce platform. It's a lot more resource-intensive on labor and costs just to get a good shop up. And this is a discussion that goes on all the time for especially do-it-yourselfers solopreneurs is to know your client. If your client is that shop at the end of the street, they probably don't need WooCommerce for what doing, and to have that awareness and then instinctively and reflexively jump to Woo is important to know. Even though you might want to do these projects so you can also learn and teach yourself how everything works, there's that struggle to keep that client in mind. And there are platforms for very small... If there's someone selling three things, do they really need to have a WooCommerce shop up? No, they don't. Woo is great for being an e-commerce platform, but it's not going to solve all the problems. Yes, Shopify is out there. I mean, look at Wix. Wix is slowly growing up their ability to do a shopping and e-commerce and building and payment gateways, and trying to do a lot of these things that the other providers have done. So there's that awareness, I need to make sure I take care of the clients best. So to answer your question from 10 minutes ago about we talked about existing people entering the market with their existing products, I think the new products, and a lot of this will happen to 2021, some of it's already happened in 2019, 2020 with the hosting companies, figuring out ways to more efficiently onboard small to medium sized businesses. So that's where do-it-yourself product or solopreneurs, where the agencies can focus on much larger e-commerce opportunities. So we're not going to necessarily see a proprietary solution like Wix, but we're going to see Liquid Web with their WooCommerce onboarding and experiences. We're going to see other hosts. I'm sure hosting companies like Convesio and WPEngine has got to have something in the pipeline. I can't imagine they wouldn't. We can go on and on through all the hosts that are figuring out the best way to onboard at different market points people onto WooCommerce. Because it makes sense, people are going to do it. We talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, well, it's been Gray November. Everyone's been shopping every day online. There are stuff that I've bought online that I'd never thought I would because I was like, "No, I cannot absolutely do that." Yes, I've been hold out for things like, "I'm never going to use Instacart or anything like that." But yeah, I guess I can actually do that. Sometimes it's a roll of dice. You're not necessarily going to get what you might get if you were picking up something at the grocery store, but it's close enough and you make do. And I think people are finding ways to make whatever they have today as a solution, a real-world or real-life solution at least accessible somehow online. At the end of the day, if the price points are right, everyone will have a shop because if you're spending a hundred bucks a month say on infrastructure, well, you may only need to sell two things to make up for that infrastructure. You could still have your day job, but you have your store now as well. So why not do that with your blog and maybe a mini Woo that takes care of a lot of that, of the transactional stuff? I'm just very bullish on a lot of the e-commerce solutions and a lot of the SaaS products getting in because the cost of starting up one of these things is just so much lower, so much lower than last, a year ago and infinitely lower than 10 years ago to just get something rolling. And so many people can do it as a hobby and be successful without having to deal with eBay as their outlet and the lack of trustworthiness and off. Now, you can just set up your own shipping with SaaS shipping providers and all the taxes and all this can be SaaS-based. And it's transactional and relatively inexpensive. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Agencies moving into the product space more in 2021 Bob: Yeah, and I wonder if... It brings up something I hadn't really thought about, but maybe I had thought about, but if I have, I already thought about it again is a lot of the agencies we talk with on this podcast, a lot of the products that they've created came out of a need they had for their existing clients. And I wonder if there are more agencies now, and I'm not behind the scenes hearing this, because for an agency there's that, "Okay. Well, if I start a product, I've got to have support." There's a lot of things that come with that, but at the same time, it's an added stream of pretty consistent income. So I'm wondering again, if that this whole... what's grown out of this, this last year, if that's pushing even some agencies starting to think, "Maybe it's not so much I need to even take more WooCommerce website building clients, instead maybe it's time to start looking at a product." I wonder if that's opened up some opportunities to these agencies to put another source of revenue in their stream. Robert: Well, if you're an agency, the ebbs and flows of revenue are notorious, and I did that for almost 20 years. We had amazing years that could cover three or four other years. So of course, we had two recessions in the middle of that time, so that was also entertaining. And we always talk about recurring revenue and how do you build that base in, because it's nice to have a floor where you're not necessarily always sweating the bullets about, "Is my income going to be zero next month? No. I mean, you can have a floor. And I think just during this discussion, it dawned on me a little bit more that the successful agencies of 2021 will figure out how to be SaaSsy. Bob: Yeah. Robert: So, that's SaaSsy with two As. Bob: Yeah. Yeah. Robert: Two As, two Ss. And really build that into their workflow and focus on their unique value propositions. So the markets they've already entered into, is that regional? Is that technical? Is it industry markets? Specializations, things like that. Bob: Well, I think you better go and trademark that tagline. That sounds like a good one. I like that. Write that down. Yeah. Robert: I'm writing it down as we speak. Bob: Yeah, I was going to say that. I like that one. You trademark that and I can use and give you all this credit and say, "As Robert says, hey- Robert: Get SaaSsy. Bob:... it's the year to get SaaSsy." All right. Robert: I've done a presentation in the past, actually in 2019, talking about the invisible CMS, where again, you focus on your specialties and push the technology backwards at WorkCamp Costa Rica. I had a real-time signer that was translating from English and then signing in Spanish, if that makes sense. The last slide is sort of a call to action. It was about kick some SaaS. And she stopped signing in the middle of that thinking she might miss heard. Bob: Oh no. Robert: We make eye contact. I point up to the sign and she's like, "Oh." Bob: Yes, that's good. Static WordPress with WooCommerce Well, the last thing I'm going to touch on before we go, and this tend to take in a totally different twist out of what we've been talking about. And this may be looks at the next year what's coming up and something I know you're really into is a static WordPress with WooCommerce, and what's around the band. Can you just leave us with some thoughts on that and what you're thinking? Because I think this is going to be something we're going to be talking about on the podcast, I think for sure, as we move into this new year, even more. Robert: So it's not that big of a leap from what we were just speaking about. Static WordPress sites, by their very definition, don't have dynamic content. WooCommerce does. And I'm wondering, and this is speculative ideation, crazy thoughts in my head with too much caffeine, it was how can WooCommerce become a headless JavaScript, plugin-based tool set for all these static sites? So if you look at companies like FLATsite or Strattic, and the Gatsby products, all the JAMstack stuff, they're trying to move away from having to call databases all the time, but you're going to need that for e-commerce solutions. So, it's really more of a thought puzzles. How can WooCommerce integrate into this market that's not going to go anywhere? I mean, static sites are not disappearing, so how can WooCommerce be a player and available and on top of that? Because there are other SaaS providers already trying to get into that space or already making inroads, Ecwid is one. So how does WooCommerce compete instead of with Shopify, how does it compete with something like Ecwid, which is almost like a JavaScript drop-in store? So I'm curious what the visions are for that from the development teams, but also how third parties might magically make that happen. Bob: Right. That'd be an interesting topic for my Woo Perspective. I was just thinking of that in the new year is to get some people coming in. Obviously, there aren't solid ideas and people are moving on things, but there's a lot of this, just like you shared, this is what I'm thinking, "How can we do this?" And I think that would be pulling in some of those people that are in that space to really... Because I'm sure there's like, "Okay. Right now, we're not doing it." But in a perfect world situation, it could make for a real interesting discussion that I could sit back and let three people just go for it. Robert: Yeah. I mean, because why should WooCommerce be limited to WordPress? Why can't you all of a sudden use WooCommerce with some other JAMstack toolkits? And why can't it be the best of breed e-commerce platform for X, Y, Z? So I think a lot of this stuff is getting intermingled and it's not going to matter much. You're going to have multiple systems interconnected, and why not? Bob: Well, I know we could talk on and on and I'm going to have you back. In fact, I know you're going to be on a Woo Perspective. We're not quite sure on the topic yet, but that will be coming in January and that'll be fun. We'll be pulling in some of you and a couple of other people. Well, we'll find something cool to talk about Woo. Robert: I'm looking forward to it. Can't wait. Bob: Yeah. So anyway, well, excellent. Yeah. Let me just give a quick shout out to my sponsors before we close out here. Again, WooCommerce.com. You know them. You love them. Probably why you listen to this podcast. And like I said at the beginning of this show, you just need to spend some time. I think, especially as a builder, you get stuck on those development resources and you got to wade through their site. There's probably a lot of hidden gems there that you can use. And then, of course, PayPal, get on that, check out their buy now, pay later solutions. I'm going to keep talking about that because I think there's many people that use PayPal. That's a great option to throw in there. Again, depending on your product, I know that right now that paying for it does not work with recurring automatic subscriptions, but I also know that is in the pipeline. I'm sure they'll be figuring that out. But yeah, there's some opportunity there. So check out PayPal.com, WooCommerce.com. Connect with Robert And where can people check out Robert Jacobi? Robert: Oh, that's easy, RobertJacobi.com. Now, you just have figured out how to spell it. So, Robert's easy. Jacobi is J-A-C-O-B-I. Bob: And any platforms, anywhere you hang out a lot on where people can reach out to you? Robert: So many meetups, definitely on, let's say, Post Status' Slack, Big Orange Heart's Slack. You can always get me on WordPress.org Slack. So those three Slacks are always running around, but you'll catch me at an event at least once a week somewhere. Bob: Cool. Well, yeah, in an event and plenty of other places to connect with Robert. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Robert: Thank you so much, Bob. Bob: And everyone, yeah, do check us out on your favorite pod platform. Also, coming up next Tuesday, I will be having a Woo Perspective with three Woo vendors and we're going to do a post-Black Friday. We're going to see what they prepared for, how it went for them, if they survived it, if they've been drinking for the last week, all that good stuff, just see what is going on with it, with some of the Woo vendors and how they survived Black Friday. So until next time, Do the Woo. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
52 minutes | 2 months ago
What is a Woo Builder and a Look at the Opportunities
In the second Woo Perspectives, I bring back my co-hosts Brad Williams, Jonathan Wold and Mendel Kurland to talk more about Woo builders. As you will see, these episodes, unlike the discussions we have with specific builders in the space, are more open conversation around a topic. In other words, we never know where the discussion will go. I would suggest listening to the show it get a flavor of what to expect on every other Tuesday. Thanks to our sponsors Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce.
36 minutes | 2 months ago
Subscriptions and WooCommerce Support with Sarah Rennick
Thanks to our community sponsors Sarah has been using WordPress for a lot of years. She moved from the fashion industry to Skyverge, and then to WooCommerce/Automattic. We have a chance to talk about her transition to Automattic, a bit around the space of subscriptions and, of course, her active role in support at WooCommerce as a Happiness Engineer. A Chat with Sarah In episode 82, Brad and I talk with Sarah about: Those early days and going further back with helping her mom blog in the 1997What she experienced moving from a smaller company to working at AutomatticThe challenge of juggling timezonesHer experiences in supporting WooCommerce productsThe overall feedback she is getting from people who use WooCommerceWhat she is hearing about WooCommerce and Gutenberg in the support channelsThe requests they get for expanding subscriptionsWhat Sarah has found in her experience of a unique way someone has used subscriptions There’s a lot of gems in the conversation. And if you are a company who wants to understand the way to deliver support, you will need to listen to Sarah as someone who loves her job. Connect with Sarah Sarah on Twitter @fevered Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Brad: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another fun episode of Do the Woo. I'm one of your co-hosts Brad Williams and I'm joined as always by Mr. BobWP. Hey Bob, welcome to the show. Bob: Hey, it's always good to be here, especially when I have electricity, it's even better. Brad: We're recording a day later because Bob lives on an Island in the middle of nowhere. And if someone sneezes, it knocks out the internet. Did I get that right? Bob: Right. Except it's on the beach actually. It's not an Island. Well, it's a peninsula, if you want to get technical, but yeah, it's basically the ocean sneezes and that's what happened. Brad: The oceans sneezes, there you go. Well we're glad we were able to make this. We got a really fun show today. Before we get into it, definitely we want to thank our sponsors. As always, we have WooCommerce. Maybe you've heard of it. I hope so. That's what this podcast is all about. Go to WooCommerce.com, a lot of great resources over there and obviously check out the product because that's what we talk about every day on the show. And I also want to give a big shout out to one of our newest sponsors, PayPal. And we had a great episode. What was that? Two weeks ago, three weeks? Time is kind of blurring together for me, but I had a really cool episode about PayPal not too long ago. And we just really dug into their Pay in 4 service that they offer now, which I think anyone running a store, or even if you're an implementer, you support a store. It's something you should bring to the store owners is an option because if you accept PayPal, this is already available to you and it basically allows your customers to buy something and pay it off in four payments. And PayPal takes all the risk and responsibility around that. So you get paid in full and PayPal handles collecting the payments from the customer. So it's kind of a no-brainer. If you run a store and you accept PayPal, definitely look at that Pay in 4 from PayPal. So let's dive in. I'd like to officially welcome our guests, Sarah Rennick to the show. Hey Sarah, how are you doing? Sarah: I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing better? Brad: Good. We're excited to have you. It sounds like you have a fun, detailed story about how you got into WooCommerce. So we're very excited to hear how you Do the Woo. The journey to Woo really started in 2004 Sarah: So yeah, I'm going to give the detailed version of how I got into WooCommerce, which of course starts with WordPress. So I started using WordPress in 2006 because my mom had a blog that she started in 1997. And then when WordPress came out, she was like, "I'm going to move to it." I was getting interested in web development around 2004-ish. So she was like, "Hey, why don't you try this?" So I set up my first WordPress site. I got started with that and basically just have been using it ever since I started going to word camps in like 2010-ish. So I've been around for a little bit, but I had been working in a job in front-end development, not for WordPress stuff, but I got that job like right out of college, went to college for something called digital media, which is like game development and coding and stuff like that. And some like video stuff, which is pretty cool. And then got a job, was there for like five years, got laid off from that job. And then I was like, "I'm going to get a remote job in WordPress. And I was looking at all these like different jobs online. And I found this company called Prospress and their job ad really intrigued me. And they are a company that developed WooCommerce subscriptions and they had a support opening. So I applied for one of those. Because I was like, "this company sounds awesome. And I've used WooCommerce before, I think I bought like a one site that had WooCommerce on it. So I was like, "Oh, this is something new." Because I was like, "Let's start a new job that's on something that I haven't used much before." So got that job. And that's how I got into WooCommerce. A blog in 1997 Brad: That's actually a pretty cool story. Like you said, you've been around the WordPress space for quite a while. Maybe we go back to what you said about your mom having a blog in 1997. She's like a trendsetter. Because that's early. Like, I don't know anyone that had a blog back then. Can we just talk about that for a minute? I'm very curious about one, what your mom was blogging about and how was she doing it? Do you know what service she was using at the time? I don't even know what was available back then. Sarah: I can't remember, but yeah, she started a blog in 1997. Her and my dad met going to college for programming. Like computer programming. Met, had some kids, got married, all that stuff. So she started a blog because she was like, "Hey, this internet thing, I could like start a blog." And the things she would post about is I was homeschooled along with all of my siblings. So she would post about things and updates for family like homeschooling stuff. Eventually she went on to start a multi-site network. So it'd be similar to WordPress.com, but just for home schoolers. So people could go sign up for a free homeschooling blog, which was pretty cool. But yeah, sometimes the things she posted, it would be funny. Like there was a post that was house rules, which were things like no playing with string longer than six feet, no live or dead things in the house. Brad: I like it. That's awesome. I think so it's almost inevitable that you were going to end up in WordPress knowing that story. The path to get you on WordPress started way back in 1997, maybe before that. But the fact that your mom was blogging kind of at the start of all of it. To be honest I didn't start a blog until 2006 and I knew I was way behind. I felt behind at the time, like everybody had a blog, but in 1997. That's some old school blogging there. It's probably very much just straight up writing the HTML files and uploading them to the server. Sarah: I'm pretty sure that's how it started. Yeah, it was just HTML files, but yeah. Brad: That's very cool. Thanks for sharing. And, and then you mentioned on your path was Prospress, which is a company I'm familiar with. I know Brent, the owner of Prospress and the subscriptions extension that you mentioned, I think is one that anyone that's worked with WooCommerce is probably somewhat familiar with. It's probably crossed their paths a few times because it's ... I mean, I don't know if it still is, maybe you know this, but it was like the most popular commercial extension that WooCommerce had for years. I'm assuming it still is. Sarah: Yeah, it still is. As far as I know anyways. What Sarah does as a Happiness Engineer Brad: Yeah. So that was the, if you're not familiar, it's basically the WooCommerce extension that allows you to have paid subscriptions and it works really well. And it works really well with other extensions, which is probably even a bigger benefit. It just works well on the WooCommerce ecosystem, which I'm sure was a big part of why Automattc purchased or acquired Prospress and want to bring that in house so they could help kind of shape the future of that product as well. So I'm curious to what ... in terms of Automattic, I know your official title is support engineers, is that right? Sarah: Happiness engineer. Brad: Happiness engineer, sorry. Sarah: That's like the public title. You can pick your own like internal title. So mine is internet wizard. Brad: I like that. So what kind of happiness are you actually officially like in your profession, like at Automattic for your day job? Are you supporting WooCommerce? Sarah: Yeah. So basically WooCommerce core, all of the extensions that we have on the marketplace, any of them that are owned by WooCommerce, we do support for. Any third-party ones, we do the pre-sales questions for. So that's like a lot of extensions to know about. I obviously specialize in subscriptions. I also spend a lot of time talking to people, if someone's like, "Hey, can anybody do this in subscriptions?" I'm like, "I know the answer." I also am a co-lead of our documentation team, which means that me and a team of happiness engineers make sure the documentation doesn't blow up or anything. Brad: The thankless job of documentation. We've talked about that in the past, haven't we Bob. It's one of the most important things and the most overlooked things in software development is documentation. That's a thankless job. So thank you for leading that because people need documentation. I need documentation and it's helpful. So it gets people on the platform. It gets them comfortable with the platform that they know there's good docs out there. How are people feeling in general about WooCommerce? So you're on the front lines of support. That's always an interesting place to be because you hear everything, you hear a lot of stuff, right. And probably a lot of it coming from a point of frustration, because obviously when you're reaching out to support, generally something's not working right. Or you have questions or whatever, you can think of a million different reasons. But I'd love to know, by and large, the people that come to support, look for support and help, what's your takeaway in terms of their outlook on WooCommerce whether they ... and I know it is a bit of a general answer because you're talking about a large group of people. But do you see some kind of a sense like, "By and large, most people really love it. They just get stuck in a few places." Or does it come from a point of frustration because the product itself is too confusing or is it somewhere in the middle? I'm just curious, if you have a pulse on it, if you could say like an average support customer or client, what are you hearing? Sarah: Most people really like WooCommerce. Sometimes I'll get done with a support interaction, they're just like, "Love WooCommerce, love your support. This is great. It's a great platform." Generally, people that come in, that might have an issue that's frustrating them. Or they're like, "This is really way too complex." It's not with WooCommerce core. It's like with a particular extension, for example, sometimes subscriptions. It's like, "Why are my renewals blowing up or something like that." And for me, it's lucky that I usually know the answer. I can understand why it's sometimes frustrating because people are like, "I didn't get all my payments this month or whatever." But there's definitely one of the good things about subscription is there's ways to get those payments. So that's super useful now. Brad: Yeah. And I would imagine a lot of that's educational too. Because you mentioned the frustration of it's not WooCommerce, it's a plugin, it's an extension. Maybe one probably not official, right? It's maybe a third-party offsite and that starts wreaking havoc. Like that's a common struggle with just WordPress in general. I'm sure as you know being on support and working with WordPress, as long as you have. Why you see that plain old white page with the database error WordPress can get a bad rap sometimes for things that are completely out of its own control, which is isn't really fair, but it's just kind of the world we live in. So a lot of that's just kind of educating the masses on, "Well, yeah, there is a problem, but it's not actually WooCommerce it's this or it's that." I remember Matt Mullenweg years ago explained, and I don't know why this stuck with me, but it kind of lines up with what you're saying. He talked about why you never see the error connecting to a database message on WordPress. If WordPress can't connect to the database, it's just literally text on the screen that says — error establishing a database connection. There is nothing, it's literally just big text on the screen. And somebody asks the question of why isn't that branded? Why isn't it say like, "WordPress and here's the problem and make it look really good." And he said, "The challenge is if we did that, then everyone would make the assumption that WordPress broke. Something's wrong with WordPress when it's actually not WordPress' fault, it just can't connect to the database." So it was a conscious decision not to brand that as WordPress, because it would fuel that negativity around, "Oh, the site's down. WordPress is terrible, it's got these problems and it must be something to do with WordPress." Like, "Nope, just keep it generic data. Can't find the database. Let's not blame anybody here. Like, go fix your connection." And so that kind of always stuck with me when people talk about WordPress, getting a bad rap for maybe some bad code that was put in there. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. The experience of first-time support Bob: I'm curious, going back to when you joined Prospress, and you said that it appealed to you. Was that your first experience going in full-time into support at Prospress. Was that your first experience doing that? Sarah: Yeah. So before that, I worked at an agency that built their own CMS for people in the fashion industry. And I was basically the person who built all of the websites for these clients and stuff like that. So they had their own backend CMS. I developed a front-end site. It was similar to WordPress in that each client had like their own folder or whatever, they had their custom theme stuff or whatever in it that I built. And it was connected to a CMS. And I had built my own like WordPress sites and stuff like that. So I was definitely very familiar with the structure, but it was the first time that I was like, "I have a full-time job doing WordPress stuff." Bob: What was your first experience ... not actually literally your first experiences in support. But when you got into it, did it throw you any surprises? It was like, "Oh, this sounded good. And now I kind of have to wrap my brain around this a little bit differently." Or what was that initial reaction to dropping into support, having done what you did before? Sarah: So I thought it was really cool because one of the really nice things about support, is most people who work in support are extremely helpful. And if you have questions, even stupid ones, they're totally willing to help you out. So when I started, there was a training period and stuff like that. And a lot of cases in support what'll happen is you'll get like paired up with someone and they'll pick tickets for you to answer. So they are, "Hey, answer this. If you have any questions, let me know. If you're not able to figure it out ..." Usually it's something that they already know the answer to. That would be like, "Hey, it's this." So I never really found it was like super challenging or, "I don't like this," because one of the things I really like is figuring out problems. If someone's says, "This website's broken, tell me why?" I'm like, "It's like the best thing to happen to me.” What is the word about Gutenberg and WooCommerce via support? Brad: We've been talking for good reason, like a lot about Gutenberg and especially as it started to kind of make its way into WooCommerce and with the blocks plugin. I'm sure you've talked a lot of people through support or just in general of people that are starting to use that. What's the general reaction? I know with WordPress, when Gutenberg was first rolled out, it was pretty jarring to users that didn't know what was coming. There was obviously a learning curve and it just changed the game in terms of how WordPress works. Now that we're seeing that more in WooCommerce, what are people's reactions? Is it positive? Is it negative? Are you getting good feedback? Is it a point of frustration? How are they feeling about the Gutenberg stuff that's starting to come into WooCommerce? Sarah: I think that people really like it because sometimes there'll be like experimental blocks released and people will immediately be like, "I'm trying to use it. But it won't work with this specific thing." Since it's an experimental block, like it's not supposed to. For example, the cart and checkout block only supports a certain number of payment gateways that like we've added support for. So sometimes you'll get people who are like, "I really want to use this, but have this other payment gateway and it's not working with it." I definitely think since Gutenberg is already a thing, like people are just like, "Cool, like this is just adding onto the experience WooCommerce." Brad: Yeah, the cart stuff is interesting. Awhile back we were talking about the idea of that coming, being able to use Gutenberg around the checkout, around the cart. And that was, in my mind, a pretty big step forward for Gutenberg in general, because it took the idea of the block-based editor away from the post and content screens. And took it into a place that's generally more static, but giving people the control to actually make some adjustments there in very critical pages, right? Like cart and checkout pages are by and large, clearly some of the most important pages on an eCommerce website. If somebody's made the decision to buy, you don't want the cart or the checkout process to become a barrier to do that. But I think it's fascinating to see that that's moved in that direction. We're obviously going down that path and to see people start to use it and kick the tires a bit. It's been pretty exciting because Gutenberg has a lot of potentials. So to see it kind of creeping out of the post screens and out of the page screens and other areas of WordPress and WooCommerce, it's pretty neat to see. So I was just curious if people ... and I know a lot of it is, if not all of it is still kind of opt in. Like you have to install the extension or whatever. But I'm sure like you said, more people are dabbling with it and get antsy for it to show up. And I guess that's an easy to support response though when you could just say just say, "Yeah, it says right here it's not supported in the documentation." Sarah: Yeah, that is pretty awesome. Brad: Yeah, that's an easy answer, right? If you read the documentation. Sarah: Well, what can I say? I work in support. Brad: What's the old acronym? RTFM, how often is that? The response that you get to people in chat. Sarah: Never. But sometimes if someone's like, "I've read the documentation, but I don't get it," that's definitely a case for advice. I always say to people, here's the documentation link, but I am definitely happy to walk with you through it. 'Cause I know sometimes I talk to people and they don't even know how to install a plugin, but if they're willing to learn, then it's like, "Yeah, I'm totally happy to help you.” Plugin support through the marketplace Brad: Yeah. That's cool, and you said right now you just support the kind of Automattic owned extensions. I know there's other extensions in there as well, right? Like vetted, third-party approved extensions as well. Bu that supports handled via the third party directly, is that how that works? Sarah: Yeah. So if you go to any page for an extension on WooCommerce.com, it will say who supports it. So it'll either say supported by WooCommerce or for example, memberships is supported by SkyVerge. Brad: Yeah. I remember back when the marketplace first launched, we put a couple of extensions on there, my company and at the time, all the support was handled by ... well, at the time it was WooThemes unless it got to a certain level, they had to escalate it back to the developers. And I always thought that was a very risky business model for support. Like you're going to support the customers for something we built? Okay, cool. All right. As a developer, I was like, "That's great." If I remember right, we had to pay out more in commissions though, because of that, but it made sense, right? Because they're handling that frontline support. But I think that makes a lot more sense, the set up that it is now, like if somebody else built it, then they need to support it, right, so. Sarah: That's especially good, because then if someone's like, "Hey, I found a bug," the person who actually developed it, them or their support team is looking at it and they're much more familiar with possible issues and stuff like that. So they're going to figure it out faster usually. Brad: Yeah. The transition from a small to large remote team Bob: Yeah. For anyone out with a smaller team or ... I won't say small team, but they're with a, yeah, smaller team compared to Automattic and they're thinking of, "Oh, I want to go work for somebody like Automattic that just is large," or Automattic. For you, you were remote in both of those positions, how has that transition personally to go from that size of a team at Prospress to suddenly even though I'm sure you have a smaller team you work with, but to be on such a larger team. And, you know, everything's kind of opened up from what you did as Prospress and the products you did there were a lot more products. So how did that go for you? Sarah: It was really good actually. I was really worried about joining a larger company because the previous company I worked for too was also quite small. There was only about 20 employees. So, I was like, "Man, I'm joining a company that has a lot of people that work for it." But the WooCommerce support division itself, isn't very large. And a good example is, I will talk about meetups I've gone to and stuff like that with the whole company also, like my friends here in real life stories. And then I'll be like, "Oh, yeah, my company employs over a thousand people." And they're like, "Oh, it sounds like you know everyone that you work with." And it's like, "Yeah, I do, like all the people who work in WooCommerce. I feel like I know all of them and it's really nice." Brad: Yeah. That's cool. I was actually interested in that too Bob, I'm glad you asked that, 'cause I think anytime, somebody goes works at a company, that company's acquired and by a much larger company usually, right? And then the process of that transition I think is always interesting because I think initially it can be ... I'm sure it's scary, right? Like, "Well the company I worked for got acquired, what does that mean for me?" And which is rightfully so, you know, that's exactly what you should be thinking. And the fact that you stayed clearly kind of speaks to the fact that it must have went well for you, because why would you stick around if it didn't? But I'm always fascinated as an outsider looking in when those transitions happen, especially the companies I like and respect like Prospress. So, I was glad to see you end up in a good spot. And it seems like by and large, everybody was very happy with that acquisition, it went smoothly. Sarah: Yeah. Brad: Again, outside looking in, but it is always fascinating to hear those stories. Sarah: One of the things that helps a lot too is since WooCommerce was also acquired, a lot of people were like, "Hey, we've been through this. If you want to chat or anything, just let me know." So that was really nice. A couple of other things too, is the people on our support team mostly stayed on the same team. So, a lot of the people that I worked with at Prospress are still on the same team that I'm on. Some of them moved to different teams because of time zones, and we've had some new people join our team, which is exciting. Juggling timezones And then another thing that actually worked a bit better for me is when I worked at Prospress, I was the only person in my time zone. And so everyone else, there was one person who lives in Europe who, I would come on maybe at the end of their day. And then everyone else that was in the U.S. would start a few hours after me or whatever. But now I have people that are in the same time zone as me and lots of people who are working at the same time as me and now, instead of it being like, oh, I'm on and everyone isn't on yet, it's like, that's kind of like when the most people are on are during my working hours. And I'm like, "I don't feel alone anymore." Brad: Yeah. That actually had to be kind of challenging because it's one thing to be working from home. It's already can be somewhat isolating depending on your setup. You know, obviously right now we're kind of in unique times, but before the pandemic and everything ... 'cause a lot of people work at home, their spouses don't, their kids go to school. So you're home alone, right? So your team, your online team is who you ... like you said, work with, obviously hanging out with, are the people you're interacting with. But if you're by yourself all day, 'cause your team's in a different time zone, that sounds tough to me. That sounds very isolating. And I think just mentally for myself, I think I would struggle with that a bit. Sarah: Not that it was a really bad situation before, but it was definitely a nice change and I have people around like, "Hey, we're in the same time zone, isn't that awesome?"Because I am an hour ahead of Eastern time in the U.S. so it's not often that people are in the same time zone as me. Brad: Yeah. That's cool, that's interesting. I think a lot of people probably like just kind of hearing your story of how you just set your mind to, "I want a remote position," you made it happen. I like stories like that too where people are just like, "You know what, I want to make this happen and I'm going to make it happen," and they do. And then, you know, years down the road everything's worked out really well, so, it's really cool to see. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Bob: I want to just swing back one more time to support in kind of overall what people are asking you- Brad: Bob actually has some questions about his website- Bob: Yeah, really, I got my list of ... I think I was trying something with subscriptions, anyway, no. Support, how-to vs. troubleshooting But seriously, where's the balance in support and maybe you can't really even tell between people that basically say, "Okay, how do you do this?" And you say, "Dah, dah, dah." You give them maybe two, three steps or something like that versus this is screwed up and you have to get into the troubleshooting and go through and figure out why it screwed up as more people are coming to you on that troubleshooting level, versus I don't quite know how to set up this particular part or this part confuses me. Sarah: So most of the people that I talk to are kind of at least somewhat technical. So, usually I can be like, "Hey, here's some documentation on troubleshooting," of course there's a whole guide on troubleshooting, the documentation. And I'm like, "If you have any questions about any of these steps, just let me know." But a lot of the times they're like, "Yeah, it looks good to me. I've done this before." Or people will be like, "If you tell me how to do it, I can do it." And I'm like, "Great." The only cases where it's like you really would need to handhold someone ... well, handle would be if they're like, "I'm a store owner and I have a developer that I work with and they do everything on my website." And usually in those cases, they're contacting us because they own the subscription to the plugin so they can access the support. And sometimes what I'll do in cases like that is be like, "Hey, do you want me to make a ticket for you and put your developer on the ticket so they can handle it for you?" And people are usually like, "Yes, I would love that, 'cause I don't want to deal with it 'cause that's what I pay my developer to do." Bob: I never thought of it that way that, 'cause I've actually never had a developer. Probably I could have used some several times, but the fact that you do offer that option, I mean, that's a good idea. I don't know if there's ... you know, every company that has support is thinking that way, but that's something rather than struggling with it. You know, this poor store owner that's like, "What are you talking ..." which is typically me, when support people are talking to me, there's a point where I'm just like, "I need to get somebody in here to help me understand even what the heck you're talking about because it's beyond me at this point." So, that's pretty cool. Sarah: As long as people are being nice and willing to learn, I'm happy to walk anyone through anything. 'Cause one of the best parts of my day is if someone says to me, "Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about this. I learned something today." I'm like, totally makes my job awesome to hear something like that. Brad: Yeah. I think that's good advice for really anyone. If you're online support, really anybody, right? Like you want to be nice, want to be respectful. Like don't go in guns blazing, like, "My site's broken." It's not their fault, they're there to help you. So I always try to make sure I keep that in mind, and even if I'm frustrated to be very respectful of anybody because it goes a long way, right? Sarah: Yeah. Brad: Just use thank yous and then they'll probably want to go the extra mile for you versus making demands and talking in all CAPS and exclamation points, and they're going to be like, "You know what? Nope." Sarah: Yeah. Basically the nicer you are, the more we will be willing to do for you because definitely there's things that are up to my discretion if I want to go the extra mile to help you. And if you're being nice, the chances are more likely that I will do that. What people want with subscriptions Bob: With the subscription, going back to that, and that's where all your expertise lies, you've been living and breathing that thing for a long time. Are subscription's kind of at a status quo where they're plugging along and you don't hear a lot of people coming up with "Boy, it'd be great if subscriptions could work for this or work for that, or are the things that are on people's wishlists or stuff that hopefully some time they'll be able to integrate." Or you might even have your own ideas of what you think you see subscriptions going to or what direction they're going in. Sarah: So there are lots of things that people want subscriptions to do that it does not do. One of the things that WooCommerce does have is there's an ideas board, which is basically if you have a feature request, you post it there. And subscriptions has like hundreds of suggestions there. One of the really big requests I see is having a shipping and billing schedule that is different. So, basically like say you want to charge them every three months, but ship it to them every month. That's something that subscriptions on its own doesn't handle. There's a couple other plugins like AutomateWoo and make it do that. But a lot of people are like, "I just want subscriptions to do that.” An interesting subscription example Bob: Well, okay, here's our last question. Let's do this, and of course you'd have to answer with something you could share that wouldn't be too bizarre, but through all of this time with subscriptions, has there been one that really stood out? You thought, "Wow, that's a really interesting way to use subscriptions. I would have never thought of selling this kind of product or service in subscriptions." Anything coming to mind? I know I'm kind of putting you on the spot there and I don't want you to have to share something that's you know, maybe not PG rated or something, but. Sarah: I do have a PG rated example. There's lots of non PG rated examples. At this point, if I'm like looking at someone's site, I'm not even paying attention to whatever they're selling, I'm paying attention to what's happening on the site. But this is actually a local-ish to me site, in the next province over there is a fish market that sells a subscription to fish. And basically what they do is you can subscribe to get fish regularly, and there's a pickup in my city, for example. So, if I wanted to buy fish regularly, I can subscribe to fish at this website. Bob: I'm just thinking about that, is it a variety, the fish of the month or something, or? Sarah: I don't remember, 'cause it was a couple of years ago I was looking at their site, but I was just like, "That's so cool." So, I live in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is our province that's connected to us and there's a lot of different fishing for example lobster, lots of lobster fishing here. So, like for example, you could probably get a subscription to lobster. Brad: Bob, you're at the Northwest over there, you got a lot of fish, a lot of fishing. Brad: Yeah, clams, everybody digs clams here. I won't go out and do that, but they dig clams. Brad: Oysters? West coast oysters? Bob: Yeah, they're the big clam diggers on our beaches is what it is. So, people love doing it. I can watch them from afar and think of how wonderful that is standing out there in that weather, yeah, whatever. Brad: Well, if you could subscribe and they would just show up at your doorstep. Bob: Yeah. Sarah: Exactly. Bob: Exactly. Alrighty, well, yeah, this has been cool. I knew this would be fun, and we had to end it with something a little bit fishy or something, but anyway, whatever that was bad. Brad: This is going downhill quick. Brad: Yeah, this is going downhill quick, I think it's time for Bob to wrap this up here actually. So, before we head out first, let people know where they can connect with you. Connect with Sarah Sarah: On Twitter, my username is @fevered, and that's usually the best place to reach me. Bob: Excellent, cool. Well, let me just do a quick thank you again to our sponsor, WooCommerce. As Brad said, you can find a lot there and you can find Sarah there, that's even more special. So, next time you go on support, you never know. You may be getting the prize gem over there in support. Well, I'm sure there's wonderful people in support, but maybe you'll be lucky enough to get Sarah. And then of course PayPal, do check out their Pay in 4, Brad went over that very well at the beginning. But yeah, if you are a builder and you have clients, this is a no brainer. In fact, it might even make you look pretty cool to them if you bring that up and say, "Hey, let's drop that on there and see how those conversions go." So check that out. And then, yeah, as far as what we have coming up, we have Woo Perspective coming up next week. Brad will be on there with my other co-hosts. We'll be talking more about this site and what's going on with the site as we launch that ... I'll be launching that podcast or that additional podcast seriously here now, moving forward. So, I think that's it. And appreciate Brad, I know you had a little bit of a break there. We had some things going on. There was election you had to go to and all sorts of stuff, but I'm glad to see your face around. In fact, you're going to be around for the next couple three shows. Brad: Yeah. You're going to get sick of me. Bob: Yeah. And Sarah, thank you very much for coming on. Brad: Thanks Sarah, that was a lot of fun. Sarah: Thank you for having me, it was great. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
