Episode Transcript
Welcome to another edition of Within WordPress, the podcast in WordPress where you get to know all the people working within WordPress. Today we have a special guest again, cuz you know, let's be honest, all the guests are special. Um, the infamous, uh, Katie Keith, and Katie is doing something very interesting with WooCommerce.
Um, so please, Katie, welcome to the podcast. And, um, how about, uh, you do a little introduction of what, uh, what the thing is you do with WooCommerce and who you are.
Hi, yeah, I'm Katie Keith from, so I'm co-founder and c e o OFTU plugins. And, uh, thank you very much for having me. It's good to be here. Sure.
Yeah. Thank. Um, we started selling plugins in 2016, having previously designed WordPress websites. And, um, we mostly do WooCommerce plugins. We have 21 premium plugins at the moment. I think all but four of them are to do with WooCommerce. So that's very much what we specialize in. Um, in particular, we have a lot of plugins that are around speeding up the customer journey in WooCommerce and, um, making it every single stage of the process faster.
And that's a very interesting thing because making things faster is what I like. It's not, and not, not just a site, but, uh, most people think performance is, uh, just making your site faster. But it is indeed a lot more than that, right. It's the, the, the customer journey is a very important part of it. So what I hear you, what I'm hearing you say is that you started out as an agency.
And then you pivoted into a plug-in business. Is that a correct assumption?
That's right. Yeah. So we started in about 2009 building WordPress websites for clients, Uhhuh. Um, we, uh, did that. We, um, grew a bit. We built a virtual team of freelancers to build the websites and we kind of. Hit a ceiling. Really, it was a project management related ceiling.
So we got some good people working for us to do design development, seo, but it was always me managing the projects and mm-hmm. I tried to find other project managers and it just didn't really work out. I didn't really want to, to become a kind of company with staff at that stage of my career. And we thought we need a sort of more sustainable way to build, uh, the company.
Yeah. Um, we look towards products. I know a lot of WordPress service providers, um, freelancers and agencies do have this kind of holy grail of selling products, um, and see digital products as a more scalable way forward. And we very much fit into that category. So we built our first product, um, in early 2016 and, um, haven't looked back.
I, I, I hear you say, uh, you, you weren't looking for the, the, the extra amount of people on, on, on, on payroll and stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, if I'm not mistaken, I saw you tweet, uh, uh, a week or two weeks back. I saw you tweet like a whole, uh, this is a, an array of folks that we've hired. Um, obviously you, I know you've looked, you've, you've reconsidered that position.
Well, this is why I pivoted slightly in the previous statement where I, I said at that stage of my career because, uh, in saying that I realized how much things have changed since then because I, at the time, I really didn't want to be a manager and all that goes with it. Um, and so we thought, well, we'll do something else that's more scalable, so we don't need to, and started the plugins.
And we, uh, managed the plugins with just us for a while, and then they just kept growing and growing and we were enjoying it. And, um, first of all, took on, uh, someone to do support, uh mm-hmm. Because I, I did all the support myself for, for such a long time. Like we're talking 50 tickets a day, I was handling on my own.
And ob obviously I'm fast, so I know the plugins inside out. I had saved responses and things to save me time. But sure that takes away from business development. It's not a good idea. And I was quite precious about support. I didn't want anybody else talking to my customers. They'd get it wrong. Um, well, There just wasn't a choice.
Um, it was just getting ridiculous. So I was really reluctant, um, and took on a support company and, um, and, uh, I used a company that was just sort of okay for a while and then they closed down and then I found Level Up support, which I know a lot of WordPress product companies use. Yep. Um, and they have a big team of support people in the Philippines and they all, they do a lot of training and.
Each person is dedicated to your company. They don't swap them around really and things. And the first level up by guy we got was just amazing. He just slotted into the team immediately and he's such a character. He just really took a lot forward within the company straight away. And he's still our head of support now, um, years later.
And it kind of showed me that he can add rather than take away. And that opened my mind to having other people involved. And similarly, we gradually started taking on developers initially on a freelance basis from Codeable. Yeah. And we would be very careful. We talked to Codeable personally about who's experienced in developing commercial plugins, and they put us in touch with some really good people.
And so it, it was years before we actually hired our first in-house developers, which was two years ago. So it was kind of really gradual. And then suddenly I've got a team of 18 or whatever it is, and I'm like, I never made that decision. It just evolved.
If you have, if you have to suffer that sentence with whatever it is, it means it's growing fast and it means it's going
good.
Exactly. And then you have to go with it and make the decisions as they happen, the right decision at each stage. Yeah. Yeah. What
is, um, what is the pivotal moment there that you decided, like, let, let's do, let's do a, uh, a plugin, let's do products. Is there, um, Is there a pivotal moment or did that also sort of happen,
happen?
Um, it was a very slow process actually. Um, okay. So I said we started selling plugins in 2016. Mm-hmm. We actually spent much of 2013 building a theme, and back then I wasn't so confident with marketing and I wanted to sell on ThemeForest because I didn't know how I would get our theme out to the wider audience.
And, um, unfortunately it was rejected by ThemeForest when we spent like a year developing it and submitted it and they rejected it. And I didn't think I could make a theme of success on my own. Uh, so we just kind of stopped. So we had this product idea for literally three years before we launched our first plugin.
And then, I suppose the virtual team, um, that was helping to build our client's websites was going well in early 2016. Mm-hmm. And that freed up my husband Andy, to uh, spend a few weeks writing a fairly simple WooCommerce plugin. Um, it's still there today and has grown since then. It's WooCommerce protected categories, and at the time all it did was let you password protect a category.
So in WordPress you can already pass web protect pages and posts, but not categories. And, um, we went on the WooCommerce Ideas forum, which, um, is used to be a separate website, but I think they've merged it with other things now. And we looked at the simplest, most popular idea, uh, that people were requesting that they didn't seem likely to put into core.
And we built our plugin with commerce protected categories and, um, It only took a few weeks of Andy's time and he could do that because we had the freelancers doing the technical tasks on the websites we were building. Yeah. And um, so we did, I did a bit of content marketing. Um, it was a lot more niche than the theme I mentioned before because at the time there was nothing on the market that let you pass a protected category in WooCommerce.
So I blogged about it. It got straight to the top of Google because it didn't exist, and we started getting sales straight away. So that was kind of just an experiment, and we were like really amazed when we got our first sale. We weren't really expecting it to happen. It was, we just stuck the plugin on our main agency website and didn't think about branding or name or anything like that.
And then about three days later we started getting a trickle of sales and we were like, Ooh, maybe we can sell plugins. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a, that's an interesting, uh, so it almost sounds like the, uh, I'm not gonna say that this is the whole, um, experience you've had, but that almost sounds like overnight success.
Like find, find something that works, uh, be truly unique and have something that works, uh, and then hit it off straight away. That's that. I mean, that must have been like a warm bath compared to the rejection of the theme.
Absolutely. Yeah. And we realized that going small, going niche in a big market can work.
Yeah. Uh, the theme was multi-purpose. It was too big. And we were never going to compete with the likes of Arvada that were becoming popular at the time. We were building our theme. They have much more resources behind them, and they're just the huge pieces of software, these themes. Whereas a little plugin that does one task well is very different and felt more achievable for us.
So that was really nice to find something that we could actually make a difference in. Yeah. And it's a bit harder nowadays, but there is still gaps. If you're in WooCommerce or WordPress doing it every day, then there are gaps that you can build products to fill. Oh, for
sure. The, I, I forgot who, but somebody commented recently saying like, the, the market is saturated.
I'm like, are we looking at the same market? Because I see opportunities constantly like there is e even if you think the market within WordPress is saturated, just look outside of WordPress and see what other CMSs are doing, and you'll quickly find a whole array of solutions. Uh, like if you're looking for, uh, inspiration to buy, uh, to, to, uh, create a WooCommerce plugin.