46 minutes | 2 months ago
The WooCommerce Product Ecosystem: Product Pricing and Opportunities with Alex Denning
Thanks to our community sponsors Alex has been in the WordPress and WooCommerce community for several years, helping WooCommerce product builders through his company, Ellipsis Marketing. Alex has the pulse of this space and a lot of great insights to share. A Chat with Alex In episode 81, Jonathan and I talk with Alex about: Starting in the early days with both WordPress and WooCommerceWhat in Alex’s opinion has stood out in the product space during this last yearThe level of maturity of the landscape of Woo product businessesWhat is going well in the product ecosystem and where improvements can be madeSupporting the Woo product ecosystemHow products are moving toward either expanding features or narrowing down to more defined nichesThe growth and what industries and markets play in in the vertical integration using WooCommerceThe risks in both the WordPress and WooCommerce business industryHow product builders in the space perceive AutomatticSocial cause donations vs. giving discounts on Black FridayPricing and discounts and what Alex has experienced around discountingMonthly vs. yearly subscription for extensions and plugins A lot of questions are asked about pricing, discounting and the overall product space. Alex has firsthand experience with those businesses, and whether you are seasoned, have just started or thinking about the next product, you will get some great insights that will help you. Connect with Alex Ellipsis MarketingAlex on Twitter @AlexDenningMasterWPPress Marketing Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey, everyone BobWP here, episode 81 Do the Woo. And I have my great co-host who was going to do a harmonica solo, but we decided against it. But we may just close out with that way if he gets the urge by the end of this. Jonathan, how are you doing? Jonathan: Bob, I'm doing really well. It's taken a turn for the cold, which I like. There's snow outside, but I got the snow tires on just in time. So I'm in good shape. Bob: We're getting a bit of a chill here too so, and then with the wind off the ocean it makes it for interesting times, but staying warm. So thank you to our sponsors before we head on into the show, because we have a really good show coming up. PayPal yes, our sponsor Buy Now, Pay Later. A couple of great options, but I've been focusing a little bit on the Pay in 4. Really it's very interesting, because I'm finding a lot of people in this space that are wow, I haven't even heard of this, and they are jumping on it right away. In fact, our other co-host Mendel already put it on his site. So once people are finding out about it, it's an option, especially if you have PayPal already installed. It's really easy and a no-brainer, So check that out. And WooCommerce, yes, 4.7 did come out and a minor update. They didn't want to get everybody too freaked out about putting a big update in with Black Friday, and all that fun holiday stuff around the corner. So a minor update where everything should go smooth, unless you've got five billion plugins that you got from some guy in a basement. Other than that, I think you're good to go. So we're going to dive into the show. I am excited to welcome Alex Denning. Hey, Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Hey, thanks for having me. Meet Alex Denning Bob: Now, Alex, you're a man of many talents, and I thought one of them has got to be ... You've done a little bit of Woo. So in a sense, how do you do the Woo in your business, and what do you do? Alex: So I run a marketing agency called Ellipsis Marketing, and we help people who make WordPress and WooCommerce products do more of whatever they're trying to do. So recently my doing of the Woo is helping out WooCommerce product businesses with their marketing. But I've been involved in WordPress for a long time. I remember the post on Woo Themes when it was a thing, so we go back a little way. Bob: How did you get into WordPress, but then how did Woo start to play into your space? Alex: I got into WordPress because when I was in high school I had a website where I reviewed video games. This was a great hustle. It was early enough that making a website was difficult enough, but you could still call yourself press. So I got free video games. And obviously the site was built on WordPress, and I was trying to work out how to do stuff. And I remember finding about there were two or three WordPress tutorial websites at the time, and I remember finding one called Hack WordPress. Jonathan: Obviously. Alex: Which was the precursor to WPTavern. I remember staying up all night reading it, and I thought this is great, I'll do this. So I made my in store site. One thing led to another and I ended up running that for a couple of years. The story is the old terrible, and I didn't know what I was doing. But I guess I was figuring things out as I went along. And that led to me finding more about WordPress. And at the time theme shops were the dominant forces in WordPress. I remember trying out WooCommerce shortly after it was released by then with themes, and one thing leads to another. And yes, these days it's an important part of my life. What is standing out in the product business around WooCommerce Jonathan: So one thing I'm really curious about you work in marketing, you specialize on marketing for WordPress product businesses, WooCommerce product businesses. So from my point of view, and you have a newsletter that you keep up to date, you did this black Friday post recently. So you're in this special position of having a better than average pulse, if not one of the best pulses of what's happening across the space. And as you look at this past year, I'm curious, what insight standout? Are there anything that surprised you, as you look at what's happening? And this year in particular. Alex: Sure. So the big thing obviously, is the pandemic. We saw a massive increase in people looking for our clients solutions around WooCommerce and that started March, April. In terms of searches, there was about a 50% increase in WordPress search terms, and a huge amount of that was driven by WooCommerce. The searches for WooCommerce per month went up by hundreds of thousands and month on month. And also year on year, they were up a significant amount as well, so that was obviously a big thing. So people were looking to get there, but it seems like an acceleration of digital transformation. And people who had stores, which did not have a web presence rapidly wanted to get a web presence. And we saw a very large number of people choosing WooCommerce to do that. For our clients who are selling functionality that lets both solutions that let people do things with whatever their site is set up to do, things scaled pretty nicely as you'd expect in a product business. And so that's driven a lot of growth within the ecosystem. The maturity level of WooCommerce product businesses Jonathan: So let's take WooCommerce product businesses, specifically people who build plugins, extensions, themes, SaaS connectors, whatever have you for Woo. When you take in the landscape as a whole, how would you describe its current maturity? Is it really young? Is it mid? What's the level of maturity that you're seeing across the space? Alex: We're not quite the wild west of a couple of years ago. Say three to five years ago, you could build pretty much any functionality driven WooCommerce extension, and either sell it through woo.com or sell it through your own site, or a third party platform. You could pretty much make anything and make a lot of sales. It's not the case that there are loads of things that should exist which don't exist at all these days, which is what happened there. And most of the time there is existing functionality, but there's certainly to the flip side a tiny bit of maturity. But we're probably five, 10 percent of the way there. What is going well in the space Jonathan: A couple more questions in this vein then, what's your sense when you take in the landscape as a whole of the WooCommerce product businesses? And there's some maturity there, still very little. What's going well? What do you see going well? And then where are the opportunities as a whole to improve? In terms of what you see how folks are approaching product businesses in the WordPress context. Alex: So the product businesses are getting more sophisticated, because the obvious opportunities have gone. We need to work out how to add more value, that makes a lot of sense. We're going to continue to see that, and I think we will continue to see more niche solutions, more niche by higher value solutions, focusing on different industries. That will happen in the short term. In the medium term, the huge opportunity is to look beyond the WooCommerce this label. Currently its just like you can do this, but it's also bolted on WooCommerce and that's what my product is. But as Woo becomes a more dominant player, I guess even more dominant player in the e-commerce space, and Woo itself becomes more material, Then suddenly it's not just hey, it's this WooCommerce plugin, it's an obvious part of your store in a much more SaaS like way. That's really exciting. Jonathan: You mentioned Woo's maturity. I'm curious for your thoughts, so this year brings a lot of different things, Woo's growing like crazy. At Woo, earlier we shared some of the numbers it's a lot. Not quite double, but just based on what we can see its significant growth. You also have a lot of maturity happening around the product release cycle we're up to ... I'm going to butcher this you might know Bob, I should know this, seven releases so far this year with 4.7 and it's a lot. Opportunities to support the Woo ecosystem We're picking up a pace there, there's an overall confidence that's starting to permeate more about how it's being dealt with. So there's definitely maturity happening there. I'm curious from your perspective Alex, as you're working with WooCommerce product businesses and looking at what's happened in the Woo space you see the growth, you see how it's being managed. What's good? What's gives you confidence? Where some of the opportunities you see there from the Woo perspective, to support the ecosystem? Alex: So in terms of things going well it's easier than ever to make your own e-commerce site, and that's great. Everything that's happening on the lines lap. I think the opportunity is to make it even easier. So a lot of the work that I do that we do is content marketing to help people get started with solve a problem with one of our clients products. And we can do two types of that, we can go inside WooCommerce so people searching for how do I do this with WooCommerce? Or we can go outside, which is how do I do this with my e-commerce website? If we go outside, we have to cover 10 preliminary steps about here is how you spend half a day deciding on your hosting company and your domain name. You have to explain all of those things. It's not simple. It probably should never be simple. There's always been a bit of friction there and that's probably fine and good. That's interesting. The marketplace for distributing extensions, reviews. Bob, you're saying in the intro line unless you installed 5 million plugins from someone in a basement. That's still possible, as a consumer you don't necessarily know is this good? Is this bad? That's a really interesting opportunity. The niche and more features vs. doing one thing well Bob: I was wondering when you talked about the niche, that's where we're going at. And I deal with a lot of people coming to me with their extensions. You can have so many extensions that do improve checkout, or so many extensions that do cart, whatever. With the niche, are you talking more about if somebody's got a product and you're looking at it, and they're thinking I've built this product, and I'm going to just keep adding things because nobody has all these things and all these features on the product. On the other hand, I see others that are saying, I'm taking other people's products and pulling out one little thing, and I do one simple thing and I do it well with my plugin. And that's where a lot of times I gravitate towards, because it's like I had this one need, I didn't need these 20 other things. And that particular plugin does that. Is that what you're seeing, is that shift to that? Alex: Yeah, I'm seeing a little bit of it. I don't see it enough to call it a trend, but I think that's where a lot of the opportunity is. It's like for this type of business, you've got your custom check out for things that need to be collected in person, or whatever it is. The focus on particular industries and markets Jonathan: What about do you see opportunity in just more vertical integration, where they say we're going to focus on farmers markets for instance, and provide a solution where this hybrid of offline online, et cetera. I just really do that. That's what I've been curious about interested in for a long time. I don't see as much of it as I'd expect to at this point. I'm curious, do you see that? Is that something that you see more of? Are people going to focus on particular industries and markets? Alex: Yeah, so just going back to this inside outside perspective, that if you go inside you just have to focus on the WooCommerce stuff, you've got nowhere else to go. If you go outside though, you can go horizontal or vertical. And then suddenly, you can start opening up lots of more opportunities. So it's how to do this, how to manage your inventory for your farmers market, whatever it is. Vertical integration Jonathan: The opportunity that I see in vertical integration, when you take farmers markets for instance, or restaurants in a particular country, or whatever it might be, is that you can abstract away a lot of those getting started complexities, the domain name, registration, hosting, et cetera, et cetera. You can either manage it all for them, or have very explicit guidance and recommendations on how to get those things started. There's pros and cons to those approaches but to me, it seems like as there's an opportunity here with e-commerce is growing in general for there to be more focused solutions that have the benefit of being built on an open source base, we're able to combine some of the positives of that SaaS focus. And SaaS will tend to have more vertical integration or very clear horizontal. It's going to be interesting. I'm really interested to see. We've talked about this previously, on Do the Woo. This thing of COVID really just seems to be an accelerator of trends. And it's going to be interesting, we have this opportunity to almost look into the future, where is this? Where would this stuff have been going anyway? And now we're just getting there faster is what it seems like. Alex: From the marketing point of view, definitely an acceleration. The way I'm seeing things, there's been a bit of change in direction, I think which comes with that base is the rockets mainly gone in a straight line, rather than ... This rocket analogy doesn't work. Risks in the WordPress and WooCommerce business industry Jonathan: If you think about the WordPress and the WooCommerce product business industry, what are some of the risks? What are the things that people need to be wary of I think just in general? Alex: Great question. Love that. We don't talk about risk enough. Most of the initial work we do with clients covers existential risk, and no one's talked about it, so let's talk about it. So from the independent product creator point of view, the biggest risk of building your product around a platform is if the platform does something that doesn't let you work. If you build such a great feature that it comes into core. Sorry, you're not going to make so many sales. And of course, in a WordPress context, that happens a lot. And oftentimes you find actually you've got a three year headstart, and you can just add on to that functionality anyway. So it works out. But that is a major risk and we have seen a lot of price competition recently. I think people see it as a space to be in too to make money quickly. And so a lot of new Woo market entrants, some of whom are happy to compete on price. That is probably good for consumers, but is a risk for storing it for product makers. They have to find ways to differentiate, or to compete on price, or add values in other way. I think otherwise, it's in a pretty good situation. How product makers view Automattic Jonathan: I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. I'm curious when you're talking to folks in this independent maker space, how do you tend to guide them as far as Automattic goes? When you think about automatic and the role that we tend to play in this space. And how do people think about Automattic? It's a bit of a potential elephant in the room, what if automatic gets into some things? We also have products and plugins that we're selling in the space. So how do you tend to think about that? Alex: To be honest, for the average product maker, they don't think about Automattic and that's fine. They're focused on how do I get my next customer, rather than is my business going to be eaten by a competitor that I can't compete with? So I think at the smaller end, but small and medium size end, I don't think people are too worried. There are so many things to be done around WooCommerce extensions that I think that the problems that your small or medium sized creator is going to solve, aren't problems that you would solve at the enterprise level. If you're building a thing around payments, payment processing whatever, something like that you would worry about it. But that's not something that a company of 10 people can or maybe they can, certainly not with this attitude. Jonathan: It's a delicate thread, because there's this work on how do we ... I think in an ideal world, the work that we do at Automattic and Woo is just sort of make the pie bigger. Work on some of the hardest problems. A lot of our motivation to get into payments for instance, is that its a hard problem to work on. And it's something we think can really move the needle on making Woo more accessible. And in theory, if we do that well which is our intent, it opens up a lot more opportunity for the ecosystem as a whole. So I think that's when things go well. Obviously, we're dealing with humans, so we're imperfect and mistakes happen and people get misunderstood, et cetera. But I think it's something important to keep an eye on in general. We thought of it. I tend to think of the work that Woo is doing as working on the operating system and continue to do that well. And sometimes you have to bring in something into core because it makes sense, but most of the times let's keep this as lean as possible, and then support people building the software if you will for the operating system. And at least from my perspective, which I have the disadvantage of being fairly potentially insulated, it feels like that's going well overall. But then that's a question that's good to continue to ask, is do independent creators in the space feel supported, feel that there's opportunity where they can really carve out something for themselves? Alex: I think that's where the market place opportunity is really interesting, because then you start to see aligned incentives financially. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Black Friday, deals or social causes Bob: This is a total flip. The only reason I'm flipping over to this is because Alex, you sent me an email about all this stuff about Black Friday. So I perused it and I know we're at a point where a lot of decisions can be made to twist and turn. You had a lot of good stuff in there, and I've been biting at the bit to play a devil's advocate here. This is something that because I've dealt with nonprofits for decades and work with nonprofits, one other thing you mentioned in it, the social angle is really important this year. And that was as a result of one of the plugin there. Instead of doing Black Friday, they're going to give 50% to social cause. And I'm not talking social media, I'm talking social causes here, to clarify. Now, as I look at that and I think back and in my days of working with them, and at this point that's a great thing. At this point, I feel like we also are inundated with needs. It's been a few months of this, where this is coming left and right. And then you're at a point also as somebody that can donate, where there's so many opportunities to donate. So you can be really picky on what touches me, and maybe it's a specific area or a nonprofit specifically. So I'm looking at people also on the flip side, on the other side of thing, I'm looking at people right now that are biting at the bit, because it's time to get a discount there. It's tough, they're trying to get things going, they're trying to get to online whatever, all these different reasons. This particular instance, is it really a more of a ... I don't want to say this, but not so much, I'm looking to really make a killing with this and give a lot of money to these nonprofits. But it's kind of a feel good thing on the side of the business to say, this is what I'm doing instead of this. It doesn't really matter what plays out in the end as far as sales, and how much I give is just more of a thing I want to do. So it's not really a pump to get a lot more sales, because honestly I feel a lot of people at this point in time would. Personally, I've given a lot and I look at something like that, and I go unless I really need that, it wouldn't be an incentive for me to buy it. And I know it's a very convoluted thought process I'm going through here, but when I saw this and then I saw yours, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on it. And you can just rake me over the coals with that one. Alex: So the specific instance you're referring to is a company called Weglot, which does multilingual WordPress and WooCommerce translations, websites, stores is on the Cyber Monday and the Black Friday, they're donating 50% of their revenue to a number of charities, which I think is a great thing for them to do. That's a big chunk of revenue. It's not profit, it's what you're paying them. And I thought that was great and I thought it was bold of them, and I thought it was different, I haven't seen that before. You're right as an incentive to buy their product from a consumer point of view, this is not going to do it for me. And I'm sure they know that. There have been some other approaches I've seen people taking off on those increasingly, people want a social element to their sale. So it's for every purchase we're going to do this, which is a nice way of doing it. You also see commitments like 1% for the planet, or something which is year round things where people are committing in some cases, 1% of their revenue to whatever causes. All those are good things from a branding point of view in 2020, that is a thing which is good. You're right there that without a discount as a consumer, that's not probably not going to influence my decision. Jonathan: So if I'm looking at this externally, it's like if you have a pattern of doing discounts year after year. I've seen a lot of me too in the space, we struggle with this a bit of Woo. You'll notice that we're slowly not doing as many sales as we used to. We're experimenting and exploring that because then you get people used to it. If you want to break that pattern, you can't just ignore it. We're just not doing anything at all this year. And so there's an opportunity to say hey, we value something differently here and we're not ignoring this. So from my perspective, it's great to see people experimenting and trying different things. Some of it is going to work well and you have to know why it's working, because if you are trying to do an approach like that to drive more sales, you're probably not going to do it. If you're doing that to stop a cycle of setting people's expectations to discount, I could see a message like that being a great way to do that. And then long term, it's probably a better at least in my point of view I'm not a big fan of discounts, period. I think that can end up hurting the brand's value in the longer term. Sweet spots and dangers with discounts Alex: You see companies like Kinsta who I'm sure hosts a lot of stores, don't discount, and they make it really clear, because they get asked we don't do it for this reason. I think that helps. I'm sure they will lose out on some sales to their competitors on that day in November, but they are going to get increased customer loyalty from that, because they're not offering new customers a better deal. They're not punishing their existing customers. And the one we're on, they're going to associate their brand with quality with higher prices, but value et cetera. And those are all good things. And certainly not everyone should do a discount. Bob: On that same train of thought, one thing I wanted you to touch on a bit is I'd heard somebody talking about who will survive in this Black Friday? And I'm sure they were maybe looking at the bigger picture beyond WordPress and WooCommerce and extensions and plugins. But essentially probably still touching on that, their thoughts were that yes, people are going to need to do very deep discounts 50% or more. Now, in your newsletter, you said lower discounts are in, and you had some reasons behind that which also makes very much sense. So why don't you touch on that a bit, and tell us a little bit more what your thoughts were around this idea that really the lower discounts are going to do the trick this time. Alex: So this ties back to maturity in the space. And also what Jonathan said about people meeting. I think in the past people would run sales, in response to what the biggest person who'd run a sale the previous year had done, we're just starting to move away from that a little bit. The earlier someone emailed me about their Black Friday sale, and how to do it this year was April, so more complexity going into it and which is good. I think a side effect of not thinking about your sale is just to go sure 50% is massive, the 30% I'm a big fan of. 30% is the biggest small discount you can do. And anymore can be a fairly high margin space digital products. I love that represents the discount. If you discount at 50%, you have to make 40% more sales than if you discount at 30%. And so the question comes for people with extensions, am I going to make 40% more sales just to make the same revenue? Probably not. Jonathan: To me, it seems the difference when you get into this world of discounts and all the hype around it. A big thing is are you focused on short term or long term thinking? And discounts can seem really good and attractive, but there's all these other things you mentioned support. There's the whole renewal thing, there's the whole how do your other customers feel right now? Because it's like I bought two weeks ago, and now it's 50% off, and then some of those people will ask for a refund. There's this whole process, you'll go through a lot more consequences than just the short term burst. Alex: I know you're a Seth Godin fan Jonathan, I have a great quote, cheap is the last refuge for the marketer who can't figure out how to live better. Jonathan: And that's completely right. Black Friday, should I buy or should I go (wait) Bob: That's interesting, because I had to buy a plugin yesterday, there was a plugin that wasn't working on my site to do the Woo site. So I had to find another one and I found it, and at that moment it wasn't that much for the year it was 57 bucks, 58 bucks or something. So it wasn't a big, but I was looking at it and I thought for a moment I thought what if they have a sale here in a week maybe. But the thing I really didn't want to wait a week and I went ahead and got it. And maybe I'm not the normal person, but also I was in the position where it was like, is it worth waiting a week on the per chance? And at that much are they really going to give a huge discount? And I thought all these things, is it really worth it? It was way too much thought I put into it, and I just finally just bought it. Alex: You're probably right though, those decisions go on. And if you knew that, that store discounts every November without fail and there's a discount that you wanted, you would have waited. But that's why I like Black Friday overall, because it gives you a chance as a seller to pick up on those price sensitive customers who do care about the price. And they may not buy from you without that. So you're quite happy you got the thing it was for work. It's an expense not worth waiting. All those people certainly in the past, but if I didn't need the thing or was on a budget, they are going to wait. And it's a good deal for everyone, or it can be a good deal for everyone. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Jonathan: I'm curious Alex, so you see what's happening in the space, and you've been doing this black Friday post up, how long have you been doing this now? Alex: Three years. What should happen in the future when it comes to Black Friday Jonathan: That's awesome. If you could wave a magic want and just improve how the product business space as a whole treats Black Friday, what are some of the things that you'd like to see happen more of or less of going forward? Alex: I'd like more randomness about predicting sales, expecting sales, mix it up. Great way of breaking that cycle. I'd like that, but simultaneously I'd like more predictability week to make a purchasing decision is good. So you see all sorts of people, this is a thing that feels really important. So I think people put a lot of thought into it. But do I start my sale the month before, the day before, the Monday before? I love that and run until the end of the site Monday. And it gives people enough time to make an informed purchasing decision, but also if I have a list of five plugins, which is a thing people do, make a list of here's what I want to buy, let's see what's on offer. You help the consumer do their little budgeting, and I think that's a good outcome. I would love to see just more thought into the discount levels. Part of this post I did last year, it was every discount increment at 5% increments between 10 and 90%. People are just picking numbers out of the air from 10, 15, 20, all the way out to 90. If you're taking 90% off a plugin, then what are you selling? You got 90% margins on an e-commerce plugin, that feels disingenuous. So we could think about that a little bit more. Bob: I think if I saw something at 90% off, I'd have to really think about this. What exactly I'm I getting? How much are they actually making off this thing in the first place? I'd start thinking all weird things. Alex: No, you're quite right, those are the things you do not want your customers to be asking. Products and underpricing Jonathan: So my last question for now on this pricing thing, what's your take pricing as a whole across let's take just the WooCommerce product space? Obviously, you see some competition, but if you were to step back for a moment, how are we as a whole? Is the space under priced, is it overpriced? Is it about right? Alex: Massively under priced. So whilst the range on any individual bit of functionality might be three to 10 times, those numbers start so small, but it might be from 30 to $300 for one year. It's fine. I'm sure a lot of people are getting a lot more value, especially at the higher end. There will be functionality that it makes sense to pay a lot of money for what doesn't exist yet. Jonathan: Just a comment there on the enterprise Woo is growing in the enterprise, and that's a loose term. It can mean a lot of things, but basically you're seeing more big stores, especially folks coming over from Shopify world, where they're like we don't want to give this cut anymore. And I've seen this a few times where people are shocked at the price and not in a positive way, where it's like wait a minute, this is mission critical functionality for my business and you're telling me this is a $200 extension. And so I think I would love to see more high end maybe productized services around some of these things. But the bottom line however it works, is that sometimes the price is a negative, where sometimes you're not doing folks a favor. And I see this a lot in the mid to upper end, where it's this is our business we're talking about here. You're telling me that this critical plugin, the most that I can do with this developer is paying a small amount of money for a license, what if I need more. So it feels like there's a lot of opportunity there. And the more successful Woo becomes, and the more stores succeed, the higher the stakes go, and the more people are going to care about the infrastructure that they're using. Alex: I think that point about the stakes is really important, because then it's not uncommon for functionality, which is critical to stores to be maintained by one to 10 people, which is not all of the people. And it would be really interesting to see what products could do with significantly more resources. And as the stakes get higher, QA is going to be increasingly important. Jonathan: My instinct there would be to see folks do enterprise versions of their software, which could be a higher support tier, it could be some special functionality. I'm curious, do you have any thoughts on that? If you recognize that's a problem, the stakes are going to get higher. And there's a difference between value alignment and accordingly incentive, because if you're selling a low end plugin, there's only so much you can do it's a volume game. How would you recommend folks approach that? How do you serve the higher stakes? Do you do it on features, do you do it on support? Alex: People don't want to solve that problem, because it's a lot more difficult. And where there is volume opportunity, you can see how it doesn't necessarily make sense, but it's not attractive in the same way. You start needing relationships, sales, confidence to support service level agreements on whatever you're offering. And I think unless you've got that experience, which is probably fair to say that the vast majority of people don't, exalts a daunting thing to tackle. Which means there's opportunity for someone to come in and do that. A spin off from my WooCommerce agency, we customize extensions for high volume stores. Jonathan: So I'll leave it at that. I think the opportunity because it is tough, I see that. And I could see that the volume it's not as attractive because you are getting more into the productized service realm potential where, an enterprise we'll buy this thing we'll buy the enterprise version. And we want to know that we have someone on call if we need help, et cetera. It can be very lucrative for those who are willing to set up the processes and systems and accept the responsibility. My only recommendation for anyone looking at that is you probably need to charge a lot higher than you're thinking. So it's something that you got to make sure that it's worth it. And for some of these businesses, it absolutely is worth it, because we're talking about a lot of payment volume going through these things. I guess it's worth than paying for. Monthly vs. yearly subscriptions for extensions and plugins Bob: I'm going to apologize to my listeners, because I was going to leave it at that, but I have one more question. And this is just going to turn into a long podcast sorry, but this is pricing. And there was a conversation somebody had on Twitter and just I can't say in a nutshell, because there's probably not such a thing for this particular topic. But around the fact of questioning, why aren't more extensions and plugins monthly versus a yearly fee, because that helps people that can't afford that yearly fee? But I think I know the answers to this and I think understood it, even before I started hearing people reply to it. But just some quick thoughts on that as far as what you think there Alex? Alex: So in the WordPress and WooCommerce product space, monthly pricing is a nightmare, it doesn't work right now. We have seen instances of when clients switch from monthly to annual pricing, and even kept the prices ballpark the same. They massively increased their revenue. So currently consumers are responding really badly to monthly pricing for our best products, and annual performs significantly better. It's very hard to do that. Not hard but it's rare to do the genuine SaaS component, which I think people feel justifies the monthly fee WooCommerce. I think that's the major blocker. Jonathan: I think that happens each month, and if it's just the license, they're not seeing a thing come happen each month and it's really hard to like what am I paying for. Alex: And sometimes if your extension is coded brilliantly, you don't need updates for it. But it's the thing that does import this, it doesn't need to change it just works. Where to connect with Alex Jonathan: Alex, thanks for joining us. It's been great having you. If folks want to learn more about what you're up to, where should we send them? Alex: It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. My professional life lives at getellipsis.com. We have a blog that covers some of the stuff we've talked about, and a monthly newsletter called press marketing, which is pretty good. Jonathan: That's great. Alex: That was the Black Friday stuff Bob mentioned. I also run a weekly newsletter, if monthly is not your thing. MasterWP It's a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals. I'm on Twitter. It's just my name, Alex Denning. Bob: We'll just give a quick shout out to our sponsor, before we close out PayPal, do check out Pay in 4, that's the numeral four. As I mentioned both in the ad roll and at the beginning, you know the benefits so there's really a no brainer to give it a try, see if that's what your customers are looking for. And WooCommerce of course.com do update to the latest version, keep things all nice and secure. I think that's it. So we are good to go. Again, thank you Alex, for joining us. It was a total pleasure. Alex: Thank you so much. 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43 minutes | 2 months ago
WooGraphQL, Headless and APIs with Geoff Taylor