Look at Shopify. They have tons of extensions and add-ons that do not exist in WooCommerce world, but. Could, cuz there's obviously a market for it. Cuz if, you know Shopify, for those who don't know, um, everything, extra costs extra. There's no, there's no free stuff. So if if people are willing to pay for it, then there is a market for it.
Yeah, no, that's a, yeah. That, that's an interesting, um, so the, the, the origin story sort of starts with, uh, one plugin. Um, you, uh, mentioned in your introduction you're focusing on, um, the, the customer experience, uh, in, in your plugins mostly now. Mm-hmm. So what would be your flagship plugin that, uh, exemplifies that principle?
Um, well, we've got about four or five that bring the principle together, but the best selling outta that category is our WooCommerce product table plugin, which was probably our third premium plugin that we ever released. And we released it in response to demand on one of our other plugins that people wanted the WooCommerce version of this other plugin.
Um, that they wanted basically a one page order form, which would put lots of plugin, lots of products, rather all on one page with all the information about the product, like the description and stuff like that. And an add to cart buttons, um, ways to sort of, sort of like a bundle or. Um, more like a one page order form, really.
So, okay. Imagine a printed catalog. Imagine, imagine in the olden days you'd receive a catalog and on the back page there would be a form with all the products from the catalog listed, right? And then you'd check off the ones you wanted exactly. You'd tick what you wanted. You would, uh, enter the quantity of each one and send off the form.
So we are talking a WooCommerce version of that, which brings the products onto one page with, um, order form functionality. So you can choose quantities. If it's a variable product, you can select the variations, uh, take as many products as you require, and then mm-hmm. Just do one click to add them all to the cart together.
So that's what our WooCommerce product table does. And, um, that was again, the first plugin to do that, although there are competitors now, of course. And, um, it, it just speeds up shopping because normally in WooCommerce you've got like a grid of products. Maybe you've got nine products per page. Yep. And each one takes up quite a lot of space and it's got a big image.
It's got a title, a price, and not much else. It might have an add to cart button, but you can't really do much with that because you can't change the quantity and you can't choose a variation. So you'd have to visit this separate product page for each product to choose those extra options, view descriptions, and that kind of thing.
So what Product Table does is put more information and all the purchase options onto one page, as well as displaying products more in a more compact layout so that people can buy them in bulk much more quickly.
Yeah, sounds like a solution. Uh, I, I, I know, uh, quite a few, uh, stores that would benefit that, so that's one of them.
I'm curious, what, what are other, um, you said not one flagship. There's a couple of flagships, which are some prime examples in that.
Um, well, I'll start at the beginning of the customer journey, which is how they find the products in the first place. Yeah, so last, I think it was last September, we launched our WooCommerce product filter plugin, which is already proving popular and that you can use it on its own with WooCommerce or you can use it with our product table plugin to add kind of really.
Fancy filters. So all sorts of filters, like, uh, check boxes, and you can click on color swatches or images and all sorts of different ways of displaying product data. Uh, because depending on what sorts of products you're selling, you might want different ways to interrogate that data and narrow down your list of products.
So the filter plugin is about finding the products in the first place. Yep. The product table plugin that we've mentioned is about how they're displayed like in a quick order form. Yep. Um, we also have a WooCommerce quick view plugin, which adds quick view buttons to your store. Again, either you. Quick view is like a light box.
So you click okay. Yeah. You've probably seen this in um, ma major clothes, e-commerce sites or something where you are browsing products and you hover or click on a magnifying glass or something like that to bring up a popup with information about that one product. So that's another way of learning more with while remaining on the page.
Um, so you don't have to go away from the product page that in the shop page and then come back to it. You're still there cuz you can open the quick view, read the description, look at more pitches, add to the cart, and then it closes and you're still on that list of products so that you are encouraged to buy more instead of just go straight to the cars and complete
your purchase.
Yeah, that's a, that, that's a great way to speed up the process and yet still being in context of what your originally intent was. Mm.
And similarly, the final stage of the process is completing your order. So normally with WooCommerce, you add products to the cart, and then you are taken to a cart page and you review your order and make changes, and then you go to a checkout page.
So that's quite a few different pages. So we've also got a WooCommerce Fast cart plugin, which brings all that onto the whatever page you added the product to the cart. So that might be the shop page. Okay. So when you've added a product to the cart, Either it opens straight away or there's a little icon in the corner, which you can click to launch your cart, and then it pops up either like on the side of the page or in the middle.
You get to choose. And that's, um, lets you, uh, view your cart and then go to the checkouts still in the popup. So then you enter your payment details and complete your order. You can view related products as well to kind of increase the average order value or within this popup on the page where you added the product, so you're not going through a multi-page process.
Yeah, that's smart. That that almost sounds like it's potentially your most popular plugin because I can see all the benefits in, in, in what that does.
I think it's probably about number five at the moment, but it's relatively new, so we are still growing it. Um, but yeah, that could be a big one as well.
Yeah, we are working on another checkout plugin at the moment as well, which will be released in the next few months, which will let you edit your checkout fields and add multi-step checkouts and other things, and that will work with the fast cart for people that want extra functionality as well. Mm-hmm.
So at, so at this stage, how do you come up with your new plugin ideas? Is that still. Mostly feedback you're getting or are you doing market research now? Or how, how has that evolved?
Kind of two sources. One is that the ideas come to us because we are out there, we are listening to customers and we can see what they want.
We often create plugins, uh, to add a feature that relates to one of our existing plugins. Mm-hmm. Uh, the WooCommerce Quick View plugins, a really good example of that because customers of our WooCommerce product table plugin were asking constantly for quick view buttons in the product table, and we could have added that as a feature of Product Table, but instead we thought Quick view isn't specific to product tables.
It is something different from that. It's, uh, you can yeah. Use it without the product table in your default layout, for example. Yeah. And, um, so then people can either click on it from the default shop page or from the product table if they're using the two plugins together. Yeah. So we decided to release it, um, as a separate plugin for that reason.
That makes sense. If
you can extract it to something that's, is a standalone option. Uh, and improvement as well. Yeah. Yeah. So you, um, th that is the feedback you're getting and stuff and, and what's the other, how, what is the other route of, uh, going from an idea to yes, this is something that is validated and, and, and needed.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, let's start building. How does that process work? The
other, the other route is more, uh, awareness of what is big in the markets. And our vision is to kind of have a band two version of all of the major WooCommerce extensions. So for example, there's an official extension on woocommerce.com called Product add-ons, and it's quite limited.
It's useful in that it lets you add other types of product options. Though normally in WooCommerce you can only have variation dropdowns and they're always displayed as a dropdown. Um, product options is popular because it lets you add check boxes and radio buttons and text fields and things like that as well.
Uh, so. But it's missing quite a lot. For example, uh, we knew from our experience of the market that it was missing conditional logic options to, for example, conditionally show one option depending on the customer's, other selections. An example of that might be if you want to add gift wrap options to a plugin, you might have a gift wrap checkbox.
And when you tick the checkbox, it opens up additional options for people to choose from. Um, you wouldn't want to clutter up your page with, like, choose a style of ribbon or something for all customers. Yeah. So it's missing a few things like that, that people want. And as a result, we built our own last year, which is doing really well, and it integrates with our other plugins.
For example, you can display the products options added with our plugin in the product table in WooCommerce product table in the quick view light box in the Quickview plugin, and so on.
So it sounds like you're, you are building your own, um, ecosystem of plugins, not only as separate solutions, but as some, uh, whichever combination of your plugins you're using, that they also interact and add onto each other.
Um, I'm, I'm assuming that's a conscious decision Yeah.