Thanks to our community sponsors When we have a developer on the show who is passionate about what they do, well, we always end up taking a deep dive into the topic. This was the case when we invited Geoff Taylor, from XWP and developer of WooGraphQL. Mendel runs with it this time and there is a lot of info jammed into this episode. A Chat with Greg In episode 80, Mendel and I talk with Greg about: How he became interested in server-side data and APIsWhen he used his experience to take his work and use GraphQL with WordPressWhat it means when people say “headless”How it compares to using hooks, filters and endpointsThe real power behind GraphQLUsing GraphQL and why even still use WordPressMultiple ways to do your WordPress front-end with GraphQL and APIHow the GraphQL and the REST of API worksWhether performance and data retrieval are more performant using GraphQL than it is when using standard WordPress through a themeUsing WooGraphQL vs the WooCommerce RESTWhat the future holds for GraphQL If you are a developer wanting to learn about or dig deeper into GraphQL and WooCommerce, this is a must-listen show. Greg really knows his stuff. Connect with Greg Greg on Twitter at @kidunot89At kidunot89 on GitHub and WooCommerce SlackXWP Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey, everybody. BobWP, and we are back with Do the Woo episode 80. 8-0. And of course, I have one of my co-hosts, one of my favorite co-hosts. In fact, all three of them are favorite. But hey, Mendel Kurland, how you doing? Mendel: Hey, what's up? Hey, Bob, it's okay, I know it's public, so you have to say that you have three favorites, but I know where you stand. I know where you stand. And it's cool. It's cool. I'm sure they know too, deep down inside. It's good to be here. I'm excited about this conversation. It's going to get nerdy. It's going to get geeky. And I feel good about that. I feel really good about that. Bob: Yeah, Mendel, you certainly will be in your element. So let's go ahead and move on into the show here. But before I do that I want to thank our great sponsors. First of all, PayPal. As I've been talking about since they became a sponsor, their Pay in 4. It's a pretty sweet way that your clients, customers, make purchases on their sites between $30 and $600, and they get four interest-free payments. That really is nice, because talking to them, they fit it every other week. So it fits the model of the person that gets paid every two weeks or twice a month. Mendel: Bob, I want to double your shout-out for PayPal, because I installed the new PayPal plugin on my website, and I enabled the Pay in 4. I didn't even have to enable it. It just came out-of-the-box, it was enabled. And it's incredible. It automatically takes the cart total and allows you to allow somebody to pay in four payments and it's interest free. It took me five minutes to implement. So just go do it. The holidays are coming up. Might as well. Bob: Yeah, no doubt. If Mendel did it then ... Mendel: That's right, anybody can do it. If I can do it, anybody can do it. Bob: That's it. Then there's WooCommerce.com. Let's see, 4.7 RC came out the last week. So just want to remind everybody get that testing wrapped up for the release of the 10th. Very, very minor updates, because they did not want to break your site before these holidays. So you can be rest-assured that everything will go very smoothly. Well, as Mendel said, we have a great guest today, Geoff Taylor. Geoff, how are you doing? Geoff: I'm good. Yourself? How Geoff does the Woo Bob: Doing really good. And like Mendel said, we're going to get geeky, and I think the best way to do that is figure out what the heck you do with Woo. What do you do with WooCommerce? Geoff: Well, right now I work primarily as a consultant and just work for a specialist, XWP, and I also am the developer of WooGraphQL, which is the GraphQL's API functionality for WooCommerce. I'm typically a consultant/developer as far as on a couple of different WooCommerce projects that are coming up and being released and have been released. I specialize primarily though in just data management on the server. So improving the request speed and performance for service side requests when it comes to data management for headless applications. Bob: Cool. Wow, that's a mouthful. That is some serious stuff. Geoff: Well, it's just a really fancy way of saying I make stuff go really quickly. I make stuff faster. The interest in server-side data and API’s Mendel: So I want to start at the beginning of your API journey though, because we're talking GraphQL, right? And now we're talking APIs. And there may be some people listening to the Do the Woo Podcast that have no idea what GraphQL is, that WordPress even has an API by itself, right? That WordPress didn't used to have a native API, and now it does, but then GraphQL augments that, and what GraphQL is versus the native API, right? But before we get into that, because we're going to need your help with that, before we get into that let's back up, and how did you even get interested in data, or in server-side data, or in APIs? Geoff: Well, initially I started as, I guess that you could say I was a freelance web developer, and at the time I worked primarily on the LAMP staff using PHP, then whatever CMS would work for what I needed at the time. Then one time, I had a need for WordPress at the time, I was trying to make a front-end JavaScript application, which is now known as headless in the community, which is typically where you take a WordPress back-end and let that provide the data on the front-end. But I needed something other than REST. At the time I hadn't even really looked into REST. I actually came across the plugin WordPress-GraphQL before I even looked into using REST. And the beauty of that was it was still a growing project. It looked far less scary than it does now, and I was easily able to get on and just start using it and contributing. Then through contributing I met and got in touch with Jason Bahl, the developer, and it just snowballed from there with me working on several different plugins and uses for it, taking and using it in several applications, because it turned out to be really versatile. I had already had experience and known about GraphQL at the time, but I hadn't been using it in WordPress. Mendel: Got it. GraphQL and WordPress Geoff: When I went to Jason Bahl's project and I started using that, I found that now only was this extremely convenient, it made setup really easy for creating a new application. I just had to install WordPress and then install this plugin. Then from there my journey was all JavaScript, which is typically if you are a theme developer of any kind or something like that, you prefer just to only have to worry about the visuals. And this really gave me that opportunity. Funny thing is though, as I got into developing more of the API I found I had less time to develop front-ends. So initially, I was a full stack developer, but my focus had never really always been back-end logic. It had become that in developing this, and it turned out I'm really good at it. So I stuck with it, and it wasn't even that I had a personal need for WooCommerce at that time. What brought me to making the WooCommerce functionality was, I had finished up all my projects, I was still working sort of as a consultant at the time, but not for WooCommerce yet. Just for GraphQL and WordPress, the combination of that. But there was a demand growing for two things, ACF support to the GraphQL API. ACF is a humongous plugin in the WordPress community. Mendel: Advanced Custom Fields for those folks that don't know. Geoff: Yes, my bad. Advanced Custom Fields. And WooCommerce. Jason had already actually started developing the Advanced Custom Fields extension and was already about to start selling it as a premium plugin. Then I started developing the WooCommerce plugin, because there was a demand for it, and I also wanted to build up my reputation that I did not have in the community. I was a nobody. I was trying to get better remote work, because at the time I was working off of place like Upwork, or Freelancing.com, which I could find work, but the quality of the work and the pay, it was really not making ends meet. So as I started to build out the WooCommerce API, I built connections. People started coming up and using it. I got consultant work through it, and it not only improved my ability with building WooCommerce extensions, it improved my ability with WordPress development. It improved my ability all across the board on every part of the spectrum, because I made sure I was testing and implementing and making sure it worked from all facets. And here I am now, like a year later. I only started it back in March 2019 and it's become what it is now. Mendel: Cool. Yeah, that's awesome. It's awesome to hear how you got into it and how you got excited about it, and then how you started to get work from it, which I think is something a lot of people don't recognize. That becoming an expert in any field means that you've done enough in that field, you have a large enough body of work that's been successful that people start to notice and that you can use as your own self-reference. I think a lot of people maybe sell short their personal experience, or their small business experience, or their freelancer or entrepreneurial experience. And there's real value in that. So I think that's a cool takeaway from that story. I want to talk with you a little bit about why somebody would use an API to begin with, or GraphQL to begin with, with WordPress. So WordPress, for a lot of people you install on a server, you go into the back-end, you manipulate some data, right? And essentially the back-end is just a UI for a database that does some super complex queries and joins and all this stuff, and then you save those states, right? Geoff: Yeah. Mendel: With a whole bunch of data. Then on the front-end you have users interact with the website, right? And they might manipulate data in a database. So that's like a front-end interface for a database. So you can do a lot with WordPress. You can do a lot with WooCommerce. You can theme it. You can make it perform, even with the application. So what is this headless thing and why would somebody be interested in it? What is this headless thing you talk about Geoff: All right. When you think about just a WordPress front-end you come up with, I guess now, the modern day of three scenarios. You have a WordPress theme. You still have that same WordPress data, it's just showcased through a WordPress theme. And there're pros and cons to this. The pros are the WordPress theme tends to be the code for that, tends to be bundled with WordPress installation. You have everything together. It tends to be neat and seamless. But the con to this the data's baked into the layout, there's very little room for customization without making it really unwieldy, and any form of realtime JavaScript application implementation is made that much harder and complex. So if you want to go to something modern, scratch that. You want to do something really impressive or really unique, scratch that. You'd have to gut the whole theme altogether, making it pointless. Hooks, filters and endpoints Mendel: I want to break in right there on that point and just say, I think a good example of this is like using hooks and filters and things like that to add things into the output of the site. Geoff: Oh, not even just that. Think about it from this endpoint. Say you want to make a menu that performs a little bit differently and you want to style it in a way where you don't have to use the complex PHP walkers. You just have the menu items, the menu locations, and you just want to split that out. Doing that through the WordPress theme is made that much more complex, because all of that is tied into the WordPress code. I don't even want to say it's made impossible, it's made just not user-friendly all through it. If you have to come in and learn a bunch of stuff, that if we're not completely sure it won't be depreciated years from now, a lot of it is just built-in baked-in WordPress functionality that's only used specifically for this menu part. It's just a con all around when you look at it in comparison to the other alternatives. Then the other way is using WordPress REST and a JavaScript application just to retrieve that data. This allows you to have greater versatility, but it opens your site up to, for one, people have access to the data through another endpoint unless you lock it off. You may have to build a bit more in the way of structure on specific points. You lose a lot of that WordPress built-in functionality, but you get the capability of truly doing whatever the heck you want. But the downside to this is REST does not allow for a lot of versatility in the size and shape of the request. So you'll be limited to what data you get back and where, and those requests can get big and you might not always need the data for every little bit, every little part of the application where you'll be making those requests. What GraphQL really does Mendel: And it sounds like that's where GraphQL comes to the rescue. Geoff: There you go. And GraphQL, it works similar to REST. You'll be able to make whatever you want, retrieve all this data. However, you can fine-tune the request to only grab what you need off those data objects, cherry pick only the fields that you need at that time. And a lot of the tools on the JavaScript front-end allow you take advantage of things such as caching, no retrieving of data you already have, keeping track of state as well as also manipulating said data within the confines of your application just to modify right here and keep to yourself only for what you need. There's just so many advantages of being able to control the request size and request data to such a fine-tuned point that you easily notice the different in an app that is using GraphQL over using REST. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Mendel: Now, when we're talking about headless and we're talking about using GraphQL, just for, again, the benefit of the listeners, we're talking about creating apps, we're talking mobile phone apps. Geoff: The beauty to all of this is you can access REST or GraphQL from any device you can make a HTTP request from. This can be a phone. This can be a game app. This can be a game console. Mendel: Apple TV. Whatever. Geoff: Apple TV. Anything. You can make an app that will be supported from a WordPress site back-end using Wordpress-GraphQL, using GraphQL or REST. That point doesn't really matter. You'll just get a performance boost that is incomparable from using GraphQL. If GraphQL can do all that, why even use WordPress? Mendel: Now, I want to take it a step further, and we're going to tread into uncomfortable territory here, because I'm going to ask you, and I want your honest opinion on this one. Although you don't seem like a guy that would not give your honest opinion. I want to know why even use WordPress at that point then? Why not just roll your own, right? Geoff: Because I've done this before. Allow me to explain to you the problem of rolling your own versus using an already built community maintained application. Yeah, WordPress may seem unwieldy and different from, it might not even look like it's the top of the line, but WordPress is a Swiss Army Knife. If you need to get through the forest to do what you need to do, WordPress will get you there. You think about it, WordPress at its core is just a basic blogging site. All the plugins come in and add features and functionality that WordPress allows for, and you can create objects to shape whatever you want. The reason you would use WordPress is, if you go and try and make an API just from scratch you lose the validation at WordPress, you lose the possibility of the functionality that the plugins provide, because one of the things that WP-GraphQL and Woo-GraphQL and a lot of the plugins we've built, is we've tried to make it to work with as many plugins that simply want to add data to the scheme or manipulate the scheme. We've made it work with as many plugins as possible. Like right now we a plugin that works with CPTUI. So when you want to make custom post type, there's another extension you can use that will add those plugins, create it through CPTUI to the GraphQL APS scheme. Same thing with WP Tax and Meta Tax query. You can do complex queries for Tax Meta through the GraphQL API. We've made plugins that add specific features that would make it so even the reason you would use it is because all the support that WordPress provides out-of-the-box and respective in that same way, the support that both the REST API as well as the GraphQL API use will provide out-of-the-box. Your argument can be that this might be a bit much, or why even use it if you got to alter it this much? But look at the alternatives, because when you think about it, the setup for a WordPress back-end is as simple as installation, install a plugin, walk away. You have your back-end set up. If that is considered to be a bit much, at that point what is the point? Because typically if you were going to build a WordPress application or a WordPress site the traditional way, you'd do the same thing. You'd install, plugins, modify your themes. This almost no different, except that the process that you are doing to create the front-end just is different than creating a theme. It's really almost no different than modifying a WordPress website. You just need to do things a little differently at specific points. Bob:I'm not a developer, but I did design and build WordPress sites for many years, and even thinking back on the site I just redid, and how you just explained it to me, it's like, "Okay, I've got the knowledge and the power to build it up to a certain point, but till I need or have a requirement of a certain functionality that I don't want any more or any less and I want it to be quick, then that'd be the time I'd have somebody come in and take care of it using GraphQL. More on headless Geoff: Yeah, and to go back to your point too, the beauty of headless WordPress that it gives the capability of doing, you can start from design first, something you can't do through the traditional method. You can design your whole site the way you want it and then build it in HTML, and then bring in WordPress to back that front-end that you have created. That is something that you traditionally can't do with the WordPress application. And something that I was actually recently able to do recently and realize the side-by-side difference in being able to start from design first, not worry about WordPress at all until afterwards, and then go create it, as opposed to having to shape your design to what WordPress's base theme printouts are. That's something that you really can't do otherwise. Mendel: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm sitting here, I've written APIs, I've played with APIs, I've built sites using APIs, and one of the things that comes to mind when I think of WordPress is getting my head around all this fits together, right? So let's say you're building a website. I'm sure you've built a website with something with GraphQL. We don't need to get more complex than that. So what does the architecture look like when you're setting something like this up? And I'm talking like directory level. You have a WordPress installation. Your WordPress installation comes with a front-end, right? Geoff: Yeah. How to set it up so that you can consume GraphQL API coming from WordPress or WooCommerce Mendel: So how are you setting all of this up so that you can consume the GraphQL API coming from the WordPress or WooCommerce site? Geoff: Well, there's a multitude of ways you can do your WordPress front-end, and there's been several ways that are being implemented right now. As I'm sure you've heard of Gatsby. One of the big ways that a lot of Gatsby sites are doing because the speeds you get from the static site build is they will set their front-end up at a specific domain using LFI and then they will use Gatsby to build the site by querying for all of those pages and everything in their application to create those pages with the Gatsby code. That's one way of doing it. Then another way is, because you're not necessarily locked to the WordPress front-end, your domain, wherever you point it, that's your front-end, regardless of where WordPress is at. Mendel: We're putting the WordPress installation and all of the data maybe on a different server, a different domain, something like that, and we're just querying back and forth. How the GraphQL API and the REST API works Geoff: Let me explain really quickly how the GraphQL API and the REST API works. When the REST API's activated, or the GraphQL API's activated, they provide an end-point where wherever your WordPress site is hosted, slash, in the case of WordPress, WP, I think dash version two right now, JSON for whatever thing you want to grab, or in the case of GraphQL, Slash GraphQL, and then you send your request through either a POST request or a GIT request, which are variables, and you get back a response in the form of a JSON. You can make that request both service side and client side and it will respond to it. The beauty of being able to remake service side is the fact you can get SSR support for your applications, and then one of the advantages is you get to use Helmet, and you can combine Helmet and Yoast to spit out your research as SEO metadata. It's wonderful. That's a common thing that people have been doing recently with Next. If you're familiar with Next.js. They've been building static site front-ends using Helmet to process the header meta provided by Yoast in the header and using that for SEO coverage. Another way that you can do it, though the only person I've known that's actually done it is me, is you can actually use the PHP-V8 extension to process your JavaScript, and within a GraphQL, because you can shove your JavaScript application, your headless application, in a WordPress theme. That is actually the way I like to do it in all honesty, because I like the self-containment of WordPress, but you wouldn't be able to get SSR support. It's a JavaScript application. To get SSR support you could use the PHP-V8 engine to process the React beforehand and create an SSR spit out on the initial build in the service side request. And that can work perfectly fine. There are a number of ways you can create a headless application, both self-contained and it's broken out into different parts where you're front-end's at one point and your back-end's at another. Another thing is, if you change in the WordPress settings the current site address, whenever you try to navigate the site address it'll redirect you to wherever you put that at. You can put that on your front-end application, and then from that point anytime somebody tries to navigate to your back-end it'll redirect them to that front-end application, unless they send a post request to your GraphQL back-end, which will still be recognized. Mendel: That's pretty interesting. That's a fun little trick actually. I like that. Geoff: Don't do it during development, it will mess things up a little bit and you won't be able to make it up. But it will still react to POST requests and to GraphQL. So your front-end application can still send those requests. Another thing that you can do also is preview support. If you're using the classic editor currently Gutenberg will not let you do it. You can if you're editing a POST preview it in your front-end application with a few minor tweaks to filters and changes and stuff like that. It is very much possible. We've been trying to implement that and Jason's been adding more support for the draft posts that are created through the editor to help you display previous support. But headless, there's not too much you have to do extra in the way of the basic installation of your WordPress site, it's just how you set up your front-end. Separating data logic and display Mendel: And this goes to the whole idea of separating data code and display, right? Geoff: Yes. Mendel: Or sorry, data logic and display. And I think it's an important paradigm to look at, I think as you build more complex functionality and as you create more performance sites, because troubleshooting performance is really difficult when you're ... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of putting output in PHP, outputting it using PHP. Geoff: Oh no, I can tell you all the little tricks. There's var dump, WPS in JSON. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dumping stuff that way when you want to debug. In my opinion, use whatever tool necessary to dump when it comes to debugging. And in development with a lot of these APIs, I try to help with that also, helping people debug their solutions, because I'm a big believer in testing. I am a humongous believer in testing, because I hate having to go back and fix things. Everybody does. Even if you want to complain that you're doing it for a client, it'll get you more money, I care about my time. So when you want to make customizations to certain stuff and stuff like that, there are multiple ways you can debug your issues and troubleshoot when it comes to all the GraphQL extensions. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Performance and themes Mendel: So I want to touch on performance, and then I want to give things back to Bob, because he's let me take over a little bit today. But I'm curious to know, forget the fact that you can make a more performant theme, okay? I'm talking about data retrieval. So is data retrieval more performant using GraphQL than it is using standard WordPress through a theme? Geoff: Through a theme? I'm going to say yes and no. It depends on the page specifically. That's why I'm going to say yes and no. It depends on the page being queried. WordPress-GraphQL is designed to cache specific requests and only query specific things when necessary, and resolve and N+1 problems where you would be querying individual things over and over again. WordPress-GraphQL goes through that, but the base design of a WordPress theme in those queries aren't polluting. Unlike REST where you will get data you might not need, that's pretty much never the case with the WordPress theme. They only are going to provide the data in the query that you need. Now, if you are doing a custom theme where you might create an extra loop in your theme, yeah, we're going to shit on you in performance when it comes to GraphQL. You're doing an extra query for no reason. Yeah, we're kill you in performance in that way. When you think about the traditional method, if you were to go and get the 2020 WordPress theme, we're not going to beat that in performance in GraphQL. Probably not. Unless, but here's the thing you also got to think about, there're images being loaded. It depends on the request itself. Matching that request, we could probably match the speed, we can probably beat the page on loading when it comes to the request, especially if it's something where you have SSR support. But out-of-the-box it's just going to match if you just have the 2020 theme or something like that. But a custom theme where there tends to be extra things added to your layout and your appearance and extra cores for different types of data, or if you might bring in ACF fields, your speed, there will be variations, and I'm almost positive GraphQL will beat you on that front. Mendel: And it is interesting you can bring in component pieces of data as you're painting the page. So you don't necessarily need to bring in a huge payload all at once, because you have the ability to cherry pick the data, right? WooGraphQL versus using WooCommerce REST Geoff: Not to toot my own horn, but using the WooGraphQL versus using WooCommerce REST, no matter what you are doing, WooGraphQL will beat it in speed. The basic product query grabs every piece of data on the product object every time. And there is a lot of information on those product objects. We're talking names, prices, sale prices, sale dates, things like that. You're not going to need that if all you want to do is showcase possibly the image, picture, sale price or price. You're going to need maybe 10 variables or 10 pieces of data related to the product, not all like 50 fields. So when you put it into perspective and look at what you're building performance-wise, GraphQL is always going to win. Performance-wise you're never going to grab anything that you don't need, so you're always going to win. WooCommerce Rest, you don't have a choice. You're going to get whatever the endpoint can provide you, and you're going to have to filter through that. One thing I've noticed is that with GraphQL we make multiple requests. We make a request at every component that we need the specific data for, instead of making one giant request and then building all the components from that data. Now, if you're looking at this from the React front-end, that means that somewhere you have another place where they're catching the data and sending it, and are forced to send it to whatever component needs it. While on the flip coin with the GraphQL, you're going to do requests and only get the data that you want at the level of that component. Cleaning up your code as well as cleaning up your performance. I believe a few years back it said that it was better to make multiple small requests than one large one, that somebody said that. And that's still true, as far as I know. Like no one came out and refuted that. Mendel: Well, you can probably also add a higher level of concurrency then too, right? Geoff: Yeah. Mendel: So you can be pulling price and you can be pulling description, and you can be pulling name all at the same time. Geoff: And one thing is GraphQL, and sequentially WooGraphQL, support batching. So batch requests and stuff like that, it's supported. It'll just take all those requests and run those on the spot and send them back as an array of JSON data that whatever thing you're using that sent out the batch request will process. Mendel: Got it. Geoff: So batching and stuff like that to speed up on the front-end is also supported. Bob: I find it fascinating, because I'm actually starting to learn more and more with our guests on here, and definitely I think this is something to keep on top of you think, Mendel? You think we should? Mendel: Yeah, it's the future. I don't think it's something to keep on top of, I think it's something that is going to be imperative to know in the next five, 10 years of building sites as people demand faster sites, more complex sites. The future of GraphQL Geoff: Yeah. I won't deny that I've seen some kinks that still need to be worked out in the process. Like with the Gatsby build a lot of people have been having issues, especially specifically with clients I've had where they have a lot of content. And every time you make a save to Set-Content it'll trigger a new build. So while all these features I will say are the future, the kinks in their use are still being worked out. So I don't believe there is a super hurry. And like I said, there's so much versatility in how you can make your front-end that I feel like a lot of people are still going to be, just for a long time, trying to work out what's the perfect way to create a front-end. I spoke to a client yesterday who told me with almost a single button click they can create a new store, and they can vastly change the appearance by just tweaking a styling theme sheet with variables of their CSS styling. There's been so many different ways to tackle the front-end, and it gives you so many options that I don't think ... That while I do agree with you, this is the future, I think there's no rush to learn it right away. There's going to be so much growing in this space that nothing is going to be finite in the way that it's laid out right now. Bob: Cool. Mendel: Makes sense. Bob: Well, I think that's a good way to wrap things up. Mendel, what do you think? Mendel: Yeah. I've really enjoyed talking APIs and GraphQL and enjoyed talking to Geoff even more. Geoff: Oh, thank you, sir. Mendel: And I guess with that, I might as well just help us close out the show. Before I do that I just want to mention that WooCommerce, it's awesome and also happens to be a sponsor of this podcast. So if you haven't joined the WooCommerce Slack, I know I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, there's a channel for anything, any question that you might have about WooCommerce. Now, pro-tip, don't post the same question in every single channel on the WooCommerce Slack. But if you have a question go and look through the channels and figure where it fits and ask that question, because there are a lot of helpful people there that are interested in helping you figure out the answers. Geoff: And avoid using the channel tag and the header tag. Mendel: That's right. And the second thing I would say is if you have the PayPal plugin installed on your website and you installed that maybe a year ago or two years ago and you've been updating it like a pro, remove it and put the new PayPal plugin on your website. The one that you can download, surprisingly, at WooCommerce on the WooCommerce website. And use that plugin, because when you enable it, first of all, it's way easier to connect than the old way, but the second thing is you can use this for Pay in 4, which is really cool, especially as the holidays are coming up and people are going to want to buy things for their loved ones and maybe they don't have all the cash on hand right now, but they will in the next month or something like that. It allows people to pay in four payments, which is just pretty cool. And there's no risk to you. Super easy to set up. And they're a sponsor, by the way. I forgot to mention that. They sponsor this podcast. I don't want to leave that out. So thank you to PayPal and WooCommerce. I'm done gushing all over them. Where to find Greg Tell us, Geoff, where can people connect with you if they want to say, "Hey", or they have a question? Geoff: Twitter I guess, @kidunot89.com. Though I rarely talk. I'm more of a listener, and I respond to questions. You will find me all over GitHub, all over Repos making commits and reviews and whatnot, again, at that same name, @kidunot89. And on the Slack channels on WooCommerce Slack I am there. You'll find me at Geoff Taylor, although I think it's @kidunot89 again. On WooCommerce Slack as well as the WPGraphQL Slack and several other Slack channels, GitHub or Twitter. You can find me at kidunot89. Mendel: I appreciate so much your knowledge and you being on the show today. Geoff: Thanks. Mendel: And I appreciate your contributions to the community, because that's what makes things better, that's what helps us all upgrade our technology, our skills and the way we help clients and ourselves. Greg says to contribute and shares the value he has found Geoff: And also on that same coin, I also think people should contribute. Just like you said, with the giving back to the community. A lot of people just think about Open-Source and see it as you're giving away something for free. It is a great way to refine your skillset. As much as people will like to say that a commercial product is better or something because somebody's being paid to do it, it's not going to beat a community of people that are just, "Hey, we're doing it for fun, but we're bringing our skillset to it." And contributing can easily help you refine as a developer as well as improve in just communication on projects and everything. I contribute. I'm trying to encourage others to contribute, and I think it's made me a better developer. I think it can make anybody a better developer. Mendel: Cool. Yeah. Contribute, everybody. You heard it here first. Geoff does it, and if Geoff does it you should do it. That's all for this information-packed week. If you're enjoying this podcast please, please, please consider dropping a review over on Apple Podcasts. It would help us out. It'd help Bob out. It would help the community out. All those things. So go ahead and leave a review, and we'll see you next week. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
52 minutes | 3 months ago
Deep Thoughts from David Lockie and Jimmy Rosén on WooCommerce and Open Source
Thanks to our community sponsors Earlier this year Dave Lockie and his company, Pragmatic, merged with Jimmy Rosén at Angry Creative. Their work with WooCommerce was going to focus on client support and maintenance. But that is only part of the conversation. When you get a couple of agency owners from the WordPress space who have been around for a while, you may be surprised at what a deeper dive into WooCommerce, WordPress and Open Source can look like. Trust me. There is a lot to unpack in this episode. A Chat with Dave and Jimmy In episode 79, Mendel and I talk with Dave and Jimmy about: Their separate journeys to WordPress and WooCommerce with Jimmy starting in his dorm and Dave looking at a way to make a living to save up for his wedding.What they have seen as big changes in the industry, how shops are built and the ways consumer interact— and a look into the future. Dave, a futurist, especially expounds on this one.How they met, what brought them to merge and how it ties into their common vision for the future.The decision to build up the strength of WooCommerce support and maintenance for their clients as they merged.What each values when it comes to contributing to the community beyond working on core. As I mentioned, this goes deep. We filled 50 minutes of conversation with our guests and the show notes only touch the surface. It’s worth a listen if you run a business in the WordPress or WooCommerce space. Connect with Jimmy and Dave Email Jimmy at jimmy@angrycreative.seDave on Twitter at @divydovyEmail Dave at d@pragmatic.agencyPragmaticAngry Creative Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Mendel: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 79 of Do the Woo. I'm here with BobWP, the famous Bob, and a couple guests, which I'm really excited to talk to you. But before we get into it I want to see how you're doing, Bob. Bob: Hey, I'm doing good. Mendel: Yeah? Is it getting cold over there in Seattle? Bob: Actually since we're on the ocean we're a few degrees warmer, but we've been getting down here. I think we got down in the 30s actually a couple days ago. So it's been a bit brisk. But I'm good with it. Mendel: We're that cold too. I went out for a walk this morning and I walked back inside. Then I was typing and I noticed my fingers, they went slower than normal. So that's how I gauge the temperature outside. Bob: I gauge it by the wind here. Mendel: Awesome. Well, before we get into the show I just want to thank our sponsors today. We've got WooCommerce.com. Now, Bob, I don't know what you're doing on the last Thursday of each month at around 18:00 UTC. It's super specific, but it's important, because you don't want to miss the monthly community chat on the WooCommerce core Slack channel. It's the last Thursday of each month at 18:00 UTC and it's a great way to hear the latest updates from the Woo Team, or the WooCommerce Team. We also want to thank PayPal, who's a sponsor. Hey, the holiday's coming up and there's this cool new thing, maybe it's new, I don't know, new to me, that PayPal's doing, which is called Pay in 4. So you can have your clients pay in four installments, giving your customers another option for their purchasing power during the holiday season. So go visit WooCommerce.com. Go check out PayPal's Pay in 4. Make sure and check out the core Slack channel chat. It's fun. It's cool. You'll learn a lot. And with that I think we'll get into it. Meet Jimmy and Dave So we have with us Jimmy and Dave. Now, these two guys, these are simple names, okay? They are simple names, but they are not simple people, because they have a lot to share with us. You can't see it, but they're both saying, "Ah, I don't know. We might be." Anyway. I would love for each of you to introduce yourself. This is kind of a rare thing where we have two guests on the show at the same time, and you're going to see how their lives have kind of weaved themselves together. Maybe they didn't want them to, but they did. So, Jimmy, Dave, welcome to the show. Jimmy, you want to start out and introduce yourself? Jimmy: Yes. Of course. First of all, thank you for having us. Great pleasure. I am Jimmy Rosen and I'm the CEO and Founder of a company called Angry Creative, and we are a, well, WooCommerce and WordPress Specialist originally based at least in Sweden. Mendel: Excellent. Well, nice to have you, Jimmy. And we're going to go more in-depth with you in a second. Dave, introduce yourself. You're newly Dave. You used to be David, but now you're Dave. Dave: I like to keep things fluid. Mendel: I like it. Dave: So I'm Dave Lockie, or David Lockie, depending on the day apparently. I'm Founder and CEO of Pragmatic. We're a U.K. based agency, specialist in WordPress. And I'll leave the story there for now. Mendel: Excellent. Well, welcome to the show, you two. Bob. Bob: Yes. Mendel: I know you have a pressing question for these two, and it's a question I've heard you ask many times before. But I'm going to step out of the way and let you ask this question. The Journey to WordPress and WooCommerce Bob: Okay, cool. Well, we'll head back to Jimmy. And essentially what we want to hear is a little bit of your journey, it can even be to WordPress, but then how you ended up getting involved with WooCommerce. Jimmy: All right. Like for me personally? So I found, kind of by mistake, WordPress when I was in my dorm room. This was like 05, 06, something like that. It was really early on, very early on. It was a simple enough CMS that I could hack basically with my, well, novice PHP skills I guess. I did that and I did all kinds of other freelance gigs. But in 06, 07, I started only doing websites as my main freelance gig. This was like during my university studies. So it wasn't full-time. Then in 09 I graduated and had to become an adult real fast more or less. I had to get myself a job, and that during kind of a similar situation to now, during a raging depression in the economy. So that was fun. But I stuck to it, and in 2011 I did my first hire. From there I've been working hard to make this a great firm since then. Bob: So how did you get into the Woo space? Did it just come naturally, or did you segue into it because you wanted to get into the eCommerce part of things, or how did that play out? Jimmy: To be honest, first off, in the beginning it was simple websites and then more advanced CMS websites. But I think it was in, what was the year? It was pretty early on that we did our first WooCommerce site. It was 2013 I think. We did a subscription service, but most of our gigs were WordPress only. But then that kind of snowballed and we found out that, well, the clients have a lot higher purchasing power and definitely they stick with you. In the CMS space its kind of a race to the bottom, if you're a tech firm at least. You get less and less of the gigs where you can put lots and lots of hours into just perfecting it. The space for that is really crowded. So it just came natural. Like our WooCommerce clients, they really need skilled people to help them grow and to keep their main business, while being their website, alive and working and optimized and all of that. From there just all of a sudden we more or less only had WooCommerce clients, and a bunch of really, well, larger CMS clients for like multinational companies. But other than that, that's a kind of the client in itself. But the rest of them, more or less WooCommerce. In a sense a CMS site, it helps you trade in terms of what it gives the client, it's those leads basically. But eCommerce gives you a lot more than that. So it helps you trade a lot better. And since it's open-source you can modify it. We have clients selling everything from funerals to phone gadgets to whatever. It's a big space and with the power of open-source you can sell anything and create any kind of custom checkout flow, more or less, making you sell anything in a nice way to the end clients. Bob: How about you, Dave? How did you get into this? Dave: So I guess it's pretty similar to Jimmy. I was already graduated and working on some startups with some friends out of university, working on promoting clean tech, fuel cells, hydrogen, that kind of cool stuff. But way back before there was any money in it, which takes a while to figure out. But along the way I learned from some really good developers how to do some basic coding. This was all in the classic ASP days. Then was getting married and I needed to save a bit of money up for buying wedding rings and stuff, because we were doing a startup. So we were all pretty poor. I remember, I'd done a couple of just like from-scratch HTML sites, and then, you know how it is, you suddenly need to go back and just change something in the header, or just change something in footer and you suddenly had to add in like nine different text files. I was like, "This is stupid. There's got to be a way to template this stuff." And sadly there wasn't a good way to do HTML templating. So I got down the route where I had to find the CMS, and up until last week in fact, I've always been like a Windows guy, and basically WordPress was the only CMS I could get running. WordPress is also very good for what I call Brute Force Coding, because you can just like be a monkey with a typewriter and eventually it'll work. PHP's very forgiving and very accessible. So I started making some websites for friends and family, doing that. Eventually I realized I could make more money doing that than I could in my day job. So long story short, I quit that and started freelancing full-time, got super busy. I think it was probably when we were like a micro business, like maybe two or three people, and the golden rule was always like, "Never do eCommerce with WordPress. You do pretty much anything else, but just never touch eCommerce." Then Jigoshop came along, and Jigoshop was the first version of eCommerce for WordPress that just kind of made sense. It wasn't like totally forced into WordPress, it felt like a natural kind of fit in lots of different ways. So I think we even did like one or two projects with Jigoshop. I was always like a big child themer. That was like my WordPress way. I think I started with thematic, and I must've built like 50 different sites with thematic. Then I started using a WooThemes Canvas. So I was already super familiar with Woo and I knew their code quality was really good and their support was good as well. And I remember meeting the team for the first time in Leiden. I think that was the first WordCamp Europe. The team were really cool as well. So we just kind of naturally fell into using WooCommerce when we had eCommerce requirements come through. We never seem to get the nice easy projects, the, "I just want to sell caps, or T-shirts", and they're like, "It's small, medium and large." We'd get like the, "I want to build a personalizable book where I want people to be able to upload images and write their own thing." So we always used to get these insanely complex WooCommerce projects. Like we pretty much built Airbnb with WooCommerce at one point. I think we probably only charged about 20 grand for it as well. So ever since we've used WooCommerce as one of our trusted stable of plugins, and we've done all kinds of exotic things for clients large and small. So it's been a really good part of our journey. Although, it hasn't been as cool as it has been to Jimmy until recently. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. What’s going on now and in the future Mendel: So I want to go back to those Jigoshop days. If we can think about what eCommerce was like then and what eCommerce is like now, and where eCommerce is going in 20 years. Now, I know as a fact that Dave is a futurist I think in a way. I don't know about Jimmy, but if Jimmy and Dave are buddies then I'm guessing that Jimmy probably has some of that in him somewhere. But, Dave, we can start with you, and where have things been and how have things changed? What have you noticed as far as big changes in the industry and the way shops are put together and the way consumers interact with shops, and then maybe where you think things are going to end up? Dave: So I'm going to zoom out a little bit first, and then I'll zoom to the future. So going back. Trade's basically the foundation of humanity as we know it. The necessity and attraction of commerce is what's allowed people to overcome the fears of different groups, different countries, different tribes, whatever it is, to work together and create almost unimaginable value. Even the Roman emperors would blush at what people have access to these days, even the most modest household. And more than anything trade is what stitches together human society. It creates mutual interests, and that makes corporation and trust overpower conflict and fear. And the need for that, I'm sure, is never clearer than at the moment. So today eCommerce is an incredibly important part of global trade. It allows anyone to sell anything to anyone else at any time. So I believe this kind of power and freedom is vital for our continuing mutual prosperity. That trade is one of the reasons that there is much less war now, because it's just not in each other's and different nations' interests to go to war, because they have too many vested trade interests. And open-source is a really important part of that. It's vital to oppose this increasing centralization of power and protect individual freedoms in this sort of ever more connected world. That's why we love WooCommerce. It's the most powerful, the most popular open-source eCommerce platform. And by supporting every client to achieve success with WooCommerce, we are contributing to global prosperity and harmony, and I really believe that. It's nothing short that. As to where eCommerce is going, I think there's some really interesting macro trends. One, which I think is super powerful is the whole kind of No-Code movement. There's just some really incredible tools coming out with those, Airtable, or Workflow, or Bubble. We really must pay attention in the WordPress space to what's happening now, because we're definitely losing deals to No-Code, and these aren't necessarily small mom-and-pop store deals. Obviously Shopify's been super successful. But some of these, they're kind of enterprise gigs where actually they can do everything they need to with Webflow. So No-Code's really important as a trend. I think ALA, it's just like this massive gaping void of different technologies and potential impacts, both good and bad, on eCommerce, but I think out of that you start to see things like personalization, you start to see things like integration with additive manufacturing, 4D printing, so that it's not so much a case of, "What have you got to sell other people?", but, "Can you build what other people want? Can somebody come to their site and tell you what they want and you can make it for them?" So no code, AI, and I'd say personalization's sort of a pretty big micro trend within that as well. Because you're right, Mendel, I love dreaming about where things are going, and before I ramble on too long I'll hand it over to the man. Mendel: So we can probably dissect every sentence of that and turn it into its own essay, because there's a lot there. There's a lot packed into those statements. So thanks for that, Dave. What about you, Jimmy? Jimmy: Well, obviously, especially with the coronavirus, I think we've taken a huge leap into digitalization for what was bound to happen, had to happen real fast, and everyone is changing the way they do business basically. These days we're getting people at hardware shops, "We have to do eCommerce, because otherwise we can't manage." And basically we have kind of a productized version of WordPress, and that's basically like a theme, a set of plugins and a concept of how to do the Woo I guess, that we sell as a fixed price starter project, and we ship that off to many of the simpler clients. And we can just sell that, boom, fixed price, "Here we go." But building on top of that, we obviously do customizations, and that's our main business, doing customizations. What's happening now is that everyone is having to question their business model, and it's not only the dreamers that Dave built a 20K Airbnb for. Sorry to say it, but, Dave, you got hustled. Dave: That's happened a lot to me. Don't worry. Jimmy: It is what it is, yeah? Dave: But to be fair, that client, although we didn't make a great profit out of that project, if any, I recently read an article in like a mainstream newspaper about her and her business is a success and we built the first version of that. So whether or not there was much profit in that project, it created immense value for her and in turn everyone else. I always find that, no matter how painful a project is, as long as you get it past the post then you're creating value, and that's what keeps me in the game I think. Jimmy: Yeah, man, that's good fun. And just that kind of project is what we're seeing popping up everywhere. So how can we deliver value to our clients? And small mom-and-pop stores, they can't compete with the really big businesses. They have to have business models that lift other things than just price. Then can they use Shopify? Well, maybe not. Then they have to customize, and how can they do that with Shopify? Well, they can't. So Open-source, boom. There you go. So there's been an immense increase in the amount of clients that are turning to Open-source, because they can't go on proprietary platforms. Obviously like everyone is making a buck here, especially the big platforms that ship standardized stuff, but we in the Open-source community, like customization is our bread-and-butter. We don't charge for licenses. We charge for customization. If you can't be on a super standardized product, it's a nice thing to take a standardized product and customize it, and that's what we do. The move to a partnership Mendel: So, Jimmy, the two of you made the decision earlier this year to do business with each other, to combine forces and to create a stronger agency experience I'm guessing by merging your two agencies. And the name of the two agencies, Pragmatic and Angry what? Jimmy: Angry Creative. Mendel: Angry Creative, okay. So Angry Creative and Pragmatic, which these are kind of also oddly opposing ideas. Anyway. So I'm curious, and then I'll give it back to Bob to ask some more questions, but I'm curious how the two of you met, and then clearly you have some common vision for the future and some common tread on your tires from the past. But you met. How did that happen, and then how did you eventually come to combine forces? Jimmy: I think we met at some WordCamp. It was the usual after party thing I guess. There might have been a stiff drink or two involved, might have. But we're never late to the day after when the second day of work happens. We're never late. Just to be clear. That does not happen to us. We're there eight sharp, boom, no matter what happened the day before. Anyway. That's basically it. Then Dave invited me to a group of like-minded individuals. So it was basically a group of WordPress entrepreneurs where we exchange ideas and, "What works for you?", and, "What do you feel about this?" It's been a really great group. Obviously this year we haven't really had the opportunity to meet. But that's where our friendship was evolved I'd say. Dave: Yeah, that's definitely my recollection too. Then to pick up the story, the lockdown threw a lot of challenges in a lot of different ways to a lot of businesses, and it became pretty clear to me that this was a longterm thing and that eCommerce was really a very sensible place to be. With almost all other avenues of trade closed, eCommerce just seemed like the obvious place to start paddling towards that, plus some other things like LMS, which Angry Creative already did. So I think basically how it happened was we had a client come in, like a client inquiry, and they're like, "We've got this high volume eCommerce site, it keeps going down", and I knew that. So Jimmy's kind of underplaying the productization that they've done, and it's really sophisticated down to an infrastructure level. So it's a very integrated product. And we got to the point a couple years ago where if it was like scaling eCommerce we would always give that lead over to Angry, because they could do a better job, and I can't take somebody's money if I think we're going to do a second rate job. So I basically phoned Jimmy and I was like, "Look, I've got a lead for you." He's like, "Well hey, you should just sell your business to me." I was like, "Well, actually maybe there's something in that." So we started talking and basically figured out that together we could solve a lot of our combined visions as well as accelerate the journey of our focus away from the more volatile CMS project space to the far more stable and fertile, definitely in the current climate, WooCommerce retainer and sort of itched the improvement space. So it just seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe it would've happened eventually anyway, but coronavirus is definitely an accelerant there. Focusing on support and maintenance Bob: So that kind of involved the whole thing that you had mentioned in the press release when you first announced this, that you were moving in the direction of support and maintenance? Then that probably wasn't just WooCommerce, that's probably WordPress and WooCommerce. Was the real motive behind it, so you could expand or move in that direction, and were you doing much of that, either one of you, before that, or how did that evolve where you said, "Okay, this is the direction we're moving in"? Dave, why don't you take that? Dave: Because Jimmy was already there, right? So Jimmy didn't have to move, he just had to plan to help us move very quickly to what they were already doing. So I'd say that the overlap, the Venn diagram, I love Venn diagrams, what we did as businesses was pretty much 100% overlapped, but it was about the waiting. So where we were kind of 80% project-based and 80% CMS-based, Angry were almost the opposite. They were more like 80% WooCommerce, almost 80% retainer. And when we look at the impact of COVID and lockdown we see, "All right. If we ignore some sectors got absolutely hammered, then project losses versus retainer losses were much worse in terms of pipeline and projects being put on pause." So it was a much more fragile sort of commercial outlook. Plus WooCommerce being a sort of growth space. I'd like to think that everything's around the Pragmatic way of doing things, which means that together we are building a business which is different together, but in terms of focus and business model we're paddling far more over to Angry's way of doing things than they're coming this way. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Bob: Anything to add there, Jimmy? Jimmy: We, over the years, haven't had a very data-driven way of doing, well, business I guess. We've set up a business that we're very keen to improve ourself and we're very good at measuring things internally. That means we can see the value optimization, not just with our clients, but also within ourselves. So that's why over the years we've moved towards a model that looks like this. If you do a CMS-type build, only the top tier clients, they will let you take the support, let you do that, do the maintenance and have a nice operation going on. But most of these gigs, you go in and you do the job and then like, "Okay. Thank you. Bye. Maybe we'll see each other again." What can I say? It's like being young and hooking up with people in a bar basically, and what we're doing with WooCommerce is more like growing up, having a steady relationship where you have a true relationship. So we help them grow, we help out with their maintenance, because a CMS-type client will be like, "Yeah, whatever. If the site breaks, it breaks. I don't care that much, and it's a quick fix anyway", basically. You can make a good business there, but that has to be mainly automated. You have to be like ManageWP or have something like that in order for that to be a valid business model. But for eCommerce you have to have that stability that you as a business vendor, you know that you can call us 24/7 and if your site has a problem we'll have people working on it 24/7, 365 days a week. So you can count on just pushing that traffic through your site, and that's the kind of responsibility you need from a partner if you're pushing business down an eCommerce funnel. We had huge publishers that we work with, and they were like, "It doesn't really matter if the site goes down. As long as the content is still there an hour from now. Eh, stuff happens." But for an eCommerce vendor, they measure that downtime in minutes and loss-per-minute more or less. So for them it's really important to have that. Open-source has a problem, and that's basically, "Who's responsible?" So from a client perspective, you are given a lot of free stuff. You get free updates, free features and all of this free stuff, and you see just stuff are pouring in. But like, "Who's responsible for that really?" That's you as a client. There's no one else responsible. You can blame your agency as much as you want for like, "Oh, it should be you that ...". That's why a lot of agencies, they do the project and then they run, because they don't want to end up in that situation where they have to take on that responsibility. So early one we figured out like, "Hey, let's be that kind of business. Let's solve that problem in Open-source. Let's put a fee on like a monthly cost, and no matter what we'll cover it. If there're crazy bugs, we'll cover it. If there's this-and-that, we'll cover it." That way, sure, it's a premium service, but if that gives us also incentive to like if there's a crazy bug in the core, we actually have the budget to fix it. We like to call it Sustainable Open-source, because we actually take money from our clients that we can use to help support the Open-source industry. And sometimes we do. We'll help fix a couple of really serious things in WooCommerce, and a lot of the times it's working with plugin authors, and that can be a bit harder though. Contributing beyond core Mendel: So you've built sustainable businesses that contribute back to the ecosystem when it makes sense. You've worked your butts off to both make great agencies yourselves. It sounds like you've collaborated with other like-minded agencies, people that have been coming up, people that are more experienced than you and people that are in your same lifecycle. And now you're collaborating together, and it sounds like the future is extremely profitable and bright for this joint venture. It seems like you have it all, and I guess my next question is, what can people do, agencies like you, or organizations in general in the Open-source world, what can they do to give back? Specifically I'm thinking about Grant for the Web, right? But there are other places that people can help to contribute and give things back when they finally reach that level of success where they're comfortable, but they still have interesting challenges that don't keep them up at night because they need to buy their next loaf of bread, but they keep them up at night because they enjoy the challenge, and there's something interesting there. So what is there on the web that can help contribute back to Open-source more than just core contribution? And not just. Core contribution is a big deal, right? But what do you think, Dave? Dave: So I'm going to come back to Grant for the Web if we get time, because it's super interesting. I'll tell you one of the things that really is on my mind a lot at the moment is helping to create opportunities for people, supporting people to learn a trade and to make sure that those opportunities are open to people from all sorts of different backgrounds. And we do a lot of work in ensuring that they're an equal opportunities employer, especially from a newer divestee perspective. I think one of the things that I love about the WordPress space is that it's actually really a very inclusive community, but there have been some sort of recent notable exceptions to that. But I think in general it's an incredible global community and everyone, whether they're young or old, whatever color they are, whatever background they're from, it feels like much more of a meritocracy than many of the places that I see around the world. In a lot of ways I go back to the WordCamp Europe in Seville where the feeling was like the values that have helped us build WordPress and WooCommerce as a community, "What else can we do with this? How can we take these things out into the world and help make the world a better place?" And I do think that our community is very special in that way. So I guess we focus a lot on that, right? I'm lucky that I get to spend a lot of time thinking about the future and how that's going to impact us and our clients in our community, and I hope they're giving back some of that as a contribution personally. But I think probably the most important thing we do is, outside of supporting our clients, is creating opportunities for people to have interesting rewarding valuable careers where they can help other people, as well as contribute to this Open-source project, which is a legacy of us all to future generations. Then if you think about it, there aren't that many things in life where you can do that for the greater good of people. Mendel: Cool. What do you think, Jimmy? Jimmy: First off, I'd say what's most easy is being engaged in events, meeting other people, creating interest for what we do. I'd say that's a first, and that's pretty easy. You just show up in one form or another. Just online or not, whatever. You just show up. Showing up, that's the first step. But from a larger perspective, obviously it's having that sustainability built into your business model, right? Meaning that actually not taking all of this for granted. So I live in a small town called Norrkoping in Sweden, and like 10 years ago there were basically no other firms doing WordPress. It was only me from my dorm room basically. So that was it. That was the WordPress community in this town, period. But what happened over a couple years there was that WordPress gained traction. Actually I started having meetups and then WordCamps locally. Then one-by-one the other bureaus, they just switched from their home-coded proprietary CMSs. Even the companies that only engage in proprietary CMSs started up a WordPress section. It just exploded everywhere. Then all of a sudden there were 150 people locally on my events. I was like, "What? It was only me, and I was alone in my dorm room. How did this happen?" So just engaging and speaking out on like how things should be done. Obviously all of these firms now, they are part of the WordPress community, but they're not fully engaged in it, because they're not at that point yet. You have to make a commitment to being a sustainable Open-source business in order for actually helping Open-source. And you can do it in several ways, but I think what's most important as an entrepreneur is actually having that sustainability in your business to actually seeing that. There's a lot of people doing this, and we shouldn't only hope for people to give you free updates, we should actually have them on payroll to do those updates. That's what makes sense, and that would create sustainability in the long run. I think more companies need to do that, first of all, because it's the right thing to do. Second, in the long run, A, you'll have better people, and B, you'll have a better product and everyone will benefit. But also if you want to stick to doing WordPress then you kind of have to, because when you're a big enough firm you have to start pushing that time into like pushing the product onto where you want it to go. and certainly it will be hard for a business of roughly 70, that's where we are now, to push that to make as big a dent as maybe automatic, obviously. But we're 1000s and 1000s of people working with this, and if everyone would build into their business model we would also have a business standard basically. Like 10 years ago no one did maintenance over here. Now everyone in the Swedish scene sells maintenance. Everyone does that. We were probably the first who did that, and we've been very open with how we do it and how much it costs roughly. It's all on our website. I can go to any competitor and just check out like, yeah, that's basically my pricing there that they just copied and put on their site, but they're free to do that, because that creates a business standard, and if we all had that standard and all think like, "Okay, let's have a sustainable Open-source business. So this is what we charge usually, and we will make a commitment to actually ... If we find a problem in one of the plugins that we use for like our 200 websites, whatever, then we'll commit to actually pushing a fix upstream." That's how businesses should be designed, and if I can help other businesses be designed like that, that's great, because I will benefit, they will benefit, and our community will benefit, because it will become a standard. And we need standards, because as a community we're fractured. Some people do this, some people do that, and Open-source get a lot of shit from like the larger firms saying that basically, "These guys aren't serious. Who can be serious with Open-source?" And if they have huge funds they can like, "Yeah, whatever. We'll just go with this super proprietary stuff, because they are professionals and these Open-source people are not." So if we have a common business standard and we take that responsibility and we help the community, it will help our businesses and it will also help everyone pitch to clients that Open-source is big business, Open-source is the real deal, and we can do really great stuff. You don't have to use these proprietary products. Bob: Well, Mendel, I'd say that we have shows that have gold nuggets and we have shows that are a freaking goldmine. So I think we kind of hit the latter here with this one. Wow. A lot of stuff to digest, and a lot of great information. In fact, I'm going to spend some time on the transcript just taking in more of this. Of course, I won't hear those wonderful accents, but I can listen to it as well. Well, I'm going to quickly thank our sponsors one more time before we shoot out of here. WooCommerce.com, as Mendel mentioned. Check out the community chat the last Thursday of every month. I believe it was at 18:00 UTC. And do check out PayPal's Pay in 4, a great way to spread out four payments over every other week. And come holiday time you may need that to budget in for those few extra gifts. So check them both out. Jimmy, let's start with you. Where can people connect with you on the web? Connect with Jimmy and Dave Jimmy: You can email me at jimmy@angercreative.SE, and that's my main email. And I'm a very private person, so I'm not really on social media. Dave: I'm more open. I'm @DivyDovy. D-I-V-Y-D-O-V-Y, for reasons lost to the mists of time. Mainly on Twitter. Also on Instagram. If you want to talk work then basically Twitter or D@Pragmatic.agency. Always super happy to hear from anyone and keep the conversation going. So look forward to hearing from you. And, Bob, Mendel, thank you so much for having us, guys. Thanks for doing this podcast and keeping the good word of the Woo out in the world. Jimmy: Thank you for having us, it's been great. Bob: All right. Well, let's call it a wrap then, and we are out of here, you can check this out on your favorite pod app. And until next week, Do the Woo. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
52 minutes | 3 months ago
Insights and Perspectives on the State of the Woo
Closed captions available. Thanks to our community sponsors Two weeks ago, the virtual conference WooSesh shared two days of invaluable learning for WooCommerce builders. To kick it off, there was a presentation from WooCommerce, aptly named, State of the Woo. To introduce the new addition to the Do the Woo podcast, Woo Perspectives, I asked my co-hosts Brad Williams, Jonathan Wold and Mendel Kurland to join me for this introspective chat. Unlike the Thursday episodes of Do the Woo, every other Tuesday, Woo Perspectives brings thought-provoking conversations around WooCommerce and its ecosystem. Of course, one of my co-hosts, Mendel, had to throw in an extra curveball at the beginning and end with his own topic. The first was the fact that WooSesh was only available post-event behind a paywall. And the second, totally unrelated, was about inventory and WooCommerce. But as a co-host, I let him get away with it this time What We Talked About First off, Mendel brought up a couple of things we wanted to talk about: WooSesh and post-event access to the videos.The diversity of the Automattic team on the State of the Woo. I shared three audio snippets for my guests to give their own thoughts on. Allen Smith, Developer Advocate shared the results of a survey that gave us a clearer picture of who a WooCommerce developer is.Elizabeth Pizzuti talks about what is coming to the WooCommerce home screen for vendors and their own onboarding for site owners.Alana Weinstein dives into the marketplace and improvements for vendors there. And to close it out, Mendel brought up a final discussion around the current state of inventory and expense management for inventory in WooCommerce. The State of the Woo on YouTube If you would like to see the State of the Woo from WooSesh, you can watch it on YouTube here. Get All the Videos Plus More for 60% Off You can get access to all the WooSesh videos as well as all the other great content on WPSessions plus get 60% off using the coupon code: DOTHEWOO here. Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Hey, everybody. BobWP here. You are maybe, or maybe you're not looking at us. This is a new perspective on "Do the Woo Podcast," where I bring in two to three people that are a lot smarter than me and... well, you know, there's always those special cases. But most of the time, I bring in two to three people that are a lot smarter than me and we just talk about two or three topics in the Woo space. I'm simply here to get them talking. You won't hear me talk a lot, except at the beginning and end. Yeah, it's just get their insights or perspectives. Just kind of go from it. And I'm going to... we're going to actually go around a particular subject area this time, which I'm going to dive into as soon as I thank our sponsors. WooCommerce.com, if you're looking for, you know, a career in WooCommerce, you wanna use all your Woo talents. Go to DoTheWoo.io, just click on Jobs and there's actually three very cool jobs there right now, so. We'll be building that out, there'll be more people, more agencies, more people advertising in that, putting up job listings so check that out. And PayPal, that is our newest sponsor. They just recently were on the podcast last week and might want to listen in. They have the Pay in 4 for excellent... Well, this is almost a nobrainer and Brad, who's here, he said that actually on Twitter today. What it allows you to do as a merchant or your clients if you're a builder, is to have people break up their purchase in four payments. Four equal payments every two weeks. No interest, no risk on you as a merchant, no risk on you as a builder. Suggesting that your client do this. PayPal takes all the risk so it's a pretty sweet deal. So check that out. You can go to Paypal.com, look for Pay In Four. We are going to move right along. Well, I'm going to first, I'm going to have my esteemed guests, which you know they're esteemed in a sense that they're also voices you're very familiar with, my cohost. With that, I kick off "Woo Perspectives" with my cohost and I'm gonna have them go around do a quick intro just because some of you may still not know them. Or at least, now you can, if you're watching the video, tie a face with a name. Brad, why don't you start? Sure. I am Brad Williams, the original cohost of "Do the Woo." Just remember that when you hear from these other guys after me. During the day, I am the CEO and cofounder of Web Dev Studios, WordPress design and development agency. So we have a lot of experience building out ecommerce sites specifically with WooCommerce. So happy to be here, Bob. Cool. How about you, Mendel? Who are you? Well, actually, when you were saying esteemed, I was just thinking, "I'm mostly esteemed "in Austin when it gets hot during the summer." Sorry, I couldn't help it. You know what? I am, I don't know what number in the birth order I am for hosts, but I don't care because we're all great. And I'm a WooCommerce advocate for agencies at Nexcess, a liquid web company. So that's what I do. I help agencies be successful with WooCommerce. That's it. Good job, good job. You do a good job of it, too. How about you, Jonathan? I know you work for somebody we all know and love. I'm Jonathan Wold, I lead community initiatives at WooCommerce. Which can mean any number of things but a lot of my time and energy is focused on supporting the existing WooCommerce community and helping it grow in our global and our local spaces. Cool. Alrighty, well, all three of you I don't know if all three of you, but couple of weeks ago, WooSesh did... WooSesh was online, virtual conference. A yearly, very cool event. Two days of a lot of Wooness. It was focused on primarily builders and one of the things they started out with was state of the Woo. So I thought what would be fun is to go in and grab three snippets from that, three audio snippets, and just lay it on these three guys and play them and have them, you know, talk about it a little bit. And they went over a lot of stuff in the state of Woo so we're covering very little. You can go over to WooSesh, join their membership over there, and actually get WooSesh, and all the other things, videos from WP Sessions. So you might check that out if you want to hear it. And I think there's going to be as few scattered videos on Woocommerce.com, and I don't know if there's anywhere else but a few of them, they're going to be putting out free that you can listen to. First one I want to play is from Alan Smith, the Developer Advocate over there Hey, Bob, before you start that, I want to bring some controversy into this conversation. Are you okay with that? Okay, I'm fine with that. So, what do you want? So I attended a WooSesh and I thought it was awesome, as I'm sure everybody on this podcast did. I found a couple of things interesting and I wanted to get everybody else's take on it. Number one, State of the Woo. Awesome. It was super cool. Lot of new, cool stuff coming. I thought it was interesting that it was in the walled garden of WooSesh, rather than a public forum, or a more public forum. Number two, I thought it was interesting and quite cool I'm gonna give a little bias to this quite cool that there was such a diverse group of people that were presenting pieces of State of Woo, unlike State of the Word, which is primarily done by Matt. Which nothing negative about that, just thought it was kind of cool that there were multiple groups. So I'm just curious what everybody else thought about the format and the way this information was disseminated. I'm gonna go to Brad first because I have a lot Whatever you said, Jonathan, but. Yeah, I got plenty I can say. Yeah, I mean, overall, I think it's... The idea of WooSesh and WordSesh. For those of you that don't know, I was one of the original organizers that helped with WordSesh when it was first started however many years ago. I'm not involved anymore, but I used to be. So it is near and dear to my heart. I mean, obviously virtual events are very common now, right? But WordSesh was originally founded on the idea of being a virtual event that anyone in any time zone could attend. It was originally 24 hours for that very reason, right? So not everyone had to be forced into U.S. working hours or whatever that looks like. Now they've changed that a bit, but understandably because that was a bit difficult to run as an organizer for 24 hours straight. So overall, the idea of like it's just another virtual event, I guess. Some people might look at it that way, but the fact is it's been doing this for much longer than just this year, right? This was like, the first, really big WordPress virtual event out there, in terms of WordSesh and then WooSesh kind of stemmed from that. So I love the format of that, being online. It's very accessible to anybody. I believe, correct me if I'm well no, it was free for everyone while it was live, which is cool. I definitely get your point, Mendel specifically, around the State of Woo. Now that it's past, my understanding is you have to pay to get access to it. I do think that particular presentation should probably be opened up outside of the pay wall just because of it's important to the whole, you know, community, builders, users of WooCommerce that they have access to that without having to necessarily pay. But there's just a lot of great content. Like, I like the diversity of the speakers, I like for the State of the Woo specifically and just the whole event, right? There's just some really intelligent, smart people here talking about some really interesting things. So I mean, overall, I think it was an amazing event. But I understand the point you're making To be clear, I'm not knocking the event at all. I thought the event was killer. And I'm not even actually knocking anything, I'm just posing the question out there. All right, so I'll jump in on that. I was responsible for programming and sort of making sure that things went smoothly for WooSesh this year on our side. I hadn't thought about it too much, but I agree, it does bug me a little bit, too. Let me say this. First, it's important that we like, WooSesh is a community event that we're sponsoring and supporting, right? So that was part of where all this starts from is like, I think Brian, Patrick, I love what they're doing, we wanna support it. Ultimately, like we were even a little bit uncomfortable with this idea of calling it like, the State of the Woo because you know, there's historic precedence, it was fine at the end of the day, but we do see us like doing more of our own things in the future. At the same time, it's really important to us to support and be involved in community initiatives. As far as the content itself, I'll talk to Brian about it afterwards, we've only touched on it briefly. My preference would be for like, that particular piece to just be publicly available. If for some reason he doesn't wanna do it, I'll make a version of it 'cause it was all prerecorded so I can stitch something else together. Yeah, I love what they're doing and for us, great opportunity to support something that's happening. The content, though, is something that we'd want to be available. Very happy to support the business model but for that particular piece, the intent has been to make it available. Just a matter of what's the best way to do that? Right. And I love the fact that there's very popular and really valuable events that are not spearheaded by automatic, to be honest. Because not everything has to be and I think people kind of generally fall in that rut of well, if it's... you know, if automatic's not involved, like, does it really should we do this? But I think that's a good thing, right? Like, to an extent, I think it's a good thing that it's not all coming from automatic, it's communitydriven in a sense. So I definitely like that. And that's one of the reasons I've always liked things like WordSesh and WooSesh, and even some of the other events like like PressNomics and some of those other ones in years past that were very valuable events, really great events, but they weren't under that automatic umbrella. Or at least the over 'cause word camps aren't necessarily automatic ran, but they are being overseen by you know, some components of automatic so... And for good reason. But I like a mix. It should not all be coming from one company or fall on one company, right? It should be the community. And this is a good example of it, so. [Jonathan] I agree. I would go as far as to say that this was... and granted, I didn't see all of the virtual events for WordPress and WooCommerce this year. But I would say that this was the best content and delivery of the content that I've seen at a virtual event all year. Which I totally appreciated because as a WooCommerce professional and WordPress professional, having something captivate me and pull me into the screen all day long for two days, that's surprising, right? 'Cause I run away from the screens these days. So yeah, it was cool. Cool. Well, wait 'til you see the Do The Woo Conference. You know, it's... Well, I haven't told you three about that yet, but. No, just kidding. Anyway, so thank you for that, Mendel, little bit of interjection there. That was a good segue into it. Going back to what I was going to play, just to remind you, and I could just surprise you anyway, but it is Alan Smith, a question they had asked developers. So let's listen into this and then I'm going to have your feedback on this. [Alan Soundbite] So who are Woo developers? In July of this year, we sent out a survey to folks who selfidentify as quote, unquote, "WooCommerce developers," and I'll tell ya, we learned a lot. What we learned is that WooCommerce developers are not just developers. We asked people this question, "How do you use WooCommerce? "How do you interact with WooCommerce on a daily basis?" And we learned all sorts of interesting things. For instance, 75% of people who build or extensions, they also build and maintain stores for merchants. And vice versa, 70% of the people who build stores for merchants also build and maintain extensions or plugins. There's a certain subset of people who are theme developers out of that group as well, but what I think is really interesting is if you'll notice the overlap between the people who build a maintain stores, the people who build and maintain plugins, they, themselves are also store owners. So these are people who have direct experience not just with merchants that they build for, but they have direct experience as a merchant themself. So. Talk amongst yourselves. No, let's start with... I'm going to start with Brad. And I think what I want is to, you know, how do you concur with this as far as, you know, you're an agency, all three of you work with agencies, you work with developers, you know other developers, does this kind of jive into what you're seeing? And any thoughts on why that may be happening or why you see this more diverse and not pigeonholed developer definition? Yeah. The stats are very interesting, right? 70% of devs who build stores also build extensions. You know, that one, I think is a little more, maybe a little more obvious, you know? And on our side, we're an agency, we build stores, we build extensions, right? So I guess we would fall into that particular bucket. This goes back The first thing I thought about when I started hearing that is when you talk a WordPress developer in general, that means a very different thing than just a developer or a programmer. And on the surface, it may not, or you may not be thinking that, but as someone who's hired a lot of developers over the years, it absolutely does. And I think this probably falls into that kind of bucket, where a developer, when you say WordPress developer or even WooCommerce developer, it doesn't just line up with what traditionally people think of this like, hardcore, you know, just writing code, you know, expert at PHP level type of person. Yes, those do fall into that category, but it also is hobbyists fall in that category, or would consider themselves maybe a WooCommerce developer by installing and configuring a bunch of plugins and setting up a store, right? Same way with a WordPress developer. We see someone says, "I'm a developer," and we start digging in their experience and realize well, they're good at setting up, you know, putting a bunch of plugins together, configuring those plugins, and getting things to work from that sense. Which that does take a talent and a skill. It doesn't necessarily mean they're a developer in the sense of how we would traditionally think of it of actually writing code, building extensions, working with APIs, you know, really getting into the zeros and ones of it all. So I guess when I hear stats like that, that's kind of what I think about these terms of developers in our community and our space with WordPress, with WooCommerce. I think they're much bigger like, bubbles of people than we might traditionally think of. And I think maybe that's kind of the point we're hearing here is you know, a builder, the fact that they have that many builders also running stores I think is pretty fascinating. And I'd be curious to hear stats like that on other platforms because I bet that's not really the case with things like Shopify and stuff. I bet it's really because of WooCommerce and specifically because of the open source nature of the projects. Maybe, who knows? But that's kind of what I was thinking as soon as I heard that clip. How about you, Mendel? You know, kind of coming from the hosting and dealing with a lot of different developers, agencies, et cetera. Yeah. You know, if you're an agency, you eventually come across a situation where you need to customize something that you can't customize out of the box. Right? And so, I think... like as far as agencies go, I would say that almost 100% of agencies, once they reach a certain level of business, are always going to be a plugin, addon, custom code developer. So that's on one side. On the other side, if you've ever hired a plumber or an electrician to come to your house, you can find plumbers that are not certified, that they know how to put pipes together. And they might be really good at it. They might not follow every safety protocol. They might not have experience under their belt that teaches them that putting a pipe in one part of the house, you shouldn't use that same type of pipe in the other part of the house, right? And then you have plumbers that are like, masters at their craft, right? They have like, 62 different certifications and they build, you know, complex systems, and they can do commercial, and all sorts of stuff, right? Plumbers and developers or electricians and developers are very similar because I would argue that a plumber that doesn't have a certification or a base level of information is a different type of plumber than a commercial plumber, right? Like, there are many different types. And I think that developers are very much the same way. You can call yourself a developer the second you learn one line of code. And that's fine, and that's valid, and it's awesome. It's also important to realize that when everybody calls themselves a developer, that you have to look for the nuance in what that definition is for them. And I think that that's what we're seeing in some of these numbers as well, is, you know, if you know, somebody that has hacked a little bit of code in the core, that person's a developer, right? And if you know somebody that's built a you know, a headless interface... or an interface for headless WordPress or WooCommerce for an enterprise, like Disney or somebody like that, that's a developer. And so, knowing what those grades are or what those definitions are is important and I would love to see... I would love to see some data on that in the future because knowing that would help us level up people from one... from being one type of developer. You know, maybe a new developer or developer that doesn't code within the WordPress or WooCommerce standards to becoming a, you know, a developer that does, you know, runs tests and does things according to, you know, the scaffolding that is suggested within the projects and things like that so. Yeah, it's super interesting. I'm not surprised by the numbers, but I do think that the industry as a whole, whether it's WordPress, or WooCommerce, or Magenta, or whatever, deserves a little more rigor in those classifications and numbers so that we can understand who's building on our projects. Cool. Now, Jonathan, what's your thoughts on this? I had a lot of thoughts. Two are standing out. So, one of the first things that I focused on I've just now passed a year in this role. One of the first things I focused on, especially with our meetups program is putting more and more of our emphasis on store owners and merchants, the entrepreneurs versus developers, while at the same time acknowledging that it's... kind of, there's a continuum there, right? Like, I think because of Woo's open source nature, a lot of folks will say "I want to build a store," and then they get into it, they do something for themselves I know a number of folks who've done this And then they end up becoming a developer, they enjoy it, and they'll do more for others and go from there. So on the one hand, like, I think one of the things that we're working hard to do at Woo, like overall, is make more and more of what we do be focused on what's best for the store owner. And like, how do we make the user experience easier? Et cetera. This point of differentiation, it's really interesting. So part of this idea of calling... you take the term "builder," for instance, there's a lot of flexibility inherent in that term because there can be someone who is not using any code and they can be building a Woo site for clients, which I think is fantastic and really important to the future of this ecosystem. And then when it comes to the extensions, though, you know, and doing more complex things or the fact that Woo is growing in the enterprise. Like there's a different set of needs and capability required there. So, one of the things that we're working on and have been for a bit is the... is figuring out what does the next version of the Woo Experts program look like? And I think that's where there is a particular opportunity, is to offer this... there's a number of things that were changing about it. One is to remove the pay structure entirely so that there's not any sense of like, pay for play happening. But, I think there's an opportunity there for there to be this sort of standard around this idea of art. You're a Woo expert and there's some expectations that come with that, whatever that looks like. There's some opportunity there that I'm excited to see us explore further and get more input on. And I think if we can have some clear lines of demarcation, that without putting like, an optin versus like, a negative, right? Where it's like people can, who want to grow and want to get better can sort of distinguish themselves further. So I think there's some opportunity there and I'm excited to see us explore that. Thanks to our sponsor, PayPal. In time for the holiday season, PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay In Four. This means that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in four interestfree payments. This feature is one of two options from PayPal for pay later, with the other being PayPal Credit, which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. The second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering these payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they're more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interestfree payment options? And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a nobrainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid upfront with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal checkout extension on the marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace, and search for the PayPal checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks to PayPal for being a community sponsor for "Do The Woo." And now, let's head back on over to the conversation. Alrighty, cool. Well, home screen. WooCommerce home screen. One of the things they talked about is the changes to that, what's kind of happened, and then they talked about version two, which is going to be the next phase. One specific part that Elizabeth had spoke on was some of the features that are coming to the vendors, the plugin developers as far as onboarding people and you know how WooCommerce onboards. So I want to play this. And she just goes over a few of these features, I want to kinda get your thoughts on this. She's already talked about it, she's leading into, and these are the features for some of the vendors. [Elizabeth Soundbite] One of the things that I definitely want to touch upon is extensibility. So ways that extensions can plug into the home screen. Number one, are in the setup tasks. So once an extension is installed, the extension author can trigger a setup task that could help the merchant with onboarding to the extension or other things. Another area where extensions can plug in is in the store management car. So there's a section here for extensions. Lastly, extension authors also have the possibility of sharing information with merchants via inbox messages. Okay, that is it. That is it. So that gives you an idea of what home screen 2.0 is going to be happening as far as, yeah, having a little bit more for the vendors as far as what they're putting in there or when people add stuff. So, Mendel, I'm going to start with you. Your thoughts on that? I love the inbox. I think it's super cool. I love the direction all of this is going in. The one question that I should probably raise in the WooCommerce Slack is you know, will there be the opportunity for organizations that might have a slightly different onboarding process to change the onboarding messages, rather, not the onboarding messages, the default messages that exist as soon as you turn on WooCommerce? I think in some cases, it can lead to more confusion if there's a slightly different onboarding process or there are new technologies that are augmenting and making the experience WooCommerce better. But overall, I think it's awesome. I think that notifications have been the sore spot in WordPress as a whole. And I think this is a good step in the right direction. Cool. Let's swing over to you, Jonathan. I remember seeing the preview for the first time. We did an early, sort of design call for feedback, which I've really liked. It's been a pretty open, transparent process. And I was a little bit, a little shocked at first. I've been in WordPress for such a long time and you get used to the way that things are. So I, you know, even... like I had to take a moment like, "Okay, this is pretty different." But as I started to watch the feedback and as I sat with it a bit, I showed it off to just like, some store owners at my local meetup and just began to gather feedback. And just seeing how positive the reactions were and the focus on how do we make this user experience more straightforward, less intimidating, lower the barrier of entry, like, that's the right focus, my own sort of initial reactions aside. As I sat with it longer, I really liked the direction. There's a tension there to navigate, to Mendel's point, about how you balance well, first, just the frank reality that this is an open source project. And if someone doesn't like something, they could figure out a way to do something and to get around it. That's just a fact. But we want to force people into that position. So how do you balance this like, guided, curated, more userfocused experience that's designed to help more merchants succeed with giving people flexibility to do things that frankly, you can't anticipate? Which is the beauty of extension. So it's going to take iteration and feedback. I have a lot of confidence in the team working on it and their just desire to get input and make it the best that it can be in consideration of all the possibilities. It's going to continue to be a process, though. And I think like, Mendel's point's a great one, there are folks who are going to take Woo and WordPress and create different types of onboarding experiences and we want to give them the ability to do that. So Mendel, I think to your point, I would just make sure that you raise it loudly and that it's recognized and... I usually don't have a problem with loud. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, for sure. Brad, how about you? Yeah, I mean, you know, overall, I like it. I like the fact it's just enabled for everybody now with the latest release. Everything with WordPress extensibility is always, you know, should be at the forefront 'cause that's the whole core of WordPress and why it's so popular is that you can... you know, anyone that has the ability, developers either that they work with or themselves that they can do it, can customize these things, you know, to their needs. I think to me, it's definitely a step in the right direction, it's a step forward. I mean, to your point, Jonathan, like, change is always weird, right? Like anytime something you're used to seeing changes, like, the initial reaction, I think for everybody is skepticism, I guess, is probably the best way to put it. I'm seeing it now with like Facebook, everyone's been, you know, in the last few months everyone's been getting a new Facebook. And I enabled it like six or eight months ago and I was like, "Well, this is terrible." I was like, "But I'll stick with it 'cause I know that's probably "just my initial reaction," and now I don't really care, you know? It's fine. The, the way I look at this... the home screen, you know, the dashboard, or whatever you want to call it, like, this is... It's kinda like that first impression thing for new users especially, right? Like, when you look at a dashboard for an ecommerce platform, WooCommerce or otherwise, like, that's kind of your initial impression of like, what you're going to see as a store owner. This is where I'm going to live. Like, how do I feel about the way this looks, you know? Is this giving me the information I need? Is it overwhelming? Is it underwhelming? Is it right in that sweet spot? And it's gonna be different for everybody, but it's certainly a better experience right out of the gate, I think, than what was there previously, right? And the fact that, you know, Jonathan, I think you made the point of we've gotta iterate, like, you know, it's getting the new version out there, getting people comfortable with it, getting extension developers onboard to, you know, hook their extensions into it in a way that's thoughtful for their users and not just, you know, pushing upsell messages or whatever, but actual good data that a store owner would need to see, is just gonna make it that much better. So I think it's absolutely the right direction to go. And it looks great. Like, I think it's just a really clean experience and gets you the data that you wanna see right there on your dashboard. So I'm excited to see where this is gonna end up in a year, a couple years from now is it's not only the dashboard and home screen grows, but the extensions really start taking advantage of it. That's where I think we're gonna really see the power of it. Alrighty, well, we are on to the last one here and this is the marketplace. And I thought this was interesting because I know personally I get asked a lot and see people asking out there, you know, "Oh, should I put my extension on the marketplace or not?" And I've always, you know, I know from experience with as much traffic I get on my other site, BobWP.com, that it's a trusted place. Now, they're adding several benefits to the marketplace so I believe it was Alana was talking about it. And she got to a point where she pretty much laid out, it's a couple minutes here, but it's all the different things that now are gonna be available for vendors when they, you know, put their extension on the marketplace. I just thought it was interesting and want to get your feedback on that. But this is a couple minutes long so we'll play this one here. [Alana Soundbite] So firstly, we'd like to make our onboarding experience a lot smoother and more efficient. We'll be building out an onboarding wizard that will allow us to automate and streamline this process and we'll be providing a lot more granularity into the reporting in the dashboard as well. So a big one here will be a Google Analytics integration, which I know is a highly requested feature. And this will give you insights into your product page performance. And not only that, we'll be utilizing this increased granularity in the metrics to offer up smart suggestions to better your product page performance overall and to surface potential marketing and promotional opportunities in the marketplace. We'll also be delivering feedback from merchants directly to you as a vendor within the dashboard. This will include things like ratings and reviews, net promoter score, customer satisfaction score, access to refund reasons, which I know is a big one for many of you, and the feedback portal, which I keep alluding to and we'll dive into next. So now, I'll finally dive into the merchant feedback portal. So we're super excited to announce that we're bringing a feedback portal to the marketplace to open up the feedback loop and to better connect merchants with vendors. This is another way that we're hoping to improve upon the ability vendors have to communicate with their users directly. So in the first iteration of this, we'll have links to the feedback portal on product pages, allowing merchants to easily provide feedback to vendors. This will include the ability to comment back and forth and for vendors to provide status updates for features requested. The longer term vision for this includes the ability for a user to subscribe to a request or to follow a vendor's updates, the ability to vote on a request, and for vendors to send messages out to followers. So with that all said, is it... Now, if you were talking to somebody and they said "Hey, you know, "do you think I should put my extension on the marketplace?" With that in mind, and your own experience, and what you've thought or talked about in the past around the marketplace, what do you think? I'm going to the internal route here first with Jonathan and then we'll head to Mendel and Brad. I got a lot of thoughts. I think a lot about marketplaces and... First, overall, I love what the team is doing. I think what I love most is just the energy, attention, and care being put into it. We still got a long ways to go, we're still behind in a number of things. More my perspective. But I love the direction, I love seeing the growth, I love that there's... We're taken a much more open approach to it. Historically, we had this approach that was like, oh, we only want one of each kind of thing. And I don't know, there's something about... For me, a marketplace has lots of choices and there's this appropriate mix of curation guiding people. Like right now, one of the challenges with the plugin directory and WordPress in general is that there's so many options. And anyway, I love this focus on it being usercentered, like how do we get things that are useful? Yet, this conscious, deliberate investment in how do we improve the experience for people creating these extensions? How do we give them more feedback? How do we make it better? So I'm really optimistic. I love the energy and I'm looking forward to seeing how it continues to develop. Yeah, Brad? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question. It's a tough answer, I think honestly. Like I think the default, the easy answer is, "Yeah, absolutely," right? "Put it in the marketplace." I think for most people, that's probably the right answer. You know, you gotta factor in the net revenue payouts. It's like, what? 60%, if it's exclusive. Meaning that's the only place you sell it, is what you'll pull in from the net revenue and 40% if it's nonexclusive. Meaning you maybe have your own site you sell it on as well as the marketplace. I mean, in my opinion, if you don't have a name out there, if you're not an established player in the plugin space, trying to promote your own WooCommerce extensions on your own site is gonna be a very long, hard, uphill battle. And so putting it in the marketplace would make a ton of sense because people just don't know you. And even if they find you, are they gonna trust your product, right, if they don't know you? Now, there's a handful of companies out there that, you know, have a reputation, and a name, and a number of products and I think just by them putting something out there, it's instantly gonna be validated and have a ton of customers, but that's few and far between. So I think by and large for most people, the marketplace does make a lot of sense because it is... if you're exclusive, too, it kind of takes that selfmanagement of your own website and all that stuff off the table to an extent, right? Like, yeah, you might still have a site and you probably should and certainly have some documentation, but in terms of the sales funnel process, in terms of the you know, all of that, that's really taken care of for you, right, through the marketplace there at WooCommerce. And ultimately, that's where you're gonna get the most eyeballs being in the marketplace, you know? And no matter how big your reputation is or how far your reach is, you're never gonna compete with the core product in terms of people seeing it, right? I think for most people, it makes a lot of sense to go in the marketplace. There is a few outliers that maybe they might consider not doing it or doing the nonexclusive option. But I think for most people, they should. Aright, Mendel, what about, you know this is a little from the hosting perspective because you're kind of looking at it from a different angle and also, you know, is it these different added features what they really add value to the vendor? Yeah, just a few thoughts from you on the whole thing. Yeah, so often my, my perspective from a hosting perspective is the same as the perspective, you know, from a nonhosting perspective. Because at the end of the day, it's people winning, right? And trust and discovery are the two biggest factors in selling anything online. The marketplace provides that. And I say just do it. And I would even go further and say it's super cool to see an organization focused on the wellbeing of commercial players in the space. Right? That are going to upload their extensions, and try to sell them, and giving a platform. There are places with far more restrictive requirements or policies. If you have ever sold on eBay, then you know that putting a link to your website in an auction is a really bad idea because it'll get you banned from the entire site, selling. I think it's... I don't see a downside. And even for the people that are, you know, selling like crazy on their own sites, what a great discovery engine. Because new people are being minted every day, right? New builders are being minted every day. And to have a place to hook them on one of your plugins and then, you know, market to them and sell them another plugin directly from your site. Like, it's not an eitheror in my opinion. I think it's great. I mean, is Mendel talking about selling plugins and extensions or dealing drugs over here? He's talking about like, gateway extensions to get them into your... Hey, man, WooCommerce is insidious. [Jonathan] Gateway extensions, no pun intended. Yeah, exactly. Who's your sponsor again, Bob? Is it PayPal? PayPal, yeah. Is that a gateway extension? Oh man, we're ruining that sponsorship for you. Yeah, we are, you know? Okay, we rewind here and start over. No, seriously. Well, I don't know if... I have one more controversial thing to bring up. Can I bring up Okay, I was gonna say I was gonna say go ahead and do that. Please do. Okay, it's not actually, it's not that controversial, but I did wanna kinda find out Brad, Jonathan, maybe even Bob, I know Bob's opinion hasn't been in here much but, I want to know what you think about the current state of inventory and expense management for inventory, right? So how inventory is managed in WooCommerce. And then how expenses are calculated. So cost of goods and things like that. If it seems like that should be a third party extension that, you know, augments WooCommerce to handle that in a more sophisticated way? Or if this is something that you think WooCommerce core should approach. And the only reason I bring it up is because I've seen this in site, after site, after site, you know, integrating with like, Ship Station, right? Or not Ship Station, Trade Gecko and inventory management third party solutions like that. And nothing is as good as native, right? Even if you try and be, so. I'll speak to that. It's a very challenging tension to navigate. I'd say from our perspective, and this is just sort of my current understanding, which is fairly wellinformed, is this that we're ultimately focused on the quote, unquote, like "happy path" for new merchants. Like, in terms of what we prioritize in Woo, it's how can we lower the barrier of entry further? That's very much in sort of support of the mission, right? At the same time, the strength and power of Woo is the autonomy with which you can like, do what you want and the extensibility. So I think in general, as we get clearer and clearer on what matters the most to that... to especially to the beginners, I think that's the expectation is extensions are going to take care of those things. Where I hope to see a lot more progress and something I've been passionate about for a while in WordPress, is to really improve what it means to make an extension. Like, let's teach people how to make more native extensions, right, they're far from being equal. This has gotten a lot better in WordPress in recent years, we're seeing more like, companies come in and build firstclass extensions, we need more of that in Woo. I think the marketplace is really going to help with that. But there's definitely a gap there. And a number of different places where it works, but it often is not the smoothest experience. And I think we'll continue to make the overall experience smoother. And if it comes down that having a better way of dealing with expenses and inventory is something that matters to the majority, then it's going to be something we do in core. If it's not, then it's, how do we make it easier for folks building extensions to build like firstclass experiences that just take care of it and that feel effectively native? That's what we're after. Yeah, I mean, I've actually talked about this topic on the show with one of the areas I think that I I struggle to recommend WooCommerce is really complex warehousing and inventory type of systems. Is it doable? Sure, but I don't know if the effort's worth the reward when there's other systems that are very much larger, way more complex, way more expensive for, you know, obvious reasons. But I don't think this is something that, to your point, exactly what Jonathan just said, like, if the majority of people need something like this, I don't think the majority of people need, you know, advanced inventory, you know, multiwarehouse tracking capabilities. It'd be interesting to see some stats, but I would bet the majority of WooCommerce users are a much more basic setup, right, when it comes to inventory levels. I know there was release recently, I forget which version it was, but introduced some enhancements around inventory tracking, like if someone was buying something, it would kind of hold onto that piece of inventory for a period of time so it didn't get double sold. So those advances, I think, are really great in core, but I think you get to the more advanced stuff, I think core is probably not the place for that. It's like having a more advanced like, email marketing system in WordPress core. Like, could it do it? Yeah, but there's companies like, dedicated to that, you know? Things I think of specifically are things like the small business jewelry maker that, you know, wants to sell online and they also want to sell from their store. And that can be handled, you know, a bunch of different ways, you know, POS integration, or square integration, or whatever, but, you know, part of me wonders when you're a merchant, trying to go into a place to manage a thing, do you go into WooCommerce? Do you go into a third party? Do you go into your POS? Do you go into square? Where do you go, right? So that's the only reason it comes up in my mind. Not something super complex, like, you know, multiwarehouse inventory management and stuff like that. But I also get your point in not complicating things. Well that's a good example, like, when you have to manage a bunch of different systems, it comes down to like where's the single source of truth for your inventory? I'm gonna jump on that one because when we think about like, we think about WordPress more and more like an operating system, right? And if you take Woo, like, it's an ecommerce flavor of that, right? Like it's built on WordPress. So overall, when I think of a firstclass, like a first class experience with extension and my guide is to folks building is like bring it into the WooCommerce admin, bring it into WordPress. Figure out a way to solve that where folks can they can leave if they want to, and I've seen this happen better and better more recently. I like the work that Hub Spot's been doing more recently, bringing more of the elements directly into the admin. But I think that's like, people should be able to get the majority of the things done there and if there's more specialized things that they need to do or just really advanced, then send them off to a different interface, but I feel pretty strongly about that. And I think the ones that succeed the most are the ones that really have a native feeling experience. Well, all I can add to that is since WooCommerce has been on my site for eight to nine years, we can look at the fact that I've never sold a single physical product. So, I'll just leave it at that, you know? I'm not qualified to answer it because of my sheer neglect to worry about shipping anything from, let alone one Bob WP block that I had in my brain as far as a product to several blocks, so... So, let's leave it at that. But good point there, Mendel. I can always count on you to throw something into the mixer and I appreciate that. All right, well I think that does it. I think we've talked. We've talked the talk and I hope this gives some indication to what can be expected, which will be, who knows? I mean, episodes of this, this will happen every other Tuesday. If anybody's listening and wants to get on here, if they're, you know, deep into Woo and they want to get on and talk about stuff with a group of other cool guys, or gals, or whoever is on here, I would suggest reaching out to me and letting me know. Yeah, we're hoping to have and I'm sure, you know, three of these cohosts will occasionally pop in. I know they, you know, I work 'em to death anyway, but they may wander in aimlessly as some point or other. So I appreciate the three of you joining us. And I just want to thank our sponsors again. WooCommerce.com Again, Jobs. Everybody wants a job. Everybody wants to work. Everybody wants money. Wants to make a living in this tough time so check out, DoTheWoo.io under Jobs and you'll see some excellent opportunities there and PayPal. Yes, a gateway extension, as defined as we didn't talk about, or we did talk about. But yes, PayPal. Check out their Pay In Four. Good stuff. Yeah, like, again, no brainer. Wanna get you clients on that or if you're running your own store, you're a developer and you're running your own store, according to statistics, hey, you know, you might wanna put that on there. In fact, I'm gonna put it on for the Doo The Woo friends and see how that goes. So anyway, that's it. Real quick, where can people find all my wonderful cohosts? Brad? Yeah, find me on Twitter. WilliamsBA. Mendel? You can find me on Twitter. At IfYouWillIt. And you can check out Nexcess at NEXCESS dot net. Cool, Jonathan? You can find me on Twitter at SirJonathan and some of my writing occasionally on JohnathanWold.com. Alrighty. Well thanks, everyone, for tuning in to the first "Woo Perspectives" and we will see you in a couple weeks. Of course, you can always tune in to all the Do Woo. 'Til next time. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
33 minutes | 3 months ago
Buy Now, Pay Later with Greg Lisiewski from PayPal
Thanks to our community sponsors Traditionally, consumers like to be given the opportunity to make purchases with payments. In today’s world, with the number of people who are facing financial challenges and uncertain futures, it is even more critical. Here today to talk about Buy Now, Pay Later is Greg Lisiewski, VP and GM of Global Pay Later Products at PayPal. We chat about the industry, the benefits to consumers and merchants and the newest addition to the family at PayPal, Pay in 4. If you build sites, this is another weapon in your arsenal as you educate your clients and suggest solutions to meet their needs. A Chat with Greg In episode 77, Brad and I talk with Greg about: The history of Buy Now, Pay Later and how it is growing in today’s economy.The options that PayPal offers for their Pay Later Products and what those mean to merchants and consumers.How Pay in 4 touches the lower-ticket purchase and what makes it a great option for Woo builders, merchants, consumers, and stores of all sizes.How buy now, pay later is accelerating spending and conversions.The benefits of no additional fees or risk for merchants.How PayPal hit on the sweet spot of 4 payments and the repayment schedule.How to use it with WooCommerce to take advantage of a payment option that is already there and easy to set up with their PayPal Checkout extension. Connect with Greg Greg on LinkedInEmail Greg at gregl [at] paypal.com Buy Now, Pay Later options from PayPal Download the extension on the WooCommerce.com marketplace to offer buy now, pay later optionsLearn more about buy now, pay later options at PayPal Download the PayPal extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to offer buy now, pay later options. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everyone. Welcome back. We're here with Do the Woo. I'm BobWP, episode 77. I'm joined by my esteemed cohost, Mr. Brad Williams. How are you doing, Brad? Brad: Doing great. How are you doing, Bob? Bob: I'm doing good. And I'm wondering, are you missing summer yet? That's a question I always have for you. Brad: I mean, fall is my favorite season by far, so I'm loving life right now. It's nice, getting some cool weather, the leaves are coming down, watching Halloween movies every night. I already dug into the Halloween candy, which was a big mistake. I'm enjoying it. It's a great time of year. What about you, Bob? Bob: The fall is one of my favorites too, but I also really like all seasons. And I'm guessing that I'll probably ask you again in the winter if you miss summer and probably hear something a little bit different there. Brad: I'll have a different answer when snow starts dropping. Bob: I'm sure you will, Brad, knowing you. Well, let's go ahead and move into the show here. We have a very special guest and I'm excited to get into that. But before we do, I'd like to thank our sponsors. WooCommerce.com. I would recommend that if you are a developer to check out their developer resource portal. There's a lot of information. A little bit ago, they revamped that and they're really building that out, so take advantage of it over on WooCommerce.com. And we have PayPal. PayPal is our newer community sponsor. Looking forward to having them as a partner over the next few months, and been talking a bit about the buy now, pay later options they have, in particular the Pay in 4, and as much as I'd like to share that information with you right now, I think it'd be even better if I moved into introducing our guest, because he will be able to even give you more insights into that. We have Greg Lisiewski from PayPal. Really excited to hear what he has to say. How are you doing today, Greg? Greg: Doing really good. Thanks. Great to be here. Meet Greg Bob: Well, Greg, you have quite a background. You're upper management in PayPal in the buy now, pay later space. Could you tell us a little bit about what you do and a bit about your background? Greg: Yeah, sure thing. I manage our Pay Later products for PayPal, so the VP and GM of global Pay Later products. My background, as you alluded to, I've spent a lot of time in the intersection of technology product and credit and have been focused on this buy now pay later space for the better part of 15 years, starting with Bill Me Later back in 2005, 2006, which was eventually acquired by PayPal. Here we are all these years later, continuing to reinvent and push our products and value prop forward to help merchants and consumers. Bob: What I'd like to know is before we get into the specifics of what PayPal is doing in this space is in this industry, it's an interesting time right now, especially with the history of buy now, pay later, and I'm sure you could make a lot of comparisons, but what I'd like to do is have you give us in a nutshell what you see this industry is doing at large right now as far as around growth and how people are acclimating to this idea of buy now, pay later. The history of Buy Now, Pay Later and What it means to eCommerce today Greg: Yeah. There's been quite an acceleration of the adoption of buy now pay later, pay later products, particularly online over the last couple of years. And really driving that has been the rise of better solutions from a technology perspective and the intersection of that with platforms like Woo that allows solutions to get out to far more merchants than previous products were able to. Typically, it was limited to bigger retailers. Banks were the primary provider of loans. It really was Bill Me Later 15 years ago that pioneered this online point of sale finance, alternative finance, you know as now referred to FinTech, buy now pay later category that went dormant for a while coming out of 2008 and the last cycle we had until the last few years. There's been consumer shifts happening for a couple of years and in the pandemic over the past six months now has just driven even a broader and more massive acceleration between the shift online, as well as the fact that consumers are looking to spread a dollar and anything that gives them an ability to spread out or manage their cashflow in a more prudent way is well-timed. The options of Buy Now, Pay Later Brad: Yeah, I mean, it kind of makes sense when you think about it with everything that's going on, like you said, in the last six months and how just financially, I think a lot of things have changed for people and how they're spending their money and making sure that they're maybe being a little more thoughtful about it. The idea of spreading out payments I think has always been a very interesting thing for consumers, especially larger purchases. It makes it more doable, I guess, in a sense, right? And that's really where financing came back whenever it was invented in the first place. In terms of PayPal. I wonder if you can break down the different options here, because I'm familiar with the idea of the buy now pay later through PayPal to an extent. When I started doing some research for this show, I actually learned some things that didn't realize you were doing over there. I thought just for the listeners, anyone not familiar with what PayPal is offering and what the different terms, I've seen buy now pay later and the Bill Me Later and PayPal Credit. Are these all the same options? Are these different options within the overall PayPal platform for builders or even merchants? What is available through PayPal that they can offer their customers? Greg: Yeah, Brad, great question. We've long been in the buy now pay later space, but historically we've had one flagship product, which started out as Bill Me Later, and then as part of the acquisition and some branding changes became PayPal Credit, but the core offering of that product has always been six months no interest on purchases over $99, which is a fairly low order value, but it's really been aimed at more medium sized purchases, three, four or $500 and up, and that's been available for a long time for both sides of our network. Merchants have been able to promote that on their website earlier in the shopping journey, help convert browsers to buyers, drive up order values, et cetera, and then consumers, whether a merchant's promoting it or not, can have that as a funding option in their PayPal wallet and use it essentially virtually anywhere PayPal is accepted. You were talking about seasons, so I'm in the Mid-Atlantic here, so if I'm looking to get a snowblower for the season, I can buy it online and use PayPal credit and pay for it after winter is over, or if I'm planning a trip in the early part of the year, I can purchase my airline tickets ... maybe not a great example in the pandemic, but purchase my spring break tickets January, February, and then time out my payment when I actually use it. Pay in 4 is he low ticket purchase anchor However, as we've looked at the space and consumer behavior shifting, we thought it would make sense to bring additional value props to market. We want to create essentially a suite of buy now pay later solutions. PayPal Credit is the six month offer as an anchor, but for lower ticket purchases, the Pay in 4 product is the one we're rolling out now. And you alluded to it earlier. The history of financing has tended to be around larger ticket purchases. But one of the shifts we're seeing in consumer behaviors is the desire to budget out even smaller purchases, $100 purchase or $150 purchase. Now if you want to pick up $100 pair of sneakers or a $100 accessory for the thousand dollar grill, giving consumers a choice where they can make four payments of $25 all automated, very lightweight, light touch, frictionless process. That's our newest offering and helping consumers payment choice, we think we can help merchants sell more. Payment options bundled with PayPal And that's where merchants through platforms like Woo or developers who build solutions on behalf of merchants can work with our, with our SDKs and whatnot to allow merchants to deploy these offerings, this dynamic messaging, when someone's looking at a purchase or a product rather, and say, "Hey, it's $100, or you can pay for it in four payments of $25." If it's a $500 purchase, it will dynamically change the message and say, "Hey, take six months of no interest for that purchase." And these are really proven tools to help convert sales. And in our case, it's bundled with your PayPal offering, so no incremental costs, no incremental risk, no new backend processing, et cetera. It's just a matter of deploying messaging where it helps convert sales. Brad: Yeah. And that's what really stood out to me because I think my assumption before I started doing all the research is that there would be a cost for something like this, because it is an awesome deal, right? Being able to offer financing through my store, if I'm a small business or any sized business, but specifically a small business, I think my assumption would be that, "Well, this is a very cool offering, but surely there's a catch, right? As the merchant, I must have to pay into this. There must be some kind of a transactional fee or interest that I'm paying or I might have to be maybe at a certain tier or something," but it sounds like there are no additional costs and it's available to anyone that is running PayPal payments through their store. Is that right? The merchant pays no extra costs Greg: Yeah, that's exactly right. As we accelerated our efforts this year in light of the pandemic, we really want to think about how we can help merchants in a time of uncertainty, and many are fighting to survive, help them any way we could. And given that we're a payment processing business as our core business, your ability to bring an offer like pay I four, it's not our main profit driver, right? In helping merchants sell more goods, we get more processing volume and that's how we make our money and we don't have to price it a premium for a financing product where standalone solution providers typically do have to price quite a premium to normal processing rates because they're all getting a fraction of the sales and it's a different monetization schema for them. And we're pleased to be able to offer it as part of your PayPal bundle. Brad: Yeah. I was just looking at the screenshots on the website. It couldn't be more clear, right, when you're selecting that option. Just seeing that option on the product screen or the checkout process I think is really enticing for someone that's maybe on the fence of whether they're comfortable spending that $100 right now or not and that's clearly the thing that could push them over the edge to make that conversion and to purchase that product. But I love how it just kind of lays out your example of $100 and it just shows you're going to pay $25 today and another $25 on a specific date. For the consumer, the customer it's crystal clear exactly what they're getting into by doing this. And I think just the idea of keeping it to four payments also helps keep it really simple, right? It's not trying to do some algorithm based on the purchase, a number of months and days or whatever. It's just four payments. Divide by four and here you go. Greg: Yeah, it's straightforward. It's all automated. You don't have to worry about coming back and making the payment. That said, we'll make sure you know that when we're going to pull a payment from a credit or debit card of yours, we'll send a text notification. We really tried to blend the ability to drive conversion for merchants with something that consumers could really understand and take advantage of without having to put a lot of thought into it after the fact. And to the earlier part of the conversation for those bigger ticket purchases or for people who want to do multiple spends, we do have PayPal Credit available as well. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. What made the number of 4 payments such a sweet spot Bob: Yeah. I was curious, that sweet spot of four, because I think there are people that, especially we don't know what's going to happen a few months from now and to get tied into a long-term credit payback. Is that part of the strategy behind it and how you came up with that, number four is some people do want to still have that opportunity to spread it out, but they don't want to be stuck into payments for a long, long time. And of course, no interest is a bonus to that, but was there research done to get to the number 4? Greg: We do lots of research. We have multiple markets. We have other markets outside of the US where we run similar products. And when we talked to consumers, interestingly enough, four ... I think Brad was mentioning it ... it's pretty easy math for folks to do. It lines up with the traditional, not the always, but the traditional payment schedules in the US in terms of biweekly pay. Some regions have monthly pay. And in our case, it's four payments every two weeks. Other markets, we're looking at every 30 days, because they get paid on a monthly basis. And outside of that, we didn't want to overthink it. We wanted just to keep it simple, clean, and as Brad was alluding to, something someone could look out six or eight weeks and know there was a finite period that they were going to be done with paying back that purchase they made, whether it was a want or a need, at any given moment. Making it easier for the consumer to buy and spend more Brad: Yeah. It was mentioned on the site as well, you see basically these websites that have messaging around pay over time are seeing an actual increase in the average order value, which isn't something that I really thought of but when you hear that, it makes perfect sense, right? When you realize, hey, I could maybe splurge a little bit, maybe add that extra thing in my cart that I didn't think I'd be able to, because now I have the option to spread those payments out, which work for me, like you said, on that biweekly schedules against payday so that I can get that extra thing that I wanted to get maybe my kid for Christmas or whatever it might be. I think that's really interesting for any store owner to really understand that and to dig into that is offering this type of messaging and this type of service can actually just increase the overall cart size and the order, which is ... I mean, that's a huge win, increase that cart size. Greg: Yeah, Brad, I agree. And when you step back and think about it, which most of us don't because we're not living in payments and immersing ourselves in payments all day, but it's everywhere we are, especially in a normal environment, right? If you just pay attention on a Saturday driving around or walking into various stores, you'll see that there's financing in all sorts of categories, sporting goods, hardware, furniture, stereo, et cetera. And it's been a tactic for retailers for decades to help convert sales because consumers like flexibility in payment and they like to borrow other people's money to make those purchases. Online, it sort of has the same effect, but I think any retailer is comfortable with the idea of putting a messaging persistent on a product page, which every pixel is sacred. Just took a while to gain traction because you hadn't really proved out the incrementality. But I think that box has been checked. And now it's really a sort of trusted way of driving conversion, because it does give customers an opportunity to close a sale today that they may have waited a month for or your example, they'll add something extra to the cart that they were going to come back for. And that's what we're trying to do. And we're trying to do it responsibly. We're really conscious of making sure we're extending credit, even in these sort of smaller micro amounts to folks who can afford it. And we feel good about our capabilities given our long history in this space. Bob: It makes a lot of sense just because when you're buying something, whether it could be a TV, a computer, whatever, having that fact of, "Oh, now I can break this into four payments and maybe I should throw in that little option. Maybe I should get some speakers for my TV now that I'm doing it, because this is going to be a little easier to handle." So yeah, that's good stuff. Brad: I was just going to point to these type of conversations and these types of features, especially really for ... and we talked pre-show how this conversation is really going to tread both sides of the house, right, from the implementers, the developers, but also the store owners. Just having this knowledge of these things you can implement, services you're probably already using, I mean, every store we launched already has credit cards and PayPal. That's just a requirement, right, because so many people want the option and it's just the standard and what you do. Knowing that PayPal has some of these additional features available to you and how that can help with conversions, with cart size growth, these are things that a lot of the eCommerce sites out there, they're not run by massive corporations that have teams that can really ... You talked about how important those pixels are. A small business, they're lucky enough to be able to sell a product online and actually ship it out and make that whole process work, because this is all new to them for many of them, or it's just a side revenue to get some product out the door. But as implementers, having this information and bringing it to your clients and bringing it to your shop owners and saying, "Hey, you should turn this on. This is going to help grow sales and this is the benefit of it, and you're already using PayPal, so this is why you should do it," you're just going to be that much more of the expert and honestly the superhero in their eyes, because if you can implement some very simple things, flip a few switches and you make more money for them, why would they ever want to work with anybody else, right? They're only going to want to work with you. It's like the abandoned cart stuff, right? Abandoned cart has a clear path of how it works. It converts. It brings people back that had otherwise walked away. And there's a lot of services that you can implement very quickly and easily that can convert those people. And to bring that to the table for your customers is huge in my opinion and it really solidifies you as the expert and that's why they hired you. It's good to have this knowledge. It's good and understand the different services that are available, especially from platforms like PayPal that you're already working with. It's good to research and really dig into this. This is fascinating. A payment option already there Greg: Yeah, Brad, I think it's a really excellent point. And that's what's so great about platforms like Woo is you simplify getting from idea to launch greatly. In this case, it takes a merchant who, to your point, is just trying to get the basics right. And given that it's on a platform they're already working with with a payment option they're already turned on, it really becomes a couple more settings in your admin console and suddenly the merchant has as sophisticated and merchandising machine as a top 100 e-tailer might have, as it relates to buy now pay later capabilities, without taking on any additional costs. It's not suddenly that a fraction of their transactions are now going to cost one, two, three percent more. It's already tied in with what they were already paying from a payment processing perspective. And given PayPal's reach, I think the stat we use now is two thirds of US adults have made a purchase with PayPal in the last three months, so we have a wide customer base already out there looking for the PayPal mark. We appreciate your perspective there. Benefits all sizes of stores Bob: Yeah. And I was going to say that it seems like a small ... Somebody, let's say they have five or 10 products and they're thinking, "Well, this is cool. This really opens up other options for my customers." On the other end of the spectrum, somebody that has hundreds of products may ... whether you're a merchant yourself or somebody building a site for somebody, you might say, "Well, does this really make sense for the larger business?" But as you said, it sounds like it really is a win-win situation, whether you're smaller or larger or all sized businesses. Greg: Yeah, Bob, it is, because consumers are all the same, right? Whether they're shopping at a small merchant or a large merchant, a medium merchant, they're all looking at a purchase decision in the context of how will that impact my cashflow, now more than ever in these unusual times we're living through in 2020. And one of the things we're also excited about at PayPal is there are a handful of providers of similar solutions and it's sort of fragmented across the merchant landscape and given the ubiquitous sort of coverage of PayPal, we certainly want to promote the capability to merchants that merchants turn it on for the shopping journey so that customers are seeing it while they're making their consideration of buying something or adding something additional to the cart, but we'll also be doing a large consumer push as it will be a feature of the PayPal wallet as well. So we'll start to build the expectation with consumers that if a merchant doesn't get to the point of messaging Pay in 4 on a product page, that as long as PayPal is on that site, it'll still be there for a customer to take advantage of and we'll help create customer pull through even just by having the PayPal mark and remove the uncertainty that might exist in a consumer's mind of, "Well, if I'm shopping at merchant A today, which offer will I see, and if I flip over to merchant B, will I see a different offer?" Because they're doing relationships with different vendors. In our case, we think we'll become the e-commerce standard for pay later solutions given our wide coverage on the merchant side. Brad: Yeah. I mean, what'd you say, two thirds of adults are paying with PayPal? Greg: In the last three months. That's right, yep. Brad: In the last three months. That's an amazing number. But I get it. The beautiful thing about PayPal is it's easy. Whenever I'm clicking a random ad on Facebook, laying in bed and buying something I probably shouldn't be buying, PayPal is easy. One click, I'm logging in and boom, order placed. Greg: Yeah. You're not tracking a wallet down in the dark or waking anybody up, right? Yeah. Brad: Ease of use is always ... especially from the mobile perspective, that's the biggest thing for me is I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to maybe buy something on mobile and the experience was so bad I just stopped and I never went back, but the idea of if it is a good experience from the shopping experience, but then you go into checkout and it's PayPal, then you know the payment's going to be easy too, because you just log in and away you go. It makes it very easy from a mobile device, which I love. Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. PayPal removes the risk for merchants I do have one last question, and I guess this is on the what could go wrong side of the house, but obviously there's credit in play here, right? Basically if somebody buys something, the example we had, $100 on my site, they spend the $25 today, if I'm understanding it correctly, me as the seller, I get paid in full, is that right? And then PayPal is essentially in charge of collecting those additional payments? What happens if somebody doesn't pay? Does that come back to the merchant or PayPal assume that responsibility? What happens in that case? Greg: Yeah, that's a great question. From a retailer perspective, it looks like every other dollar spent on PayPal. You get paid upfront, all the normal processing, and PayPal does own and takes the risk on collectability. And there's no further exposure that the merchant has once the is complete outside of normal fulfilling goods and whatnot, but from a credit risk perspective, that's all on PayPal. And one of our advantages relative to others is with 350 million active consumers plus or minus globally, and having done point of sale lending for the better part of 15 years now, we have lots of data and algorithms and whatnot to make good decisions. And that's how we'll manage the business on our side and are able to bring it to merchants as part of that bundle pricing they offer PayPal without that premium, while having fairly high ... I hate to use the word approval rates because it's not quite a traditional loan, but essentially, there is a point in the process where it is technically a loan, So we do run some evaluation of risk. Given our history and our data, we have pretty high throughput, I guess is the way to say it. Brad: That's great. I mean, I think, and again, another reason why it's kind of a no brainer for stores to consider and ultimately offer this because they're not taking on that risk, which I think would probably be one of the first questions a store owner would ask, like, "Well, what if they don't pay?" Greg: Yeah, that's right. Brad: To hear that it doesn't come back to them, and there aren't additional costs, like you said, I mean, then I don't see any reason why a store wouldn't want to implement this. Greg: Yeah. It's no risk, no cost. And given the Woo platform and the way PayPal and Woo are integrated together, very little work as well. I mean, saying it out loud does make it sound like one of those, "What's the catch?" And yeah, I'm happy to say that the catch is simply we've been doing it a long time and engineered a product and a solution that just works without a lot of calories on any front on the merchant side. Easy to use with WooCommerce Bob: From the perspective of everything we've talked about and getting down to the technical clarification, just for everybody knows, they may be sitting there thinking, "Okay, I know when I hook up PayPal to a Woo site, it's pretty straightforward. We do it. Bam, bam, bam, put in few things." As far as this goes, no more bells and whistles, no more having to do a bunch of extra things. They just use the existing extension that's on WooCommerce and that takes care of it, right? Greg: Yeah. That's exactly right. Woo and PayPal have done the work to connect the platforms and now if you are managing your site or you're managing a site on behalf of the other merchant, you can go into the Woo console and activate the buy now pay later offerings from PayPal and it'll show up on product pages and the like to help start driving those incremental sales. Simple as that. Bob: We like it easy. Greg: And still time for holiday season. We're in October, so I think that's holiday season now. Brad: Yeah, I mean, it's coming in hot and heavy. Greg: Hard to believe. Brad: Next thing we know, it'll be Black Friday. Now's the time. I mean, now's the time to make sure your store's in shape if you haven't already been getting ready for it, which I would imagine most store owners are because this is a tradition as the businesses that when we get knocked over in certainly November for online purchasing. Plus I'm sure just overall, clearly online purchasing is up across the board in the past six months given everything going on. Bob: Yeah. And I imagine what better than to get a great Black Friday deal than be able to do it in four payments. I mean, no interest. It definitely adds some sweetness to the pot. Well, Greg, is there anything we haven't really touched on? I just wanted to make sure there isn't something else you wanted to add to the mix here before we close out the show. Greg: Not really. I mean, it's clear you guys did your research. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the questions and I'll just emphasize the last couple of points we were making, which is PayPal and Woo have really partnered up to make this as simple as it possibly could be and it's live now. I think if you're so inclined, it's a great time to go and activate the offering. And really, it would be a competitive parody with others who have implemented more complicated solutions without paying any incremental costs. I appreciate the time and look forward to more. Bob: Yeah. Cool. All right, Brad. Well, why don't you do the official Brad closing out of the episode? Brad: Yeah, this was great. I really appreciate the time Greg. Again, we want to thank our sponsors. Head over to WooCommerce.com. It's the platform we're always talking about. Also check out DoTheWoo.io and the job listings there. Click on jobs at the top. And of course DoTheWoo.io is the new home of the podcast. And it looks like we've got three different job openings for WooCommerce, at WooCommerce. So if you're interested in working on the actual platform or working with the platform, go check it out, DoTheWoo.io and then click on jobs at the top. And of course we want to thank PayPal our new sponsor. I appreciate you coming on, Greg, and telling us everything about buy now, pay later, Pay in 4, PayPal Credit, a lot of good options. And I've learned some things, which I always love about this show when I can take a few interesting nuggets away. It seems to be a pretty obvious feature that most people probably want to implement. I'm sure everyone's already using PayPal so why not flip it on and give your customers some options? Greg, if people want to find out more information, where should they head? Just head over to paypal.com? Is there a specific section of the site we want to point them to? Greg: Yeah, they can go to paypal.com and look for a pay later section. It'll have links out to ways to activate it, including a quick link over to WooCommerce if you're on a Woo platform. Brad: Awesome. Definitely check that out. Of course, yeah, WooCommerce.com has a lot of resources as well. Anything I missed there, Bob? Bob: No. I think you are set. Any place that you want people to reach out to you directly, LinkedIn or anything, Greg, where they can find you? Connect with Greg and learn more about Pay in 4 Greg: Anyone's welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or I'll even throw my email address out there, gregl@paypal.com if anyone wants to talk buy now pay later. And just to make sure I didn't completely botch where to go on paypal.com, the simple way to find the solution is simply paypal.com/paylater will bring you right to the section that talks about our solutions. Bob: Perfect. Brad: Awesome. Well, with that, Bob, anything coming up, any special announcements, events you want to mention before we wrap up? Bob: No, I can't think of any. I think we have the holidays, which is in everybody's mind about as special as it can get. They're going to creep up on us real fast here, so no, I think that'll do it for now. Brad: All right. Well, for another episode of Do the Woo, thank you, Greg, and thanks everyone for joining us and we will see you next time. Greg: Thanks guys. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
44 minutes | 3 months ago
The World of Woo and eCommerce This Year with Chris Lema from Nexcess
Thanks to our community sponsors The year of 2020 has been challenging and at the same time, provided a chance for some opportunities for growth in the eCommerce space. We asked Chris Lema to come back to the show and reflect on the year so far, with both perspective and insights. Together we take a look at the bigger eCommerce space and then narrow it down to the Woo builder community. You’ll find a lot of gems in this one. A Chat with Chris In episode 76, Jonathan and I chat with Chris about: 2020 and thoughts on the eCommerce spaceOpportunities in the space— despite of the challengesSome of the challenges that presented themselves How builders are handling the growth in the interest in online sellingThe twists and turns that come with streamlining the opportunitiesWhat Chris expects we will see this Black FridayHow builders can help Merchants navigate the myriad of hosting options What he has seen happening in the subscription space over the last several monthsAdvice from Chris for devs entering the WooCommerce space to build sites or products Connect with Chris TwitterLinkedInYouTubeNexcess.net Learn more about the Buy Now, Pay Later options for your clients. Start your next career in WooCommerce at WooCommerce. The Conversation Transcript Email Download New Tab Jonathan: Welcome to Do the Woo Episode 76. I'm your co-host Jonathan Wold, and I'm here with the fantastic BobWP. Bob, how are you today? Bob: Hey, I'm good. We got a little bit of a wind storm here, so I always cross my fingers. Of course, we have wind storms all the time on the coast. Is the electricity going to go out, Bob disappear suddenly? That only lasts three or four months, so it's no big deal, ha. Jonathan: I think we may have the same thing happening over here, because I'm only a few hours away from you and it's pretty gnarly outside right now as well. But the Internet's working? That's what I tend to care about the most. Bob, how's the launch been going? Bob: Good. A lot of good feedback. Yeah, actually pretty amazing feedback. I mean, a lot of people are really excited about it. A lot of people want to get involved. I had a few new Do the Woo friends. Jonathan: I think it's worth saying as well that you did a lot of it yourself, which I was pretty impressed by. Did you get your fill of working on websites? Bob: Yep, I don't want to build another website for approximately seven years. I've set a new goal, so I'm not going to touch that again. Well, before we have you introduce our guest, I'd just like to thank our sponsors, WooCommerce.com 4.6 came out. Just a lot of good stuff going on over at WooCommerce. If you missed all the good stuff on WooSesh earlier this week or just the last couple of days, you can go over there and get the recordings. Join Brian Richards and WPSessions and he'll get you lined up. So visit WooCommerce.com. We're excited to have a new sponsor, PayPal. Yay, PayPal. Anyway, what can you say about PayPal? PayPal is PayPal. I mean, we're all using it. One of the things I'll be talking about and we will be talking more about during their sponsorship is their Pay in 4, that lets customers pay for their purchases over time and for interest free payments. They introduced that a little while back, kind of a cool thing. I'll actually be telling you more about that a little bit later in the show. Jonathan: What I love about PayPal is they have been here a really long time in the space. Many of us have done eCommerce installations on PayPal and they're continuing to do new things. So there's a good continuity that's there. So that's been great. I'm happy to see them involved in this community space. And they're a big part of the eCommerce ecosystem. Bob: I totally agree with you. I'm looking forward to having PayPal as a partner and learning about a lot of their cool stuff going on. So let's go ahead and get started with this show. We have someone that I could say, well, maybe many people don't know our guest, but that would be very untrue. So Jonathan, why don't you introduce our guest? Jonathan: We've got Chris Lema, who needs little introduction in this space. Chris has been contributing valuably to the WordPress ecosystem since... Was it 2005, Chris? It's been a long time huh? Chris: Yep, long time. Jonathan: You know the space well. You've been involved in a lot of things. Today, amongst the many things that you're doing, you're serving as the VP of products over at Nexcess/Liquid Web. Chris: Yeah. Jonathan: Yeah, so thank you for all that you're doing there and thanks for joining us today. It's great to have you. Chris: It is great to be here. Jonathan: We started out with the weather. How is the weather in your neck of the woods currently? Chris: I think in Houston, which is where my house is now, it is warm. I am currently in Atlanta for a couple of business meetings and it is not what you would call cold. Either way in both these parts, we're not seeing the storms that you guys are seeing up in the areas that you're in. I think we're good. But the truth is, I spend most of my days indoors, right? So I actually have to venture all the way to a window and look outside to know what's going on. Jonathan: Both the downside and the upside of being able to have a flexibility to work where you want to work, right? Chris: Yep. Jonathan: Excellent. Well, Chris, it's always great to have you. Chris: It is great to be here. I'm wearing purple, but not because of WooCommerce and not because I just did a session on WooSesh, but because the Lakers won their championship and I've waited 10 years. So all week is a purple week. Every shirt I'm wearing this week is all purple. Jonathan: It's a good week. A first look at the ecosystem in 2020 You've been in this ecosystem for a long time. You've seen a lot sort of come and go. This particular year seems especially loaded. There's been a lot happening. Chris: Yeah. Basically, if you're an analyst for eCommerce, every one of your projections was wrong, right? Because you know how people do their projections, right? They're linear progression, line just keeps creeping. Whoever said, "Oh, well, I think that in 2020, we're going to see eCommerce grow by whatever the percent you were thinking." I think we were seeing eCommerce in the US moving a couple percentage points every year. Whoever predicted 2020 was way off, right? They were just like, "Oh my God! What's happening?" McKinsey was like, "Oh, we've seen 10 years worth of growth in three months." So nobody was ready for this. There's been a lot of downside in a COVID related space; businesses closing, families hurt by unemployment, people not able to pay rent. I mean, the list goes on and on of all the negative things. The one, maybe silver lining in all that has been massive growth in eCommerce. Adoption in every form and every trend. And so if you're in that space, that's been the good news. Opportunities seen in this space Jonathan: So Chris, you've been in this eCommerce industry for a bit. And for those of us just kind of looking broadly, it's easy to see the growth, and it's easy to see that there's a lot happening. From your vantage point though, being at a company that does manage WooCommerce and having good connections in the product space, has there been anything that stands out to you, particularly in terms of maybe some of the opportunities that you're seeing in this space or some of the challenges? I'm just curious what you've been seeing over the past six months or so. Chris: What I've seen mirrors what we're reading about in the industry trade mags and everything else. I think we've noticed that there is very little brand or store loyalty out there, right? When you get caught and you don't know where to buy toilet paper, you stop worrying about brands, right? Or if you always buy at Amazon and all of a sudden Amazon delays its shipping timelines, you start buying at other places, right? Walmart was like, "Thank you for being you, Amazon. We're happy to drive this." But it wasn't just the big box retailers, right? It was everyone under the sun. So we've seen stores, we've seen retail, we've seen folks who have just pushed into a space that was previously owned and dominated by one 800-pound gorilla. And it's dispersed, it's distributed. People are making money online even if they're not the biggest name, because brand loyalty is not what we expect it to be. So we've definitely seen that. We've seen a lot of requests come into us as a host and who does manage WooCommerce hosting. Requests that we can't perfectly solve for groceries. "Hey, can we host a grocery store online?" You're like, "You can, but there's a lot more to it than the website. You got to worry about inventory. You got to worry about shipping." I mean, it gets complicated pretty fast when you go all the way out to groceries. But online groceries is one of the biggest growth components that we've seen, right? Both grocery and what we've seen out in the rest of the data points. The US and Portugal had super high growth in that, right? And I'm like, "I don't know what US and Portugal have in common, other than they both enjoy wine." But you're like, "Wow! Okay." We're seeing massive growth in that space. We're also seeing that for every store that closed down... And again, as a hosting company, we get those phone calls where people say, "I can't run it anymore. I got to close down." For every store that was closing down, every website that was closing down, we saw one or two stores that popped up, right? People were attaching eCommerce to a previous non eCommerce store. You might've had a blog, now you want to merchandise it with a T-shirt. You had a physical store, now you want an online store. We've seen quarters of this now; of definitely more closing than we've seen on a normal basis, but massively more growth and openings than before. The challenges and risks 2020 has brought to the ecosystem Jonathan: One more question I'm curious about in this vein of thinking, so we see a lot of opportunity in the eCommerce space which is generally sort of a positive thing, but what are some of the challenges or risks that you're seeing to folks in this space? Chris: Oh, yeah. I mentioned Amazon a little bit ago, but I'll tell you, we started working with ShipBob, one of our partners, because people who had previously counted on Amazon for their fulfillment services, were suddenly told, with almost no notice, "We are not going to accept your shipments anymore." What Amazon did to mitigate the fact that so many people were buying household items that were cleaners and those supplies, they couldn't maintain that while accepting all the rest of the inbound stuff that was going to be for Amazon stores. So you can imagine, right? We've had five years of people telling anyone who will listen, "You should spin up an Amazon store. You should use Amazon buy fulfillment. You should do." On and on and on. So let's say that you finally bought into that. Okay, great. You send a whole pallet of your products to Amazon and Amazon says, "We're not accepting it. And by the way, for whatever you have in stock, we're putting a delay on it because we're shipping these other things." We redirected a whole bunch of people to ShipBob and ShipBob opened up thousands of square foot of new warehouse space and just started processing stuff, right? And it's hard when you count on the main player, and that main player is external to you, right? You count on someone else, and then they change rules on you, which they were doing for their own good reasons and I get it, but it can affect your business dramatically. The tidal wave of people who want to sell online and how if affects the builder Bob: One of the things I was wondering, Chris, has this added this layer of stress on agencies? For example, all these businesses that are hurting right now and they want to go online. And some of them, it's a natural segue, "Yeah. Hey, we'll do it." But then I imagine a lot of these agencies are getting people coming out of desperation. "I have this physical brick and mortar store. I need to get online." The agency's looking at their business and thinking, well, that's going to take some creativity because obviously not everybody you have can adapt to online. Have you heard that from the agencies that they're getting more inundated? Chris: Yeah, we're seeing pressure in a lot of different ways, right? One pressure is, we need this up fast. We need it faster than we've ever asked before. I don't have nine months to get something up and online, right? If you're talking about a really big and complicated WooCommerce or a really big Magento store, and the agencies are like, "This is our normal process. We'll do it in six months." And so there's pressure on an agency that says, "Tell me what you can get done in one month or two months. I need this up fast." So there's that pressure. Second pressure is, some of the folks that are asking for this stuff have fixed budgets, right? You're asking for some of the most complicated stuff at some of the most inexpensive price points. And that applies pressure to agencies as well, right? And some of the best agencies will regularly go into, "Well, let's do a phased approach. Let's get you up and do phase one, and then we'll use the revenue from phase one to put into phase two." And so there's definitely ways to manage it, but they're seeing the second pressure, which is price points, right? The first is timelines, the second is price points. The third pressure is that... And it's not different than we've ever had. It just becomes more pronounced when those first two pressures exist. And that's when agencies are asked to do things that, frankly, they're not even sure they know how to do, because Amazon's doing it or Walmart's doing it, right? Imagine you're like, "Hey, I want to spin up an online store." "Okay, no problem. We can do that." "Well, and I want it to have inventory and track it based on both what's being sold online, but also what's being sold offline in the physical premise." You go, "Okay, that's a little hard, but we can do that." "And I also want to know what parking spot you just pulled into so that I can make sure to deliver your order to the right parking spot." And you're like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. How do we get the parking spots?" You're like, "What? Okay, hold on." "And then I want a mobile app that will let me check in to the parking spot and give you the spot when I get there." And agencies are like, "Okay, we're going to have to think through this. This is not something we do every day." I think agencies are feeling three different kinds of pressures. We're hearing it, we're seeing it. And of course, that doesn't stop the normal pressures like, "I want it fast. How do I make it faster?" That's an everyday dynamic. Thanks to our sponsor PayPal. In time for the holiday season PayPal has launched a new pay later option called Pay in 4. This mean that your clients can offer their customers the option to purchase over time in 4 interest-free payment. This feature is one of two option from PayPal for pay later with the other being PayPal Credit which gives store customers more purchasing power through flexible and transparent choices in how and when they pay. This second option is subject to consumer credit approval. So offering those payment options is good business. Did you know that 64% of consumers surveyed say they are more likely to make a purchase at a retailer that offers interest-free payment options. And 56% of consumers that responded agree that they prefer to pay a purchase back in installments rather than use a credit card. Well, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Clients can grow their sales and get paid up front with no additional risk or cost. All you need to do is download the PayPal Checkout extension on the Marketplace at WooCommerce.com. Just head on over, click marketplace and search for the PayPal Checkout. Suggesting that to your clients will certainly open up sales opportunities for them. Thanks for PayPal for being a community sponsor at Do the Woo. And now back the conversation. Jonathan: What's interesting about that challenge too is that, because of the distributed nature of this ecosystem, that question is being asked of different agencies at the same time, right? The grocery store has been a great example of that. I want to be able to park in this spot. And if you zoom out, you say, 'Okay, it makes sense and it's also plausible." But then because it's not centralized, you end up having this frank reality that multiple people are working on the same thing, and there's some diffused effort there which has advantages but it also has disadvantages when it comes to speed. You guys are in a position where you get to see more of these types of things coming together. Streamlining the opportunities So I'm curious about how you as a host, think about the opportunities here because you want to continue to play to the strength of WooCommerce on WordPress as this distributed ecosystem where people have choice yet at the same time, there's opportunities to help streamline things. So I'm curious, how do you think about that when you see all these? Chris: It's a tight rope we walk every day, right? Let's say you come and bring a website onto my platform and you are like, "Hey, this is our WooCommerce store and it's on our platform." And then you say, "Huh, it's not as fast as you promise it would be. You said it would be fast and you gave me the whole pitch on why I should host it over here." And I go, "Yeah, it should be really fast." So I'm like, "Let me go look at your site." And you're talking to the agency that built the site, right? And the agency has built code that is not sound. What do you do, right? Do you say, "Hey, your chief technology officer or your chief architect or your senior engineer didn't do this right"? That seems like a hard message to pass. On the flip side, let's say they just spent money buying a plugin and you go, "That's maybe the 30th version of that feature that I would choose. I have three others I'd choose first." So we are in this constant, how do you define managed in managerial commerce hosting. And we believe that the answer includes some really honest and frank feedback, but in the context where you've asked for it, right, or in the context where we might give you a light note like, "Hey, we noticed site is performing slower than we would expect. We dug in a little, we noticed that you're having some issues with this thing." And then you leave it there and wait and see if someone says, "Well, do you have a recommendation?" "Oh, glad you asked. Here, we do." So you're doing this tight rope balance because we see code that isn't performed well, we see plugins that we would recommend others instead of them. So you do this dance of navigating that. But every single day, we see strange things. Especially when you're talking about stores that are really over-performing, right? You don't normally see that with a store that's struggling to do three orders a day. But if you're doing hundreds of orders a day and maybe for tens of thousands of dollars a day, and all of a sudden you're getting massive traffic and things are going sideways, that's where we'll dig in. But you don't want to dig in and go, "Well, the problem is you wrote the wrong code here." So you do a dance, right, and you say, "Well, would you like us to take a look at this code?" And then they're like, "Yeah, please. I want another pair of eyes." And other people are like, "Nope, I don't need you worrying about that at all." Okay, right. You take your guidance from the folks that are hiring you. Jonathan: There's an interesting tension that's there, right? Because part of the value proposition, when we see folks move over from say, Shopify to Woo, there's this, "We want the autonomy. We want the flexibility." With that, comes the freedom to do things that can mess your stores up. Chris: Yep. Jonathan: You want to maintain that because if you just take a lockdown approach, you're doing the same thing and playing a loop game. But I like that. It's a tight rope, right? You can sort of nudge and gently point like, "Hey, you want to do this?" Some people want it, others don't. Chris: Yeah, we're working on a feature that will roll out next year, where we can tell you what the potential cost of each plugin that you activate has on your site. Let's say you wanted to add a pop-up and you thought that pop-up would generate 10% more add-on revenue. And so you're like, "Okay." Well, your average order value is $150, and you think with this pop-up you can get 10% more. So it's 15 bucks and you do 10 orders a week, so 150 bucks a week. That's money, right? But if I show you that it adds three second delay and that will take 50% of your sales away, we should be able to do the math for you and do that calculus and say, "Do you really want this pop-up or not?" Jonathan: Nice. Chris: So it gets a little complicated, but we're working on that to really help redefine what manage means and to help our merchants. Jonathan: It sounds like you're going for an approach that's really about helping them make better choices. Chris: Yep. Jonathan: So you can show them those costs. If you can show them where like, "Hey, this is what we think. This gives you some perspective. You're making the choice. We're not doing it for you, but we're helping you make better choices." I love that. Chris: It helps you run down that tight wire that's right in between being too restrictive and too free, right, that you were just talking about. You're like, "How do I educate?" Even if the education isn't the merchant or the the store owner, it might be the developer. But we interact with developers who didn't know there were three versions of this plugin or three versions of this feature, didn't know that one of them was way better than the rest, right? And so you want to be able to go, "Okay, let me give you the data and then if you still want to run with it, that's okay. It's your car." Jonathan: That's great. Black Friday, what is to be expected Bob: I'm going to flip over to another subject. I had this question I thought of before we got on here. Black Friday's coming up. We're not going to talk about prepping for that because hopefully everybody's been working on that for a while. You see the predictions just generally out there, "Oh, it's going to be explosive. It's going to be amazing." Let's go to the WooCommerce builder that builds products and does extensions. Things like that, SAS, whatever. When Black Friday rolls around, what do you think that it's going to be for those particular products in this very niche? Is it going to be a big boost? Because what we have is, we have two audiences for them. One is the store builder, and one is the regular consumer, DIYer. That might be new to the space. They just build a site they don't really understand. Okay, I can get this deal where somebody else is a little bit more attuned to looking for them. I say, "Oh, I'm going to wait and get this." Do you think for those businesses, Black Friday is going to be business as usual? Do you think it's going to be a bit more because people are jumping on the eCommerce bandwagon or is it going to be huge... What do you think is going to happen? Or is there even any way to give any prediction? Chris: I think the only prediction I can tell you really seriously about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is it's going to be up, way up, super up, and most sites will fail, right? Honestly, if I were owning a store today, right, I would tell you that last month was the time when I should have bought more infrastructure, where I should have been only focused on scale. We launched some new auto-scale features last month, specifically for this, right? Because we're like, "Hey, if you're not thinking about the massive traffic load and scale in September and October, it's too late when you get to November." It's going to be silly when you call on Friday and go, "There's a problem with my server." I mean, every host will help you, they'll try and do what they can, but that's the wrong moment to do it, right? So it will be up, way up. We know that eCommerce in general is up. We know that transaction dynamics are up. We know that we've seen between the folks that bought significantly more, and the people who bought slightly more, we're talking about more than 60%, right? 50 to 60% of the people fell in that category of, "In this time we're buying more online than anywhere else." And we know that when it comes to that particular weekend, stores will have the broadest, most significant discounts that they've had all year. You don't have to be a genius to be like, "We're going to see unprecedented numbers." But it won't matter if your website's down, right? It won't matter if just congestion has killed you. Jonathan: It's worth pointing out here too this is one of the softer spots within WordPress and Woo because if you go with a SAS platform that is typically, due to various degrees of success, abstracted out, they're handling the infrastructure. Whereas with WordPress and Woo, you do have to think about that or be working with a host who's thinking about it for you or like, "We've anticipated this, we're on top of this." Chris: It's no good. I mean, if you're with a inexpensive host, right? And by inexpensive I mean, less than $10 a month. And I know we have a promo right now that one of our 19 dollar plans is at nine. Generically, I'm not picking on a host, but if you're spending three, four, $5 a month in hosting, you are in a environment that is likely highly loaded onto a single server, right? It's high density shared hosting. And if you're in high density shared hosting, one of the sites out, of a thousand on that server, could have a really big run and every other site on that server is going to feel that pain. Even if you didn't do anything, right? And so when you're in that environment and you call up and say, "Hey, I'm not doing good. I want to move or whatever," you're talking about a migration. Even the best companies, it'll take you a day, two, three to migrate an eCommerce based store, right? It's not the same as running HTML from one directory to another. Jonathan: There's a lot of complexities to it. Are you going to take your door offline during that? You kind of have to. Chris: It gets really complicated, really fast. Our auto-scale gives people 24 hours and they don't have to be continuous. 24 hours of high traffic events, where the PHP workers, the maximum concurrent threads, you get the next plan up. You get it in your plan for 24 hours for free, right? Thanks to our sponsor WooCommerce You may be just starting your journey as a Woo Builder or well into your journey. Or perhaps you have WooCommerce talents that you want to bring to a team as you look to make a switch in your career. WooCommerce has several roles open that will likely fit your own goals of growth. You will be joining the larger Automattic team, a diverse and distributed group of individuals with a passion for WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce. If you want are looking for make that career pivot and love working from home, check out all their open positions over on our Job Listing at DotheWoo.io. Trust me. I know the company and a lot of the people. It's a smart move. Thanks to WooCommerce.com and their support as a community sponsor. Now let's head back to the show. Builders, hosts, merchants and navigating the waters Jonathan: Chris, the thing I'm curious about, the most of the people listening are builders themselves, right? I love what you guys do. There are a lot of hosts out there, a lot of options. How would you advise builders and developers, design folks working with merchants to help them navigate? Chris: The first phone call I'd tell you is call the host and ask, what kind of scaling solutions, what kind of growth can you handle if my site gets this traffic, right? Tell me blatantly. Now, some of those hosts will tell you, "I have this in place, or I have that in place." Others would say, "Well, we would recommend that you upgrade to another plan." And you may legitimately want to move to another plan. But then the next question is, "Great, let's say I move to that plan. What are the capacity challenge?" One of the things that we flipped on when we started working on this a year ago was, we had to stop talking about PHP workers, concurrent threads, et cetera. And we talked about maximum concurrent traffic, right? We started changing the language that people could understand, right? If your store has never had a hundred people on it at the same time, that may be your max and someone else maybe have a thousand at the same time. We just talked to a customer a day ago. Talked to a customer who every single time they send out an email with Klaviyo, every single time to 10,000 email subscribers. Not 50,000, not two million, but 10,000. They see thousands of clicks back to a single page within a three-minute span of the email going out, meaning everybody immediately opens the email and clicks the link. Thousands of people hitting the same exact page at the same exact time. And of course, if that's a product page and you have 30 dynamic queries running, you're going to slow that thing to a crawl. And that's on a regular day. That's not on the Cyber Monday weekend, right? So that's where you say, hey, if you're a developer, get on the phone with the host. They should be your partner, not just a vendor, right? Talk to them, ask them about capacity planning, ask them about growth and scalability. They may tell you right off the bat, "You need to be on a different plan if you're in growth." Jonathan: And if you don't do this stuff now, you're going to have a pretty unpleasant holiday because your customers are going to be calling you. They're going to be like, "Hey, what's going on?" Even if it's the host's problem, as a developer, you're in the position to be able to be advising folks and anticipate and it's like, you know it, you can see it coming. Cool. Chris: If the host offers you an ability to review the code base, review the products on your site or whatever, if you're a developer and the host offers a second pair of eyes, I would take it, right? We have some partners who are really serious hardcore eCommerce store builders and even with all their expertise, they're like, "Oh, yeah. Hey, take a second look." Because we see it so often, because we touch. And we see the tickets very often, right? And this is every host, right? Every host sees this; tickets, tickets, tickets, and eventually you start seeing patterns. And when you see that pattern, invariably, if you're a developer and you're like, "Hey, can you take a second and look at this?" If your host provides it, I'd take it. Because if you're using something that they know is going to give you a hiccup under heavy load, find out about it now, not later. Jonathan: It's great to think of them as a partner. I'm curious to switch topics to subscriptions. Chris: Oh, yeah. What about that subscription thing? Jonathan: There's a lot that could be said about this, but I'm curious for your thoughts and just the broad opportunities that you see in the subscription space. What are you seeing right now? Chris: Man, subscriptions, it's huge right now. When we talk about subscriptions, often in the WordPress space, we're talking about regular payment for content protection. Content protection, like a membership site, is only one kind of subscription, right? We just have to be like, "Okay, hold on a second." When everyday people talk about subscriptions, they're not often talking about access, right? They're often talking about curation or replenishment, right? They're talking about the Dollar Shave Club. I think it's called Dollar Shave. And then curation might be Blue Apron or Stitch Fix, whether you're talking about clothing or you're talking about food; where different people are getting different products delivered to them on a regular basis based on some level of decision-making and recommendation, right? And all of that is up into the right. Women have more subscriptions than men, broadly on the gender base, but men have more number of active subscriptions than women on average, right? 