Wherever possible because we want to be able to cross sell our plugins and have them work together. Yeah,
exactly. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. So in, in, um, um, like from a, you onboard customers for a, usually, probably for a particular plugin they're interested in, um, I'm, I'm sure your store does the upselling as well.
Um, and, and maybe they end up with two or three plugins as they check out the, the next step of, uh, Wanting to get that particular customer to understand all of your solutions. Um, do you have a specific tactic for that or is that happened as they continue to be clients? Do you like, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, uh, understand how you go from, you know, penetrating the market and ending up with one or two clients and then sort of expanding within as well.
Cause I, you, you're giving a lot of great examples of how you're using, uh, different ideas and, and solutions you see. And, and, and. Uh, see the demand for, to build those, and that obviously expands your market. But, um, do you have any special tactics to do? Like, how do I expand within my current, uh, set of
customers?
Yeah, I think it's really important to look for opportunities to get new custom from your existing customers and mm-hmm. Uh, that's what, that's why we try to develop related plugins that work alongside each other on the same website. So one way we do that, which we found really makes a difference to our average order value, is to have each plugin offered as.
A single individual plugin and also as a bundle with another very closely related plugin. So if you go on any of the product pages on vtu.com, then you'll see there's a two column pricing table where you can either buy the plugin on its own or coupled with another plugin. So to use the example of our WooCommerce product table plugin, you can buy it on its own or you can buy it with Quickview.
And when you do that, you basically get 50% off the price of what it would cost you to buy Quickview separately. So you're getting a deal for buying them together. And when we implemented this a year or so ago, it did increase our average order value by quite a lot.
Oh, wow. Uh, and I guess that this is available as a plugin, plugin for, uh, uh, other people to purchase as well, or is it, uh, custom built?
You mean the two column bundle thing? Yeah. Um, it's not because we actually sell using easy digital downloads and while we do have one Yeah. Controversial,
Ooh, do I need to edit this out? Or,
uh, that's very public information. Um, when we started selling plugins, like I said, we just. Um, stuck a plugin on our existing agency website where we sold our client services and Easy digital download.
Seemed like the simplest way to just get started with one digital product. Yeah. And we had no idea what it would grow into. And actually we've had a lot of problems as a result of that decision because it was, there's a much smaller market around it, supporting it of developers and add-ons and things.
So we've done a lot of custom work to make it meet our business requirements. And I do wish we'd use something different, maybe with commerce or something that's, um, not even specifically WordPress,
like any plans in that direction to, to reboot on, on WooCommerce or even something else.
Not actively because.
It's more of an internal benefit and it would be a huge project. Like imagine how many subscribers we've got, people with annual subscriptions on e d D. It would just be a nightmare and that would be a very big distraction for us compared to developing and improving the plugins, which actually make us money.
So probably one day, and we talk about it all the time, but we, it's fine. It does the job, um, but it's not what.
Yeah, I, I hear this a lot where, uh, folks start on, uh, on something and, and EDD is often used as a, as a, as a great starting point, but then there's limitations here and there, um, that end up making you, having, forcing you to have, make very difficult decisions because you, you're part in, like, I wanna leave, but I'm also stuck.
And I know that if I'm going to move away, it's six months of development time, uh, for one person full-time. So am I in, do I really want to want to invest that right now? Um, I remember when I was working at Yoast, uh, they were using e d D as well, and they moved to WooCommerce. That was, that was more than one person working for a very long time, I'll tell you that.
Mm-hmm. That, that was a huge project. Uh, so I, I can understand there's some hesitance there, but, uh, uh, it, it, it's still, uh, uh, a funny, uh, combination in my head, but, uh, Yeah, I guess, I guess that's how it goes. I, I, I know WooCommerce, uh, plugin developers who don't even sell, don't even have their website on WordPress, don't even sell with WordPress or whatsoever.
Um, and they're doing fine as well. So it's, it's absolutely no necessity, but, uh, interesting. Nonetheless, it feels
a little bit disingenuous, doesn't it? A bit hypocritical that you are, you're kind of an advocate of WordPress as a WordPress company, but if you don't use them, then,
so I, I've, um, one of those people that have that, uh, I, I know very well and I've asked them like, so what is your argument to not use WordPress?
Because with the same amount of effort you could have. And he actually goes like, so I have a template and I'm also selling other stuff. I have a template of what my site looks like. I, I throw my product in there. I have a license key thing activated in, in conjunction with it, and I have to do like a big copy and paste, but I'm done and I go, okay.
Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. That makes, that makes sense. Um, yeah, uh, my counter argument was you could do the same thing with a site in web present and then copy and paste that and he goes, yeah, probably, but you know, let me play around with new technologies and this and that. And I go, okay, good. Nevermind me asking.
Interesting. Yeah. Um, so it does mean though that all this custom work we do, we are not tending to release in the same way. We do have one, um, easy digital download plugin, which is E d d vat, um, for European v a T law because, um, we couldn't, there wasn't anything off the shelf available that would allow us to meet the European V a T laws.
So we built a plugin to do that, and we did release that as, and that's still available, but it doesn't do that well compared to our WooCommerce plugins. And so we haven't really been tempted, well,
the market is a lot more Yeah, I understand. Cause the, the market is a lot smaller as well for a db and, and, and in my experience, it's, it's shrinking.
Mm-hmm. Um, I see more movement away from it than I am seeing towards it. So, um, no, understandably so. You have, um, you have an interesting name for a company name. Um, I, I, I, you've mentioned it a few times, but I, I wanted to ask like, where does the name come from?
Well, that's another example of not really planning for where we aimed to get in the future.
So yeah. When we started our agency business, we lived in a converted barn in Dartmore National Park in England, and it was barn number two. That was our address opposite. It was literally an. But yeah, and we, that was our company name. It's, it's a short domain name, at least band two. Um, but yeah, again, we wouldn't have chosen that now.
But then every time we've thought of changing it, we've thought, oh, we're quite well known now let's leave it. And then two years later we are better known and it's like, well, I don't want to lose that recognition. And, um, for the vanity of a better name. Yeah,
it's a little bit like the poet, uh, Mr. Lennon said, uh, life happens while you're busy making other plans.
It just, you went in the direction you didn't expect. And then with the choices you made, here you are
quarantine. Cause we were a local company at first, we were specializing in small business web design within the area where we lived. So it made sense at the time to have a name which reflected, um, the locality, even the rural nature of where we were.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Whereas, of course, a global tech company, that's not necessarily the what you would choose to emphasize.
No. So, um, I, I ha you, you mentioned before we jumped on the podcast, uh, you live in Mayorca, uh, Spain. Mm-hmm. Um, beautiful island. Um, I, I'm guessing that would've, would've not been able if you com if you had continued to, uh, cater for agencies.
So from an agency to, to client sites and design and stuff, and or was that gonna happen anyway?
That's interesting. I've never thought about that. I've always thought about when we had our normal jobs before we quit to work for ourselves that we, you can't move abroad when you work in an office five days a week.
Yeah, obviously. Yeah. I never actually thought what we might have done if we'd kept the client facing business, I suppose it would've been harder to get new clients. Um, by the time we finished, we were mostly working remotely with our clients though. Um, we were working with more London companies and we lived in the southwest of England, nowhere near London, and, um, some international companies and things like that.
So it was mattering less. So for me, the thing that facilitated it was working for ourselves, not necessarily on the plugins.
Okay. Yeah, that makes, I guess that makes sense. It's, um, I, I, um, probably one of those other things that also happens as you're just, um, Making new decisions and, and move on with, uh, with those decisions as a, as a primary driver into what you're doing after those decisions.
Um, I maybe I, I know a few, uh, folks who are, uh, purposely designing their life to be more flexible. Uh, and I also know a few who are just stumbled into it, um, uh, even to the point where they're now back, like having been nomad for about seven, eight years and now back, like starting families and stuff. But, uh, um, the, the allure of working remote or wherever you want, um, I think it's still appealing to a lot of folks.