28% of women have three or more subscriptions. 42% of men have three or more subscriptions, right? And so that's always interesting, even though you're like, "Well, but women have more." And your like, "Backup, hold on a second." It depends on what we're talking about and it depends on how they're using it. One of my favorites as a shift in dynamics with subscriptions, is a company called Thread. If you haven't looked at Thread, it's really interesting because while it's not a subscription exact player, it's fighting the subscription players. We all know those companies that have clothing in a box, right? And especially for men, it turns out. I don't know why it took this long, but eventually we realized that men don't know how to dress, right? And so finally someone was like, "Well, what if we just hire one stylist who creates different styles, puts the clothing in a box, ships it to you, and we just tell the men to wear?" And boom, right? We went from one clothing subscription box company to 17 in less than 18 months. Men are thrilled, right? I'm a guy who's in a lot of airports and it's crazy when as people are walking by, I can go, that's this company, that's this company, right? Because they're all wearing the same outfits, right? But Thread did something a little different. Thread was like, "Okay, I want you to come over here and fill out your profile." And now I'm going to have a person who is a personalized shopper, who's going to read your profile and then make recommendations to you. And then I'm going to see the recommendations and choose which things I want or don't want. And I can buy them in a box, I can buy them in a kit or I can buy each one individually. Or I can just rate them. I like this, I don't like this. This is the notion of personalization in these subscription models. And it's huge, right? This ability for deep curation in a replenishment or product delivery on a regular basis. It's massive and it's interesting. I think it's the way of... We're seeing people adopt subscriptions more than not. And that's always interesting too. When you see subscription numbers go up, you got to understand it's counterintuitive because most of us hate the idea of recurring charges, right?. We hate that I have to buy something on a recurring basis. So the product I have to buy has to be super amazing for me to get over the hump. But when they deliver real value, right, and to see the numbers growing, then you got to be like, "Okay, well, what do I got to know about this?" And it turns out, whether it's media, buying access to downloads and stuff, or whether it's product replacement, or whether it's curated products, it's growing and it's worth people thinking about. For the longest time in the WordPress ecosystem and even in the WooCommerce ecosystem, it was mostly just access. Jonathan: Yeah, access. Chris: I think the model is starting to shift towards replenishment. And then when you start adding personalization, man, that's an incredible play. Jonathan: On the Woo side of things, subscriptions is right up there in terms of, what's most popular and what people are doing. And what I've loved personally to see is just the variety of builders who are coming in and building new plugins, new extensions, new themes to offer that. There's so much flexibility there, which has its downsides as well in terms of so many options to parse through. But I love seeing that. I'm looking forward to seeing more sort of streamlined. All right, if you're going to do this type of business, you do that, but here's the plugins that you're going to want to use. Here's the piece that you're going to want to use. I just see a lot of opportunity where some of these SaaS platforms are a bit limited. They have to pick the most popular one and sort of go that path whereas with Woo, you can have a lot more. This niche is focused on this type of business and this is the pack of plugins that you use in this over here. Chris: Yeah, you could not build what Thread has built. You cannot build it on one of the standard hosted platforms, just not going to happen. The level of engagement, interactivity, the flexibility you need in the business model, is not going to happen on SquareSpace. Even if they're now getting ready to start implementing... Oh, sorry. On Shopify. Even though they're now getting ready to start their subscription piece, they've always been hammered by the fact that they can't do it. They're going to roll out their first one. It's interesting, but it's going to be plain Jane, right? And most of the hosted platforms deliver a very plain simple version of this. And that's where you're going to go, "Nope, it's a different model." You need flexibility. The only place where you could do that today with hosted would be BigCommerce, where BigCommerce has enough of an API that if you pay for the enterprise side, you can basically run headless on BigCommerce and build anything you want. But WooCommerce and Magento are both places where, because of the open source nature, because of the community around it, you can build with flexibility, the kind of experience you want to have. Building entering the WooCommerce space, first step Bob: All right. Well, I have one last question. I don't know if you have anything else you want to touch on, but let me just swing this your way, Chris. A little bit of a Chris' advice here. So everybody I'm talking to, and probably everybody both of you talk to that are in the Wordpress space, building both products and agencies doing websites are saying... I see everybody when I say something about eCommerce, "Oh, I'm just starting to get into that. I'm starting to do more WooCommerce sites." Everybody wants to get in on it. I mean, it's obvious why they want to do it. I imagine for both of them there, it's a little bit different. But what's your initial? If somebody is saying, "Hey, I've been doing WordPress stuff for a while. I've been building WordPress sites. Now I'm ready to jump into WooCommerce and I'm going to start doing that for clients." What's your very first piece of advice you give them? Chris: So first of all, let me just say that it's wonderful that we're seeing WordPress folks who are getting into eCommerce. For many years, They didn't. They didn't touch it. They were like, "No, no, it's complicated. I don't know that I have the technical chops to do it or it's complicated. I don't know if I have the insurance premiums to handle what happens if a customer sues me. I don't want to be in a mission-critical business." And no matter what I would tell them, right? "You can do this. You have the skills, the tools are there. This is great. You're going to have a great time." People were like, "No, no, thank you." And I think we're finally at a place where people are going, "Hey, I think I can do this." You interviewed one of my good friends who, without calling her out, she was like, "I can't. I can't build a WooCommerce store." And then all of a sudden she did and then she's like, "Oh my God! Now all we do is WooCommerce store." And you're like, "That's great. I'm glad for you." So very happy that people are starting to embrace it and get into it. The first piece of advice I would say is, make sure that you have a really deep and robust conversation with the customer, right? That more often than not... And I gave a presentation at some point with 40 questions to ask for an eCommerce project before you scope it or price it. I'll find the slides, I'll send it to you somewhere. But what I know is that it's different. If you are just getting started with eCommerce, there's a lot of stuff you forget to ask about. And so you ask two or three questions, you get super excited, you know you're going to use WooCommerce and you put out a quote and you're like, "Okay, that will be $6,000." And then in the middle of it, the customer says, "Well, how do I interact with Salesforce?" And you're like, "What?" Or, "How's this going to work on my TradeGecko inventory?" And you're like, "Huh, that wasn't in the quote." You don't want to find those things out by accident. So the most important thing I'd say is, step one, get your list of questions ready, right? I had a friend who wanted to build a membership site the other day. And I said, "Hey, can we have a call?" They were going to talk to an agency. And I said, "I love that you're going to talk to an agency. Can you and I have a call first, before you have a call with the agency?" They go, "Sure, what are we going to talking about?" I said, "I'm going to give you all the questions you have to ask yourself. Here's all the questions you have to ask yourself. Do you want this? Do you need this? Do you want this? Do you need this?" And we just went through 40 questions or maybe 20 questions before she went, "Wow! I hadn't thought about any of that." I'm like, "Right, and the problem is, your agency may not ask the question, and then you're going to ask it 13 weeks into the project." And then they're going to say, "Well, we have to redo everything we did because we didn't know you're going to ask that." It's what I call marinading in the problem space. And most of us want to jump to the solution way too quickly. You got to marinate in the problem space. I'm from California. We don't really know barbecue. We grill. That means we put food on a grill and wait a certain amount of time then we take it off. The barbecue people know this. If you're going to marinate, you can't just take meat, throw it in a Ziploc bag, throw some liquid in it, zip it up, put it in the fridge, wait an hour and take it out. That's not marinated. And yet, unfortunately, that's what people do when they start doing a discovery process on a eCommerce project. If they're new, they just ask a couple questions. Great, they've isolated which extensions they want to use, and they're off and running, and they haven't marinated in the problem space. Time to sell products in the Woo space Bob: So how about somebody that wants to start selling products in the WooCommerce space? Any little bit of variation. I'm sure it's knowing your customers, but- Chris: I would tell you, do not make your target audience a developer. If you're trying to build a product in the space and you want to sell that, do not make it so that you're selling to developers. Because every developer who looks at your product, is going to say the same thing in their head. They're going to say, "I could probably do that in two hours." Which means, even though they couldn't, it means that they're not going to have the value on the price point, which means it's going to depress your price point, which means it's going to depress your revenue. And developers are going to immediately go, "Well, it's just this. Or you just have to do that." And I'm not saying developers are bad. I'm just saying, if I go to a contractor friend of mine and I start talking about building something, they're definitely going to be like, "I don't need you to do that. I can do that." The fundamental dynamic is, it's not magic to them, right? So if you want to solve a problem, solve a problem for a customer who doesn't know how you do it, and who says, "I need that, and I'm willing to pay for it." If you sell a tool to a developer and the developer goes, "I could build that myself," you're going to struggle to sell. You're going to struggle the close. You're going to struggle to get the premium price point. Bob: Well, as always, fantastic show, Chris. I know whenever I get you on a podcast and I've had on a few different ones, we could just talk and talk and talk. So that's why we keep having you come back. Chris: A lot of fun. Connect with Chris Bob: All right. Let's see. First of all, before I thank the sponsors, where can people connect with you, Chris? Chris: I am @ChrisLemma, C-H-R-I-S-L-E-M-, as in Mary, A. @ChrisLema on Twitter. And I think I'm Mr. Chris Lema on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can find me in any of those places. Also, you can read riding my blog posts @chrislema.com and I also have several blog posts over@nexcess.net. You can find me online just about anywhere. Bob: Cool. Well, I'd like to thank our sponsors again. WooCommerce.com of course, that's what we're here for. We're here for WooCommerce and that's what we've been talking about for 45 minutes almost. So WooCommerce, you got to love them. PayPal, remember their pay later offers your clients a chance to get paid up front with no additional risk or costs. So that might be a good recommendation for that next project. Visit dothewoo.io, that is our new site. Been up for about not quite a little bit over a week or two. Is it just one week? I think. Oh my God. It is just one week. Anyway, it seems a lot longer than that. But do check it out and do subscribe to the podcasts in your favorite pod app. Again, thank you so much, Chris, for joining us. Chris: My pleasure. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
31 minutes | 3 months ago
Advocating for Developers at WooCommerce with Allen Smith
Thanks to our community sponsor Creating support, feedback channels and documentation for developers is a critical piece to the puzzle. Allen Smith has taken the role of Developer Advocate at WooCommerce with drive to bring the best to the fingertips of the dev community. His global experience in platforms and community bring a fresh vision into the space and we get a chance to learn more about Allen and how he is seriously doing the Woo. A Chat with Allen In episode 75, Brad and I chat with Allen about: What the developer advocate for WooCommerce doesThe developer resources for WooCommerce and how they are taking shapeHow Allen comes from a diverse background of communities and languages with a fresh perspective on WooThe bigger picture of documentation around the WooCommerce developer communityThe challenges and solutions for keeping documentation up to dateWhere Allen is finding success in creating and managing feedback channels for the developersWhat options there are for jumping into the Woo developer community at WooCommerce Connect with Allen WooCommerce Slack Resources WooCommerce Developer Resources PortalWooCommerce Developer Blog The Conversation Yes, this is the transcript. But not in the traditional sense, transcribed word for word. We do not speak as we write. Often the flow of transcribed content is hard to follow. So I have taken it a few steps further by seriously editing, at times, the conversation and even using my editorial freedom to clarify some points. So enjoy. Transcript Email Download New Tab Brad: Welcome back to another exciting episode of Do the Woo. I'm one of your hosts, Brad, and I'm here with BobWP. Bob, what's happening? Bob: What is happening? Just a lot on the plate and keeping busy. So nothing really new, but new in a sense... Brad: Nothing new, Bob? Come on, you're being modest. Bob: Nothing new with having stuff on the plate. Brad: You could just rebrand and launch a whole new website. No big deal. Bob: Ha. Doing good. Brad: I know you've talked about it. We're going to have some deeper conversations, but DoTheWoo.io is live now, right? Bob: Right, right. We are good to go after all this time. I pushed the button. It's live. Well, I didn't push a button ... that sounds too easy. Brad: I'm going to need you to push the button. Somebody somewhere pushed a button and its live. So go check it out. DoTheWoo.io for all things Woo. If you're a builder, specifically, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, building stores, supporting a store, this is the resource for you or one of the resources because it's a great segue into our guests today. But right before I do that, I do want to give a big shout out to a href="https://woocommerce.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="WooCommerce.com (opens in a new tab)">WooCommerce, as always, our community sponsor. If you're not familiar, I would probably ask why you're listening to this podcast. Maybe you're just wondering what it is. So WooCommerce is really the leading plugin specifically for WordPress, to power your e-Commerce store. It has a ton of functionality. That's what we talk about each and every week on this show and have various guests on. This week, we're focusing on the developer side, which is really a direct relation to what you just launched here, Bob, and the changes with the podcast and with the content. This week, we've brought on Mr. Allen Smith. So welcome to the show, Allen. Allen: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Brad: I've teased it up in terms of WooCommerce development, but why don't you tell everybody? What is your official role within WooCommerce and how does that tie into the developer side of it? Allen Smith, Developer Advocate at WooCommerce Allen: Yeah, absolutely. I am a developer advocate for WooCommerce here at Automattic. My job is to make sure that the developer experience for people who are building with WooCommerce, be they builders, people who orchestrate by putting those together or people who build extensions that build on top of WooCommerce, it's my job to make sure that their developer experience is both delightful and that they have the things that they need to build the things that they're trying to build, to solve the problems that they're trying to solve for merchants. Brad: Yeah. I love it. I've written a number of books on WordPress development on the more technical side of working with WordPress for developers, designers, and basically people building sites with WordPress. One of the things I really stand behind is that if a platform is hard to work on, if you can't get the buy-in from developers, it's going to be much harder to get the users because ultimately, we're the advocates for the platform by and large. Not saying everybody using WordPress is a developer or has to be a developer. They certainly don't. But if the developers are really backing the platform, they're going to do a lot of the promotion. They're going to be the advocates, either directly or indirectly, just by using the platform. So having somebody in your role and really helping curate the knowledge, the discussions, the support on a platform as advanced, if you will, as WooCommerce, it has a lot of moving parts and a lot of things that you can do with it, I think is hugely important for any platform. So I'm really glad to see a more formal structure around this than what we have seen in the past, where it was more just community-based. In the WordPress world we had the codex and it was like, "Well, it's kind of there, but I don't trust it." So it feels more mature, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make, which I think should give developers that aren't, or that are new to this space, or that are maybe thinking about jumping into WordPress and/or WooCommerce, more confidence to say, "Hey, there's actually a lot of support here for me as a developer, not just as a user, but as a developer. There's these tools. There's resources I need to learn and to grow, to be confident in this platform." What are you hearing? Are you getting some of the same feedback? Are you really seeing people take hold of the information that you're putting out there, or what's your take? Developer resource portal Allen: Yeah, absolutely. That's one thing I noticed as soon as I started. There is so much that's out there already. A lot of the feedback we were at least initially getting from developers was that there were good resources, but so much stuff was really hard because it was spread out. So one of the things we did initially was we created a developer portal that aggregated all of those resources in one place. Now if people go to developer.woocommerce.com, they can just see a list of everything from reference docs to guides, examples. There's links to all of the libraries that people might want to use. Bob: So as I understand, that you were not necessarily deep in WooCommerce or WordPress prior to coming to WooCommerce. I like to hear a little bit about the journey. What were you doing before you entered the zone of WooCommerce? Did Allen Do the Woo before coming to WooCommerce? Allen: You're right. Yeah, I'm not a PHP developer. I'm not a WordPress person. I was not a WooCommerce person prior to joining the company. So I was honestly a little surprised that I got the interview for the job. But before this, I had been working in pretty much just about every other language. I worked at GitHub for several years before this. I started there as a trainer, and we would go out to companies and we would teach people how to use Git and how to improve their development workflows, using Git and GitHub. Because of that, we had to learn a lot of different workflow patterns. We had to learn a lot of different programming languages and frameworks and all sorts of things. So for me, it very much set the stage in learning how to bridge the gaps between all of these different communities. After I started at WooCommerce, it was then that I learned that this was something that was very important to them and was finding a way to bridge the gaps between these divergent communities that they were going to have to bring together. Difference communities and languages So we have the react developers who know all about the front end stuff, the very modern way of doing these single page apps that have build systems and all sorts of things that WordPress and WooCommerce had never historically relied upon. Then you have these veteran PHP developers who know the framework, know the platform inside and out, and how to find a way to help these two groups help each other build really, really cool things for merchants. So my background prior to WooCommerce really came into play there because I had worked in all of these different communities and all of these different languages, and finding a way to help these groups communicate and find the commonalities between them, I think, is something that was very important to them. A fresh set of eyes (and ears) Brad: It sounds like bringing you in without having some of that direct experience in those areas that you mentioned, probably really set this up for success, this roll up for success, because you're coming in with somewhat with fresh eyes, right? Like you said, you weren't in those communities. You weren't diving in head first into PHP or even WooCommerce or React. So coming in with fresh eyes, I think, is probably a smarter approach versus somebody that's been at the start or even just more familiar with WooCommerce and where we're at, because you can really take a step back objectively. Like you just said, "Here's the bridge we have to gap. How do we do that?" versus saying, "Well, I've been doing this since it started seven or eight years ago. I know what we're going to do." You know what I mean? So I think having those fresh set eyes was really sets this role up for success in what you're doing as a developer advocacy in a positive way. Allen: I totally agree. I think that when you have diverse opinions, diverse viewpoints, trying to solve problems, it helps everybody see their blind spots. That's been my experience coming into the WooCommerce community, into the WordPress community, and then by extension, the PHP community as well, is they're just like a lot of these other communities, in that they have solved the same problems the same way for years and years and years. So when you start looking at the same problem in a different way, you can approach it in a novel way. So I'll give you an example. When I started, one of the questions I had for our development team was, "Okay, how do we go about setting up and managing a development environment for WooCommerce?" There's not a great definitive answer because there are tons of different ways that you can do it. Some people use this tool called Champ. Some people use VVV as a tool for managing these Vagrant installations. Then there's another tool called WPN, basically, it runs on Docker and things like that. So we got to explore all these different ways to create and manage these environments to find a way that works really well for people. Brad: Yeah. It's a good example, because again, lowering the barrier to entry for developers is ultimately going to make it a little less scary, less intimidating, and maybe even more inviting in a sense of saying, "Oh, I am familiar with a VVV approach or a Docker approach or whatever they might be familiar with and say, "Oh, they have guides to walk me through this or steps that I can get this set up." Next thing you know, you're running it and then you're starting to get excited. Like, "All right, well that works. Now let me start peeking out under the hood a little bit, using some of the docs." So maybe we can dive into that a little bit more and, and talk about some of the ways that you are approaching developer advocacy, some of the different tools that are available either online or maybe in other areas. But we can talk about those different resources that people can look for. The docs and resources for developers Allen: Yeah, totally. What we've had to do, because we noticed there's a lot of potential here because for better or for worse, some of the things that we have out there are a little bit out of date. Then there are a lot of things that just don't exist altogether. So what we had to do when I first started, was we went through and we did just an audit of all of the developer-related content that we had. We identified for some of those gaps were. Also reached out to the community to see what would be most valuable to them. Overwhelmingly, two things stood out from the developer community is that they want thorough documentation of the code itself. They want clear technical guidance in terms of how to go about various things on the platforms. How do I extend the shopping cart? How do I hook into the checkout flow, for instance. Things like that. They want very concise guidance around these things. So these are the pieces that we're focusing on right now. The developer portal that I mentioned a little while ago was very much about solving that discoverability problem that we had, which was that we have all these resources, but nobody really knows how to find them. It's pretty much a tribal knowledge thing. Now, this next phase where we're creating the new content is focusing on that technical guidance that we can provide, so that they're using the best practices for developing for the platform, be it adhering to certain linting guidelines and documentation standards, to make sure that they're developing against the platform in a way that is ... maybe we could call it future-proof, so that they're not going to have their extensions stomped out when the platform changes. Thirdly, to make sure that the work that developers are doing is constantly providing that first-class experience to merchants. So as you all know, as WordPress developers, because there are so many different ways to do things in WordPress, it's very easy to let that extensibility turn into hacked-around things that look like they're pieced together. That's an unfortunate side effect of that balance between extensibility versus standardization. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to respect that extensibility in a way that still provides that seamless customer experience and merchant experience. Brad: Yeah, that's actually a really good point because it reminds me of, in a more extreme example, page builders and site builders, where we are giving everybody tools, the average user tools to customize anything on the look and feel and layout is great, until it's not great. Then the entire net starts looking on like MySpace pages and years ago, right? It's just, "Cool, you can change everything, but should you give that power to every user on the site? Maybe just keep it so a couple of core users have that knowledge. But that's a more extreme example of what you're getting at, but at the end of the day, you're right, because if WooCommerce, the experience that someone puts together builds ... Whoever's using that platform from a store owner standpoint, that's their impression of WooCommerce. It's not hosted in the sense of Shopify, where these really tight guard rails that can prevent bad things from happening. But that's the give and take of extending the platform and having that flexibility just like WordPress. It's the same thing, right? If WordPress across the board looks terrible on every site that you visit that is WordPress, your assumption is going to be, "Oh, WordPress just looks ugly and it's terrible." It really has nothing to do with the platform. It's just the fact that everybody made it look bad or made it very shaky or clunky or whatever. So that's a fair point. I'm curious. Once you did an audit of everything, and there's a lot. Like you said, it was all over the place. Some of it was probably official. Some of it probably wasn't. It was just all over the internet. Now that you've gotten things back in a better spot ... and I love developer.woocommerce.com. It's just a nice layout and a great site because you can easily get to what you're looking for. Reference docs, libraries, guides, examples, tools. Just quick and easy. These are the things I'm looking for as a developer. Keeping the docs updated I'm curious what you do because being open source and the nature of open source and it moves quickly and WooCommerce moves very quickly. There's a lot of releases, more so than WordPress in terms of major releases. How do you keep this updated? How do you keep it current? How do we know when we're looking at some of this information, that it is the most current? It's not something that was written a couple of years ago and just hasn't been updated, because that's been a challenge for WordPress since the beginning. Allen: It's a huge challenge. To be quite honest, a lot of the stuff that's linked on there is probably outdated. So we have guides for putting together extensions and themes. I know that specifically, the themes guide, I think, was written in 2017. These are those pieces that we need to go in and update at this point, so that we make sure that they are current. So that's one challenge that we're facing. Some of the other things that we are doing right now is for instance, our reference docs have been recently updated. So if you go to the WooCommerce core, it's the core code reference basically. That entire site has been redesigned. What we do now is we generate that static site using the inline documentation that's alongside the code. So if code gets built, it generates those docs. So any changes to the code will be automatically reflected in the documentation. Brad: I love that. Yeah, it's awesome. Allen: This was a problem we had previously because we were using a deprecated library for generating those docs. What ended up happening, I think, is we stopped generating the documentation. So the platform kept getting developed upon, but the documentation lagged behind quite a bit. That, I think, is not an issue anymore. Brad: Yeah, that's great. I think any developer out there knows the struggle of documentation, working on WordPress or not. It's the thankless job. It's there for the developer. The end-user's never going to see it or care about it. But, man, as a developer, we care about it. Whether it's us reading our own code a couple of years later, or digging into somebody else's code, that stuff is hugely valuable. I think it uses the DocBlock standard, right? PHP DocBlock. I'm assuming it's the same as WordPress, which uses DocBlock. Allen: I don't know if we use DocBlock or not. I think it's PHP Doc 3, I think that is what they switched too. Brad: Those are so cool. So no matter what you're building, you can look at this standardized way of commenting and documenting your code, and then you can auto-generate docs for it. Like you said, at the very least, reference docs are exactly what's in the code. It just cleans it up in easier format to read on a website, which is awesome because it does take that away. That's the problem that the codex had for a long, long time before developer.wordpress.com started doing the same thing. A lot of good information, but it was just constantly out of date. Wouldn't tell you if something was deprecated until you went to use it. then you're like, "Oh, yeah, this is deprecated. I shouldn't be using this." So it's a challenge, but it looks like you're keeping up on it, which is great. Allen: It's really great, too. Maybe I'm just biased because I've working to get it out, but if you generate your docs, you can store them in your repository, alongside your code and GitHub will automatically build that as a doc site and host it on GitHub for you. So you have your code and your documentation living side-by-side. You don't even have to worry about deploying it, manage your docs in WordPress or something like that. You don't have to worry about that because GitHub can serve it for you where the developers are, which I think is really cool. Brad: That is cool. I write books, which are again, open source, the challenge is keeping things updated. So people ask, "Well, isn't this out of date really quickly?" By and large, the answer is no. It might mean newer things have come , but we discuss and write about everything in a way, like you said, that is backwards compatible. If you use the proper APIs, if you use a proper class of methods and everything, and you do things the WordPress way, it should always work. It's just a matter of if newer features are available or not, or something becomes deprecated. But what we like to teach and what I think is just people getting more comfortable going under the hood because at the end of the day, the code is your greatest tool. When you can really understand how to dig into the core of WooCommerce or WordPress or some other plugin you're looking to extend and understand what you're working with, that's the greatest tool in the world because all of your answers are right there. It's just understanding how to find them and how to read them and understanding of how the docket, the commenting system works and all that stuff. But once you get a decent grasp of that, then many times you can just go right into the code and get the answers that you need. You don't have to rely necessarily on, "Is this codex out of date or is this tutorial from a couple of years ago still accurate?" Check the code. The code will tell you if it's accurate or not. So again, it's that, making sure people understand that it's okay to look at code and the core. Just don't touch it, but you can look at it. Allen: That's been our experience, too, in talking to developers, especially in this community. People who are trying to solve specific problems, tend to follow a very determined journey, regardless of what they're doing. They'll start by looking for some high level guidance documentation. How do I extend X? If they can't find it there, then they start looking at the documentation that's been generated about the API itself. If they can't find it there, then they dive into the code and they figured out on their own. I think that this is really interesting in the WordPress community specifically because unlike other platforms, since the ecosystem of developers is much more interdependent than you would see on other platforms. So you have to understand how to navigate not only your code and the code for the core platform itself, but also the code of all of the maybe sibling plugins that you may encounter. So it's helpful to have those skills of navigating the code in some standardized way. Bob: Yeah. I can certainly relate. I've been taking a extended break. In fact, it's longterm when it comes to writing tutorials on WooCommerce extensions on my site and just keeping those up. So as a result, the doctor was able to take me off my meds, and life is much better now that I'm not writing those. But seriously it is. Documentation is a challenge. You had mentioned speaking with your developers, the communication you're having with them. Managing and creating those feedback channels I know, again, with documentation, you're getting the feedback and those channels in place, and that can be a challenge. Making them centralized, where they're not going off in all different directions. What has been your experience and what are you doing with that feedback channel? Allen: Yeah. So we're doing a couple of different things. In the past, what we have done is we had a monthly community chat that happens in Slack. My colleague, Jonathan, who's our community manager, he's done a great job of putting this together and managing it. Then I took over when I got more acclimated to my role. So we're doing that once a month. That's been a great tool for what you might say, bi-directional communication, mostly outward communication to developers, a little bit of feedback coming in. What we wanted to do is increase that multi-directional conversation between developers that may or may not involve us. We want to be involved in that, but we definitely want developers who are working with the platform to chat with each other as well. So we started setting up weekly office hours where developers can share their challenges and their expertise with each other. They can up-skill if they want to. This is not us teaching people how to do things. This is developers organically helping each other. If somebody has a problem, there's a developer over here who has 15 years of experience who has run into this problem in WordPress or WooCommerce before, and they can help. That helps people build each other up. That's one thing that we've been doing. Internally, what I've been doing is I've been working with three separate teams, specifically three separate engineering teams. We have our core WooCommerce team. We have a team who manages the WooCommerce admin extension. So all of that react framework stuff that we do. Also we have a team who is responsible for managing WooCommerce Gutenberg blocks. So I've been working directly with these teams once a month, to coordinate around issues that are affecting multiple extensions, things like that. I'm also working with our support team to identify specific issues that merchants themselves are running into, to make sure that those issues can get the attention from the engineering teams that they need in order to be resolved quickly and with the right priority. Brad: Yeah. I love the office hours, the developers getting together and just helping each other. I think just the nature of open source, that's in all of our DNA. I think it's one of the reasons we're drawn to open sources is that community, "Let's help each other learn and grow." I remember seeing that early on, in the old IRC days within WordPress, where many of us, back when I got started, it was just a bunch of us figuring things out together and just helping each other and to see it be more focused out where it's not just WordPress. It's like, "Okay, let's talk about one specific tool within WordPress. Would this be in WooCommerce?" But the idea that people want to help each other and share experiences because it's a good feeling. If I can answer a question that I went through at some point and figured it out and point you in the right direction, I'm going to feel good about that. Likewise, if I have a question and you help me, we're all going to feel good about helping each other out. So I love that idea because it's fun to share experiences, share challenges. We've all done a number of different things. Like you said, there's a million ways to skin a cat or whatever, just understand the nuances of challenges and problems. Just getting stuff out in the open can help you figure out a solution. So I think that's a really cool thing that you all are doing. Allen: Yeah, totally. I can't take any credit for it because really it's something that was already happening. This is one of the nice things about coming into a community that is already so thriving is that this is something that was happening 24/7 as it was. What we did is we just added a little bit of structure in when it happens, and the developers are taking care of the rest of it. Brad: Very cool. Obviously, WordPress is all about contributing. WooCommerce is all about contributing. How can people get involved and help with this and help you? Are there opportunities that people can contribute to different forms of documentation or discussions? We talk about the feedback and things like that, but are there other areas people could jump into to help? Jumping in to help the Woo community Allen: Yeah, absolutely. I think the easiest way for people to jump in and help right now is to attend one of these office hours sessions. Even if you can't make the office hour session itself, we tried to pick a time that would let as many overlapping time zones participate as possible. But right now there's just one session. So that unfortunately leaves basically half the globe in the dark literally, trying to participate in these. If you're not able to, I still encourage people to join our Slack community. You can do that by visiting the developer portal at developer.woocommerce.com. There's a link where you can get signed up to our Slack community, and you'll be added to all the channels where we discuss troubleshooting. We discuss development issues. I know that specifically in our developers channel, we have builders and we have extension developers who act with each other and share tips and tricks and all sorts of stories from building things and solutions. That has been really great. If people want to contribute to core projects, a lot of our projects are open source. We do maintain some things privately, but the majority of what we have out there is open source. We have a system of labels and a lot of our repositories for things that would be a good first issue if somebody wants to contribute in that way. So I'd encourage people to take a look at those issues in the WooCommerce repository specifically. Brad: Yeah. I always recommend if you're really wanting to up your game quickly and really just get familiar with WordPress, WooCommerce platforms that maybe you're not as familiar with, the best way is to jump into some of these things. Even just the conversations and start asking for help. I learned really how to build dynamic websites through forums 20 years ago and just asking a lot of questions. Over time, I went from asking questions to answering a lot of questions and that's the natural flow here, is you'll go from looking up questions, trying to get answers either through online or in Slack or wherever, to helping people answer questions that they're stuck on. You'll see that progression very quickly. So dive in and help out. There's so many opportunities to help, even if it's contributing to documentation, which again is such an important, critical component of any software development. But it's just one of those under the hood things that a lot of people don't think about, but we as developers know how important it is. So that's an easy way that you can get involved, even if you don't know all the ins and outs of WooCommerce across the board. You can help out with some of that as well. So a lot of great resources over at developer.woocommerce.com. Beta testers from all levels are invited Allen: I was going to say one other thing that people can do, especially if they're not developers or if they're not code savvy, we're always looking for beta testers for new versions of WooCommerce, new versions of packages that come out. So if you think of WooCommerce admin, or I think there was a new navigation package that we were beta testing a few months ago. We post those releases on our developer blog and people can get involved by helping us test out these new extensions before they land in core. That's one thing I can say is the feedback that we get from people who are beta testing these new features, that's a direct line into our engineering team because they read those comments and they make changes to those products before they come out, based on that feedback. Bob: Yeah. I think this is great because there's so many things on our side we'll be able to share. Hopefully, I don't descend too many people up on Allen's talents, and he'll say, "Where are all these people coming from?" Well, I've been sharing your Slack channel, your handle and stuff, but hopefully that won't overwhelm you. We might even have to have occasional special episodes. You know, the Allen Smith update. It's that time of the year. Brad: Allen Smith Hour. Come on in, if you've got a question. Bob: Well, this has been good stuff. Yeah, there's a lot packed in there. A lot of stuff they can take advantage of, get involved with. I know I'm looking forward to working with Allen more. We've already connected and, yeah, there's a lot of good intertwining between WooCommerce and our mission here. So if somebody's saying, "Hey, now I want to talk to Allen," where's the best place to connect with you? Find Allen on WooCommerce Slack Allen: The best place, I would say is reach out to me in Slack. If you join our Slack community, I'm pingable in there. You can ping me 24 hours a day. I don't always have my phone with me, but I try to get back to people within a reasonable timeframe, within a day or so. You can reach me in there. I'm just Allen Smith in Slack. The other thing is you can email at my email address is allen.smith@automatic.com. Those are probably the easiest ways to get in touch with me. Bob: Excellent. I just want to thank a href="https://woocommerce.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="WooCommerce.com (opens in a new tab)">WooCommerce.com again for their support. Also, if you are a builder, check out WooSesh next week, an online virtual conference, at Woosesh.com. Well, I think that is a wrap. Do check out DoTheWoo.io, lots of stuff Here. I hope the site speaks for itself. So dive into that and see all the different things we have going on. Again, Allen, I appreciate you taking the time to join us. Allen: Yeah. Thank y'all so much for inviting me on. This has been great. Bob: All right. Well, thanks, everyone. Until next week. We'll see you then. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