So how did you end up, uh, choosing Majorca?
Um, well, it's mostly my husband. He'd always had a dream of having a second home in New Yorker and it had always been somewhere that we enjoy coming on holiday. It's not just a beach resort like people think. We like to go hiking in the mountains and things like that.
Um, and obviously the weather compared to England is a lot better. Um, yep. But the second home thing just didn't really feel right, ever. I like to go on holiday to different places and see different parts of the world and, um, we have a daughter who is school age and um, didn't necessarily want to go to the same place for all of our holidays.
And, um, we were a bit frustrated that we have this flexible lifestyle through our work, but we have a daughter at school, so she needs to be in one place and we are not into the homeschooling thing. We didn't enjoy it during Covid when we had to do it, for example, and didn't think it was in her interest either.
So, We didn't want to be the sort of family that would just travel around the world homeschooling, and yet we'd built this flexibility for ourselves. So we used to talk kind of, um, longingly about, oh, when she's left home, we will do this. We'll go and travel and live somewhere else and whatever. And then one day we actually interviewed somebody for a job and he was a digital nomad living in Portugal.
And during his online interview, he showed us the view from his apartment and it was just amazing. And, um, afterwards we were like, why do we have to wait? Um, so yeah,
grabbing the by the horn we're yes.
We thought, well, let's try it for a year. Let's move to New York for a year and see how it goes. And we kept our house in England.
Um, this is, uh, September, 2021, so 18 months ago, um, we moved over, we kept our house in England and rented it out for, as a holiday, let for a year. And, um, moved to moca and then we decided to stay and my daughter's in a international school nearby. Okay. On moca? On moca. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, it's a, it's a large enough island to have more than just, uh, tourism.
Um, I forget how large it is, but, uh, um, I didn't think there'd be, uh, an international school, but I guess there's a lot more international people there, so it actually makes sense.
There's a lot of international schools. Yeah. You'd be surprised. Oh, really? Um, yeah, there's, there's about. Four English ones, and I think there's a German one and a French one, and it's like the international school.
Wow. Capital of Europe. Uh, yeah, it's surprising. And
today I learned, I did, I I had no clue. And here's me waiting for, uh, my youngest to finish, uh, a secondary school going into college. Yeah, exactly. So we can move about. Interesting. No, I, I probably, I, I would be, I would be doing her disservice at, if we were to pack up and leave at this, uh, at this moment of her education, she has, uh, what, uh, two and a half years ahead of her.
Hmm. Um, probably nicer to, to stay in the same school and finish that. Uh,
see socially as well. Like our daughter was 10 at the time and she wasn't too attached to, uh, friends or whatever. Whereas in their mid-teens, that's the time they probably don't want be. Yeah. Yeah.
So, um, you've mentioned him a few times, uh, your husband, um mm-hmm.
His primary role, uh, from what I've gathered so far was the developer side of things.
Yeah. He's a software developer by trade, so he brought in the technical, uh, skills, whereas I brought in the more business development marketing.
Mm-hmm. Has his role changed much over the years?
Um, it's been interesting.
Yes, because he was always the only developer and then we started getting extra capacity for freelance, um, from freelancers for projects, and then we've got full-time developers. So he has done a much better job than me at hiring himself out of a job. Um,
That is possibly true. So like we bought a house in New York having rented before in February this year, and he took a few months out of work to get sorted and you know how much work these things always are. Yeah. Um, and so that helped the company even more to um, run on a day-to-day basis without him.
And he's recently come back to work and is doing a more kind of strategic quality control role cuz he often has good ideas about how to design a plugin more intuitively in the admin. For example. He's very good at spotting bugs with our website, um, that nobody else spots and um Good. So he's, um, his role has definitely evolved a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine it would cuz uh, um, there, there's like this, um, as, as a company grows to about 10, 12 people, that is manageable. That is, you essentially have one leader. Um, maybe a team lead, but depending on, on, on the kind of team. So if you have support and and development, possibly you have a team lead, but growing beyond 12 means you need different roles.