36 minutes | 4 months ago
Do the Woo Co-Host Jonathan Wold from WooCommerce Unplugged
Thanks to our community sponsor This is the last of the series where I ask my co-hosts to put on the guest hat. Today I chat with Jonathan Wold, who came on the show at the beginning of this year. As with my other co-hosts, Jonathan brings an amazing background to our show with his experiences in WordPress, WooCommerce and the bigger eCommerce ecosystem. A Chat with Jonathan In episode 74, I chat with Jonathan about: How he does the Woo (seriously)How his journey to both WordPress and WooCommerce were heavily influenced by the bigger eCommerce ecosystemCommerce and its natural flow into and within WordPressLearning from the guests the distinct differences between the WordPress and WooCommerce community even with overlapsThe users who are entering the WordPress space through WooCommerceHow publishing has a natural commerce component to itWhy shows with Matt Mullenweg, Nate Steward and Matt Gerri stood out for himHis professional and personal experience with habits, habit design and excecution. Connect with Jonathan On Twitter @sirjonathanJonathanWold.com Jonathan’s Top Episode Picks WooCommerce, Blocks, Open Source and Today’s World with Matt MullenwegDemocratizing Commerce and Woo Perspectives with Nate Stewart from BigCommerceBuying, Selling and Building WooCommerce Plugins with Matt Geri from Sftwr The Conversation Yes, this is the transcript. But not in the traditional sense, transcribed word for word. We do not speak as we write. Often the flow of transcribed content is hard to follow. So I have taken it a few steps further by seriously editing, at times, the conversation and even using my editorial freedom to clarify some points. So enjoy. Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everybody, BobWP here, and we are back with, Do The Woo. You're probably getting tired of me because I've been the opening host for three shows in a row. The reason being is I've forced my co-hosts into being guests, so they don't get to open the show, they get to be hammered with questions that I have, and it's all good. I'm looking forward to that. Before we get into our third and final of that series, let me just quickly thank WooCommerce.com, our community sponsor. We'll be adding a new community sponsor come mid-October, and we hope we have many more join us and Woo in this journey. Just wanted to throw something out about WooCommerce. I don't know as a developer you've ever gone into the community chat, on their core channel in Slack. It's the last Thursday of every month at 1800 UTC. I've been actually just lurking there and watching it. It's fun because they talk about the updates coming in blocks and different stuff each month. You're able to go in there and ask some questions. That's why I think it's just not good to hear about it or think about it. And you sure can go in and read the conversation afterwards, but the fact that if you're there at that time, you get to be part of it. You get to ask some questions to some of the brains behind Woo, rather than just letting those questions muddle in your mind and get unanswered. If you want to check that out, again last Thursday of every month, 1800 UTC. Well, last but not least, or do you say, "You always save the best for last." There's several ways we can approach this one. Jonathan Wold, who you know as a co-host, is here today as a guest. Jonathan, welcome to the show, as a guest. Jonathan: Thank you, Bob. It's great to be here as a guest. How Jonathan really does the Woo Bob: Well, as you know we start every show with our famous question. I found this particular series of episodes has made this question very fun to ask. Obviously, each one of you Do The Woo in a different way, but you obviously Do The Woo, but I always say, how do you Do The Woo aside from Do The Woo? Jonathan: Well, I get the privilege of working in WooCommerce on a daily basis. I lead community initiatives for WooCommerce, and that touches a lot of different things where most of my time tends to be spent working with our meet-ups around the world, with our global community spaces, like our Facebook group, Reddit, Slack, et cetera, and then supporting initiatives that are happening throughout the community. I'm fairly involved in events, right now not so much, but looking to the future. Also involved in producing WooCommerce Live and anything that I can do to help support the community that's already there and then help it grow. Bob: Excellent. All the hosts ahead of you, all two of them I should say, had quite a history with the WordPress, and then how they got into WooCommerce, and I know you fall right into that slot as well. There has probably been a lot of twists and turns. Maybe you can kind of take us back in time and tell us a little bit how you got into WordPress, and then fast forward or slip through those years to the point of your first experience with WooCommerce. The history is a long and winding road Jonathan: I got into WordPress, I'm going to probably butcher the time, but I think around 15 years ago, something in that. I'd been interested in the web for a bit, I'd been building on the web in different ways and shapes like HTML and experimenting with a few things. WordPress forums mark the beginning of a great relationship Then, I had a client who wanted a blog. I'd heard about WordPress at that point, did some looking around, and found the forum actually on Wordpress.org. I decided to use it and implemented it. Had a really key experience, though, early on. I got stuck on something and I posted a question to the forum. It was my first one there, and since we keep the archives it's still attached to my username, you can go back and find it. I asked for help and Matt Mullenweg jumped in, quite a few other folks jumped in, and kind helped straighten me out, pointing me in the right direction. It really made a big impression on me like and this was back in WordPress 1.5, I think. These folks were willing to take time out and answer my questions. At the end of it, I just got this little spark of an idea that I should write about this and create a tutorial to document my experience. I did so, and I shared it afterwards and didn't think much about it. Around a year or so later, I started to have people reach out to me who had found the tutorials that I'd written and said like, "Hey, could we pay you to do this for us?" Which, I had never considered up to that point. Then it started, it just kept coming. That ended up kicking off my career in WordPress, which was driven more from demand than anything else. I started to have several people a week reach out, eventually got to a point where it was like several a day and say, "Hey, can you help us integrate WordPress into our existing site?" The rest is history on the WordPress side of things. I followed that lead all the way that it went. I worked on hundreds of projects as a freelancer, I got to touch a huge range. There's very few industries that I haven't touched in some way, shape or form through WordPress because they were all making that transition to the web and they wanted WordPress at the center of it. I got to learn a lot and then spent time in a big agency working on WordPress in the enterprise. Then, that eventually led to the privilege and the opportunity to work here at Automatic on Woo specifically. eCommerce leading to WooCommerce Let me back up though. That's where the WordPress journey started. The eCommerce journey, eCommerce and entrepreneurship have always been an interest of mine from a young age. I started out baking banana breads and selling them door to door with my younger brother and learned a lot about business and commerce and margins and shipping and fulfillment and all these little things just through some of our personal experiences. It started to get serious about 12 or so years ago when my brother and I joined two other young men and we co-founded a company that was an eCommerce startup, where we were building our own software, that was an eCommerce platform. We had our own drop shipping project that was doing fairly well. Then, we were creating eCommerce software to be used by others. At the same time, this was happening, we were using WordPress to pay the bills and doing software development work and that eCommerce startup ended up transitioning into something focused on paywalls in the media space. I learned a lot from that experience. It was around that same time, I think Woo was coming out. I remember that and had experience with a few other plugins, like WPeCommerce before, I think, was the one I used before Woo. My formal experience was within that startup context of building a platform, basically, proprietary that ended up becoming something that does quite well to this day. I'm no longer involved in it, but learned a lot from that experience. Then, just through that line of doing WordPress service projects, eCommerce would consistently come up in multiple shapes and forms. I would do a project that had a Gravity Forms based eCommerce application in it, or eventually started to do more with Woo, did projects on WPeCommerce, did some Shopify projects early on that integrated with WordPress. Through the service lens of my experience, I got to touch eCommerce in a lot of different ways and shapes and forms beyond the startup experience. I realized when I joined Woo that yeah, eCommerce has been a pretty consistent thread throughout the arc of my professional experience in multiple way shapes and forms. Bob:I find it maybe amazing having talked to all three co-hosts. I know myself I've caught bits and pieces of the backgrounds and things you've been involved with just through our discussions with other builders on the show. I'm always just amazed. I'm like "My God, I've got three veterans on this show." The vast experience that all three of you have is incredible. It ties into what I've told the other two co-hosts on the last two podcasts is I feel like I was extremely lucky getting the three of you as co-hosts because you each bring in a different perspective. You're each working in a different space right now. I mean, it's the WooCommerce space, but you're also bringing in such interesting history into that conversation. Sometimes, when I hear the background of all three of you, I think, "Oh, okay. I can see where during many conversations I've been involved with with you, where something comes from that you talk about." You have a lot of meat in that background that nobody knew about and you're bringing it to the table. It's been an honor for me just to have you three on, because it's, yeah. It's just, sometimes, and I've said this before and I'll say it again. Sometimes I love to just sit back and let one of you run away with the guests. There's just a clicking going on. There's something, maybe magical .. Jonathan: That's a great word. Bob: Yeah. It's magical. I just think, "Man, I don't even need to say anything here for a while because the co-host and whoever I have on are having a conversation and I can watch it grow and expand” The big arc of eCommerce experience Jonathan: What I found interesting too is this WordPress thread, like WordPress at its heart to me is about empowering creativity on the open web. I've had the privilege of seeing that in so many ways and shapes and forms over the years. As I look back on it, commerce is a pretty natural follow through. It's a natural aspect of if you're creating value on the web, at some point there's often an opportunity for a value exchange where you're providing something that someone can then buy. Yes, I've had the privilege of direct experience with Woo over the years, but the bigger arc of my experience in eCommerce is just that broader commerce experience with WordPress generally. Because a lot of what I've had the privilege of doing with WordPress over the years has either been for small business or large business or NGOs that have had some commerce component to it, whether it's subscriptions, whether it's donations, whether it's selling products, or oftentimes, through integrations with other systems like Shopify or native things like Woo or WPeCommerce. But that's something that I've realized more recently like, "Oh yeah. This is a pretty consistent thread over the years, apart from my direct startup experience in the space." That's something I really like about WordPress broadly is when you take this more general focus on empowering creativity that tends to lead, I don't know, there's a pretty close association with commerce in my experience. That's been really cool to see that sort of naturally happen over time. I think it was inevitable that you would see WordPress become this center for commerce. Woo happens to be the thing where most of that takes place these days. If it wasn't Woo, I think it would be something else. Bob: Right. In that huge span of history, it's been a shorter segment as far as it being a co-host on the podcast. You came on at the first of the year when the podcast went to weekly, I brought on both you and Mendel. Brad had been in place for a while. I've asked them both this same question. Is there some element or a piece of all these conversations you've had, or that you've been involved with up until now that really stands out and gives you a better reflection of who Woo builders are. Maybe something you've heard over and over and over again? WordPress and WooCommerce communities, overlapping but different Jonathan: First, I've really enjoyed all of the interviews that we've done and the ones I've listened to that I haven't been involved in. I love hearing different perspectives. I love hearing different people's stories and how they think about things. If I zoom all the way out, I think it's been a bit of an education for me. Over the arc of my past year, because I'm now coming up on a year of working in Woo and I know WordPress quite well at this point. I've been a part of the community for a long time. It's been interesting to see the ways that WooCommerce and its community is different than WordPress and its community. There's so much that's similar, but there's some differences. I think it's because of that sort of centeredness around commerce and the value exchange there. I had noticed myself being somewhat on guard when I first got started to talk about money and to talk about commerce topics with folks in the WooCommerce community. Because in WordPress it's open source, it's free, and sometimes there is a shyness about making money. In general, we struggle with commercialization in WordPress, like how do plug in authors, how do builders make money in this ecosystem? With Woo, I'm still trying to understand this, but there's a difference there. I think in general with merchants, for instance, there's a comfort with paying for things because they're making money. There's not this expectation that everything should be free, not that there is in WordPress, but there is a difference there. Over this past year of listening to guests and just hearing different stories and looking at things, it's been a great opportunity for me to see this eCommerce industry represented by Woo and WordPress as, they have a lot of overlap, but there are some differences between them. This year and the guests that we've brought on and listening to and just gaining perspective has helped me get a little bit more definition. Because I started out from this like WordPress centered, appropriately. The base of this kind of open source where everything gravitates towards free, whether it should or not. Whereas in commerce, merchants and builders don't have that same base expectation, at least in my overall experience. Entering the WordPress ecosystem through WooCommerce I'm still parsing that, but at the heart of it, there is a difference and this is evidenced well by people who come into Woo who don't know WordPress, which I think is awesome. It's one of the things that I get to see more of, people who are coming into the WooCommerce ecosystem. They come to love WordPress, but they're coming from a commerce first perspective. They care about different things like the work with merchants in this industry tends to be more focused on marketing and how to run an eCommerce business of which the technical is only a smaller piece. I like to approach life with a pretty open go with the flow and see where it leads perspective. That's something I wasn't expecting. I saw this more as a subsystem of WordPress where it really is like an adjacent system that just has a lot of overlap, but it's unique. Bob: That's interesting, because I haven't really thought it through in my head. That's something that has been apparent in my podcasts over the last 4 plus year. Yeah. How many people that are actually creating these WooCommerce sites for clients and the people that are building products for WooCommerce, how valuable that would be for them to recognize that. Not that they don't recognize it, because some of them essentially are creating products that are built to do exactly what those people want to do and that's sell. Some of them are probably coming from long WordPress paths as well, and to be able to not separate them out, but to understand, yeah, I'm dealing with a whole different audience here. There are some, sure there's some like-minded things between WordPress and WooCommerce obviously, but there's a lot of unique pieces as well. Publishing and commerce Jonathan: I think what I found helpful is to take the two missions, if you look at the missions for a moment. WordPress is about democratizing publishing, making creating on the web accessible for anyone. Woo is democratizing commerce, making commerce accessible. It's all about the money, WooCommerce, right? I mean, it doesn't have to be literal money exchange, but it is this commerce exchange of value. There's a clear similarity between the two because publishing can often have a commerce component to it. Anyway, yeah, it's very complimentary, but they are distinct missions and distinct ways of thinking about things. That's been great for me. I knew that intellectually going in to this because I started out with, all right, this is the mission and this is what we're going to do and everything I'm doing in community is in service of this mission. Over this year of getting to know guests and talking to more builders and doing research and interviews, et cetera, I've been able to move from intellectual to really taking it to heart, like, okay, wow, there are a lot of adjacency, a lot of compliments here, but some clear differences between the two ecosystems. Bob: It puts a bit of added pressure because when you think okay, I'm a WordPress developer, I'm creating static sites, professional service brochures sites, I'm creating a blog for somebody, maybe it's even a news site. Something that is really content based. Now, when it comes to the builders on the other side of things, the eCommerce side, they're building people's livelihoods. The other sites can also be a persons livelihood because it branches out a bit more. If you're an attorney, yeah, your livelihood is in the court and everywhere else and doing all this stuff and you can talk about it, but with commerce your livelihood is online, selling, people buying, making conversions. There's that added pressure, a bit, to the agencies, to the product builders, to make sure this works seamlessly and people have expectations and I've got to deliver those expectations on my end. Jonathan: Take a simple example like a forms plugin, right? There's a lot of great ones out there. Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, et cetera. I personally know multiple operations running like multi-million dollar setups on Gravity Forms as a basis. Right? I doubt that that's what they saw when they first said, "Let's build a forms plugin." This is the same with Woo. There are some major operations running out of Woo that was probably quite far from mind. This is what can happen in open source. As a builder, you can build a simple plugin and then you get an email one day about how it's being used in this massive setup. They ask a basic question. You're like, "Oh, well I never intended it to be used at that scale." Yeah, it's very interesting. Bob: It is. Hey everyone, as we get closer to the launch of the next iteration of Do the Woo, I would like take take a moment to thank our sponsor WooCommerce.com. As a builder, did you know that are are dozens of WooCommerce meetups globally? These are the perfect opportunities to drop in occasionally and listen to store merchants and beginners share their stories and challenges. It also is a great resource for the clients that you have that are new to WooCommerce. All meetups can be found at WooCommerce.com/meetups/. And now back to the show. Now, you had said that overall, you just love hearing all the guests and the guests you've interviewed. I feel the same way. The other two co-hosts felt the same way. I did ask them to pull out maybe one or two particular episodes, and it could just be one as well that just something stuck out, you know? It wasn't that it was better than all the others, but there was something that hit you a little bit more in the old thought process or later on you contemplated on it a bit more. The guests and episodes that stood out and why Jonathan: First, they're all my favorite. There are a few that stand out. I really enjoyed the interview with Matt Mullenweg, and being able to just hear some of his perspective on things. It was also on my birthday, which was kind of awesome. Yeah. That was great. I enjoyed that for a number of reasons. I really enjoyed the interview we did with Nate Stewart from Big Commerce, just hearing a different perspective, such a great example. I think they've done some great work to think about making commerce more accessible over the years. They've transitioned to more of this like open SaaS thing and they've really embraced WordPress. Hearing his perspective, I really enjoyed. I think sometimes people are a little too myopic or they're like, they just think about one platform. It's like, well, what can we actually learn from what other people are doing and how they work together? Then I really enjoyed what we do with Matt Gerri He's a great example of a builder in my mind that has a lot of value to contribute that can easily go under the radar. Yeah, like I've known Matt for a long time and seen what he's done over the years. It's pretty remarkable to me. You can have these like small, easy to miss, little operations doing some really great things. Whether it's plugin work, whether it's service work, product work. I love discovering those when we get to bring people onto the show or hear about a builder that's doing some really interesting thing off in their little corner of the world that's providing a lot of value that you just wouldn't otherwise know about. Those are the ones that jump to mind. Bob: Yeah. Cool. Well, I cheated because now when I get asked that question or if I ever get asked, I can just say my favorite ones were with my co-hosts, because they talked about some of my favorite ones. I've got this all strategically planned to make my life easier. Okay, to round this out, and this has been a fun one because I think nobody can predict what the answers will be or what they'll come up with. I want you to tell something both personal, not too personal, but something personal and something professional that maybe the majority of people out there that are listening don't know about you. Jonathan: Man. There's a lot of things, Bob. Bob: I know there is. Jonathan: There's a lot of things. Bob: Well, you can meld a couple together. Both personally and professionally experimenting with habits, habit design and execution Jonathan: I think, if anyone knows me for a bit, they'll have some context, but a lot of people don't know to the extent to which I experiment with habits and habit design and execution. Today is day a thousand something in a row of doing pushups every day and taking a cold shower every day. I'm now tracking 39 different habits and I'm always experimenting with different things. I have a lot of different projects that I work on on the side and I've incorporated it, so it's like a mix of personal and professional, right? I, as an individual, am really good at jumping in and starting things, like putting a bunch of energy into something. And so you'll see me do this and I'll start this over here and I'll start this. Habits are the key to keeping the momentum going over a long period of time. As an individual, I have my strengths, I'm good at jumping in and improvising and just sort of getting something up and running. When I decide that something's important, then I'll design a habit around it to keep it going. I'm working on learning Spanish. I spend five minutes a day every day doing a little bit of Spanish. I'm a musician. I like writing music. I do illustration work as well. I'll do a little bit of that every day. Yeah. There's a wide range of things. I feel like at this stage, in my career and my life, it's a good feeling to feel like I'm just getting started. There are definitely the days where it's like, "Wow, okay, that's a lot, there's a lot going on there." But I'm careful to keep the scope small. Most of the things I'm doing are things that I can keep going with just five minutes a day. Then I'll have those moments where I'll have a burst and put a bunch of time into something and take it further along. Yeah, that's something I think a lot of people don't know to the extent to which I'm constantly experimenting and trying different things. What's great is that I do find things that stick and then I keep it up and then see that momentum over time. Bob: Yeah. From that, I can tell that from our conversations that even though I may not have known that about you, it makes sense. It's like, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay. I get it now. Jonathan: I love things, like I keep a harmonica in my pocket almost all the time. I like to be writing music or working on music. I take long walks oftentimes when the weather's nice or even when it's not. I sometimes wonder what the neighbors think of this guy that walks around all the time and then I'll whip out the harmonica and play while I'm thinking about something. Always trying new things. I also like cooking and I enjoyed the cliche of making bread at home during lockdown. Bob: Yeah. Oh yeah. A lot of people took that up. We were trying to keep up on bread supplies. I mean, just because we having been making homemade bread long before the lockup, "Okay, well suddenly everybody's buying it. Oh no, we're out of flour. We can't get flour." Jonathan: Can't buy yeast anywhere. Bob: Yeah. Yeast was an interesting one. We bought this jar so we have it. I don't know how long it will last. We'll see how that goes. Jonathan: That's awesome. Bob: Well, this has been cool. Lets first have you share where people can connect with you. Connect with Jonathan Jonathan: You can go to Jonathanwold.com. That's my little WordPress on the web that I've been keeping up and running for over a decade now. Always to some degree of construction, but a lot of my writing is there. I'm respectably active on Twitter, @SirJonathan. If you're interested in some of my photography work, I've got an Instagram profile that I quite enjoy. I think that's the extent of it. Jonathanwold.com is my home on the web and where I keep everything else connected. Bob: Very cool. Well, I thought before we close out here, if listeners are not new and they've been listening for a while, they know that we're kicking out the next iteration of Do The Woo next week. Jonathan: Yeah. Bob: Official launch is October 6th. First of all, I just want to say that and let everybody know that Jonathan was very instrumental in this iteration as far as feedback and thoughts. This has been quite a new adventure for me and I'm hoping a lot of people are going to find this very useful. Just to throw out a couple of things, we will be adding a second podcast, actually, an extension of this podcast. It's going to be in the same feed, but twice a month on Tuesdays. We will be doing something called Woo Perspectives, which will be sort of a panel, but not formally. I'll be bringing in three individuals and we'll just be talking about some Woo things I bring up. I'm just going to let them run with it. It really is about conversation and letting people share their own perspectives and insights rather than just hearing always how something is built. We can hear what they think about something going on in the space or something with eCommerce. I think it's going to be fun because I'm simply going to be a moderator and the co-hosts, I'm sure, may just pop in every once in a while as well. We'll be starting out the first one, hopefully with all three of the co-hosts. We'll see how that goes by the time that happens later in October. Yeah, it's going to be fun and it's going to be kind of open to a lot of individuals that just have a lot of experience in the space, whether you know them or you don't know them, they're going to be instrumental in the WooCommerce growth. I think just hearing what they have to say is pretty cool. It's going to be fun. I am looking forward to that piece of it. There's a ton of other things. Anything that we've talked about that stands out that you want to share with anyone? Jonathan: I think the big thing for me that I think is worth calling out is that in my work in community at WooCommerce, we're really focused on the merchants and helping merchants get connected. I love the work that you're doing and Do The Woo has been, as a podcast and as a community, focused on that builder space. I think it's really important and there's a lot of opportunity to, like you're already saying, to share insight and perspective to help folks connect. You've been doing that in a lot of ways over the years. I'm excited to just see more of that happening. eCommerce is growing quickly. The WooCommerce ecosystem is growing and more and more people are wanting to get in to build things, to provide service and value to merchants and getting into it. You've been building a great resource for them to be able to do that. I'm just excited about it in general. It was great to see you switched to a weekly and just you've had consistent great content over this, it's almost been a year now. I'm excited for the next iteration. I love the little a change log you got going on. This is 5.0? Bob: Yeah. I'm going to have to update it real soon here. Jonathan: Yeah. I'm just generally excited about it. This is a great community. For me, as I'm working on helping serve and connect more of the merchants, I have a lot of confidence in knowing that the builder community is, is alive and well and growing and the work that you're doing and Brad and Mendel, it's fantastic. I'm excited to see what happens next. Bob: Cool. Excellent. Thank you. Just to let everybody know, I've been pushing out on Bobwp.com since Monday, this last Monday, or actually before that in the week before, a post every day that talks a little bit about different pieces of the new site and what you can expect to find. Check that out. It concludes on next Monday with a post called Community and Connections Without the Noise. I'll just give a little teaser to that. This resulted in a lot of the people I talked to about what I was doing with this site, one of the first things they would ask me is, "Oh, are you starting a forum? Are you doing a Facebook group? Are you doing a big Slack channel with all these channels in there for people to come and talk?" I'd say "No." And they'd say, "Okay, community connection. Tell me more." This was something that I've thought through how you can take a perspective of that and grow a community and connections more on a personal level rather than just a bunch of noise. That's not that that noise is not good. There's a lot of places for it. People need that and get in and talk with each other and be in those crowds sharing ideas and stuff. I'm just taking a different approach to it. Look for that next Monday. In fact, I've already been asked by one or two people that maybe that might make for a nice discussion in a webinar or something, just because it is taking a little bit of a different perspective on the whole idea of building community. I'm looking forward to that. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much. This has been fun having you as a guest instead of, well, I shouldn't say instead of. It's not been any more or any less fun than having you as a co-host, but it's just great to hear more of your story. I want to thank WooCommerce.com again, don't forget about that community chat I told you every last Thursday of the month on the Woo Slack core channel at 1800 UTC. Good stuff, get in there and you can learn some stuff and you can ask some questions. Jonathan, again, thank you. Jonathan: Thank you, Bob. Bob: Everybody have a good weekend. We will be back with the new Do The Woo next week. Take care. Scroll back to top Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. powered by
38 minutes | 4 months ago
Do the Woo Co-Host Mendel Kurland Unplugged
Thanks to our community sponsor This is the second of three episodes where I ask my co-hosts to put on the guest hat. Today I chat with Mendel Kurland, who came on the show at the beginning of this year. It was the perfect opportunity to hear about the diverse background and talents that he brings to the Woo ecosystem. A Chat with Mendel In episode 73, I chat with Mendel about: His current work with WooCommerce, both as a developer advocate at Nexcess and his own personal projects.Mendel’s unique and diverse journey to WordPress and WooCommerce.What he has learned from talking with Woo builders on Do the Woo.How he has discovered a lot of grit and excitement from guests who come from all walks of life.Who he found most inspirational in the episodes he has co-hosted.Why is considers the strength of giving freely important and a steady message from the community of Woo builders.Mendel sharing the story of being a happy camper and a developer in the early days.What challenges people may not know about him when it comes to conversation. Connect with Mendel On Twitter @ifyouwillitIfyouwillit.comNexcess.net Mendel’s Top Episode Picks Bold Moves, Woo Reluctance and Membership Sites with Shannon Shaffer from Purple Finch StudiosLearning and Growing. WooCommerce Meetups with Sandi Batik The Conversation Yes, this is the transcript. But not in the traditional sense, transcribed word for word. We do not speak as we write. Often the flow of transcribed content is hard to follow. So I have taken it a few steps further by seriously editing, at times, the conversation and even using my editorial freedom to clarify some points. So enjoy. Transcript Email Download New Tab Bob: Hey everyone. BobWP, episode 73 of Do the Woo, this is number two in a series. This is really fun because I get to literally throw my co-hosts off the show during the regular episode and then ask them to come back on as a guest, so they have to put on a different hat.. I can actually see Mendel and he is wearing a different hat, I think, compared to the last time I saw him. Of course, I don't remember that, because that's been about a month, but anyway, we have a great show. I'm going to drop in our community sponsor, WooCommerce.com, before we get started. You know WooCommerce.com. If you're a developer or builder, you probably have gone to their developer resource portal. Don't forget that for your clients and your customers that are new to WooCommerce their blog has a lot of good Wooness on there at that beginner and merchant level. They can learn the basics of Woo and wrap their brains around that. So check out WooCommerce.com. The new Do the Woo launches October 6th I'm going to just make one quick announcement before I bring on my wonderful guest here. And that is that we have set a date for the official relaunch of Do the Woo, so watch for that, that day will be October 6th. (applause) And you can see we're recording at a live studio right now, and there is social distancing going on, so nah, not really, not at all, that was all Mendel's fans. Hey, Mendel. How you doing? Mendel: Hey Bob. I'm great. It's good to be here of course, I'm marking that date on my calendar. What date is that again, Bob? Bob: October 6th. Mendel: October 6th, the relaunch of Do the Woo. I'm pretty excited myself. Bob: Yeah. I'm excited to have you as a guest. This is going to be fun because you've been on my other podcast before in the past,. Here, we ask everybody else about WooCommerce, but it's nice to get the backstory and hear a little bit of what you're thinking. And just a side note,. I believe the first time Mendel and I talked was over a Bloody Mary bar at WooConf. Mendel: It was WooConf in San Francisco. I think we were in the basement of that cool space that they rented. And yeah, I walked up to you and I say, "Hey man, let's chat." And we had a Bloody Mary and I think it was like nine o'clock in the morning. So there's no reasonable reason we should have been having a Bloody Mary, but it was WooConf and it was fun and interesting. And there were wonderful speakers and awesome topics and great content and cool artwork, and having a conversation with you kind of just put the icing on the cake. Bob: Well, that's nice of you to say after all these years. Mendel: And just for the record, I am wearing a different hat than I do when I co-host. So yeah, you are seeing me with a different hat, Bob, even though the rest of you in the virtual world can't see me. Bob: Excellent. Yeah. That's good to know. So you are wearing a different hat literally. Well, this is what we always start with and I know that it gives people an idea of what you do, but I should ask you, Mendel, how do you Do the Woo aside from Do the Woo? How does Mendel Do the Woo? Mendel: Wow! Well, it's funny. One of the things that I've tried to do on this show is to not bring a whole lot of Liquid Web and Nexcess into it, because I want to focus on the people that we're interviewing. And so during this episode, I guess I'll talk a little bit about what I'm doing over at Liquid Web and Nexcess, and also how I Do the Woo in my personal life. I am a developer advocate for agencies at Nexcess for WooCommerce. So I help agencies onboard, I help them answer complex questions about WooCommerce and about building on WordPress and WooCommerce for their online stores. And generally, just try and be a helpful human over there at Nexcess, So that's how I Do the Woo in my professional life. Now I do some fun little side projects to kind of keep my mind sharp, so I spin up print on demand sites and personal rental sites and things like that for camping equipment. I try and keep myself sharp with some online stores and some eCommerce stuff. One of my favorite things to work on, this is super nerdy, is WooCommerce optimization. I've been fascinated with that for, I don't know, the past five years, and now I'm starting to get back into writing code and building a couple plugins that might be helpful for the WooCommerce world in the future. So I'm just all over Woo, and that's how I'm doing it these days. Bob: Wow! Couple of plugins. I'm impressed. Mendel: Yeah. Plugins are fun and what happens is, I'm doing work for somebody at Nexcess or I'm doing something on my own, and I'm playing around with WooCommerce. I realize there's something as simple as I can't see the inventory for all my products in list view, which is super frustrating to me. Why can't I see my product quantities? I want to know what's in stock, what's not in stock, but even more than that, I want to know what the product quantities are. Now, I haven't looked to see if that option is a column that's just hidden, I would assume it's not. And so in that case, I might go write a little piece of code and throw it into a plugin. And you get enough of those things together and all of a sudden you have a WooCommerce tweaks plugin, which is cool. So it's just stuff like that that I'm playing around with, trying to solve problems for the world. Bob: Yes, you're joining the ranks of a lot of the builders here who come up with the idea because they need to solve it either for themselves or for their clients. And then it's like, hey, might as well do a plugin and give it to the world. So cool. You are an official guest and an official builder and you are going to do a plugin, so this is just qualifies you like 100% as a guest. What is the backstory,?I don't think I ever heard this of how you got into WordPress and then where did WooCommerce come along ? The backstory of coming into WordPress and WooCommerce Mendel: Yeah. So it's a story that takes us back a little bit further than even my last job, which you, and a lot of people know about, and I'll touch on that in a second. So if you go back to around 2000, I built a social networking site in Iowa City, Iowa. This was before Facebook and all of those other, Twitter, all that stuff. I think it was around 2003, I built the site, it was pretty popular and what came out of that were a bunch of clients that I was doing advertising for, building simple websites for. I was trying to earn as much revenue as possible by helping small businesses build presences or actually just add business to their books. So I went through building sites by hand, and then I decided, well, as I got better at PHP, I thought, maybe I'll include headers and include footers and started to build what was half CMS and half not CMS, something where I was reusing a good amount of code. Eventually, I started working with Joomla and I played around with Joomla for quite a while. I ended up using it on client sites, and I went to go work for a music company. And I was working there and building sites for them, and at one point there were some issues with the Joomla content based sites. And at some point it was difficult to update the software and I ran into some problems that were not that great, I won't go into what those were, but they weren't that great. And I found my way to WordPress. And what I loved about WordPress is that WordPress was simple to update, right? As long as you didn't do tons of modifications, usually the updates didn't break things, if you did modifications in the right way. So that's not editing core files, that's creating future plugins, that's creating child themes, that's doing all of the things that you should be doing as a non cowboy or cowgirl coder and actually building things in the way that they're supposed to be built for WordPress. So as I got to know WordPress, I left that company, I went to go work for GoDaddy. And while I was at GoDaddy, I was working on other things, but in my spare time playing around with WordPress and playing around with WooCommerce eventually, when it became WooCommerce. At some point at GoDaddy, because of my knowledge with WordPress and software development and things like that, I helped to build out their developer evangelism program, which was cool for WordPress. And in particular, which is when you met me at that event in San Francisco at WooConf. I eventually left GoDaddy and I was working on my own thing, right? And my own thing was Geek Adventures, where I built eCommerce solutions that would sell tickets to events and would sell clothing , have them fill out their waiver online and would rent camping gear to them. This really put my eCommerce knowledge to the test. So by the time I got to WooCommerce, I had been working on asp.net systems that integrated with Microsoft ERP systems that integrated with the web, right? I did super enterprise