You need management. Um, there's just a crisis of, uh, of how much control you can have as a single person. Um, and, and yeah, so it makes sense. Somebody has to step up in that role. Um, it's a good thing he likes that because, um, if, if that wasn't the case, you would have to find somebody else. I imagine that.
Yeah, go ahead. We did promote one of our developer, one of our senior developers in January. We promoted to head of plug-in developer, and while he doesn't have line management responsibilities, we have empowered him to make decisions about, um, technical processes and what tools we use and so on. So that's going quite well and we've always, I totally understand the issue.
You're saying you get to a certain size and you need to put basically middle managers in who manage the other team members. And we've always kind of, Avoided that so far because even though we're a bit bigger than that 12 limit, um, some of our team are through Level Up. So we've got something like five level Up support engineers and a couple that we hire directly as well.
And so their, their management comes from Level Up, which is really helpful because they do the training and the HR side of things with those five team members. And they also do quite a lot of performance management to check their response times on support tickets and things like that. So it means that although we've got that many full-time people actually that I'm not line managing every single person in the team.
So yeah, we'll have to see how it goes as we move up and, um, what is needed.
Yeah, no, obviously, um, and, and, um, the amount of growth is going to. Either by choice or by by market is going to, um, flatten off at some point? Um, or, or is it your goal to become the next uh, I don't know. Awesome motive?
Well, not in every way.
Um, sorry. I know, um, I don't think I have say's entrepreneurial brain, although I would love to. Um-huh. I would do some things differently, but I very much respect his business knowledge and I think WordPress needs more of that, um, in it's professionalizing as an industry very much. But there aren't many SAS in the industry.
Yeah.
I'll, I'll be honest. It's a, it was a sneaky example cuz I know you tweeted something this morning. I know. As a, as a result of, uh, of you installing, uh, all-in-one s e o mm-hmm. Uh, where your email address was automatically captured and maybe a little too forward, uh, considering the GDPR rules and stuff like that.
So it was a sneaky attempt to get a reaction, but, uh,
yeah, you, yeah, I don't mind them owning multiple companies and No, of course cross promoting. Um, it's when there's a few lines they cross where they try to trick and mislead people in their marketing, and that's just a, that's like a step further than I would go.
Um, so that's, but, but limit.
But, but in terms of, of, of team size, I think, uh, I don't know exactly, but I think they're 240, 250. Something along that lines is do you ambition that sort of size, like. Is, is, is that even on your mind? Like where talk to how far do I want to grow? You've
probably gathered by now that I kind of just see what works and go with the flow and iterate based on what works.
So I, I doubt it would ever get to that size be, uh, but my vision is to keep growing kind of as we have been really. Um, yeah, we are trying to accelerate a bit by starting to develop slightly bigger, more ambitious plugins, um mm-hmm. Rather than tiny, tiny niche plugins like we would've done in the past.
Um, but I think that curve is still not that high. It's not exponential, like, uh, acquiring lots and lots of companies and growing to hundreds of people.
Well, I was gonna say that that is one of the next steps if as soon as you see a, a, a, a solution that fits your portfolio and, and, and the owner of that solution is, is ready to, uh, be purchased.
To be acquired, um, Is that an interesting path for you to continue to grow? Or, uh, like you said, is it really just, uh, taking your time, pacing and leading and seeing, uh, you know, uh, what fits and what doesn't?
Yeah, I am very interested in acquiring something largely because I see it as a gap in my experience of running a WordPress business.
I know lots of people with much smaller companies that have acquired other plugins or themes or some, uh, WordPress companies, and I haven't done that yet. Uh, part of this is because we have a very tight kind of control on the quality of our plugins and the way we do things in the admin and so on. So we'd probably end up doing quite a lot of redevelopment work on anything we acquired.
Um, but in theory, yes, and I quite often have conversations with people about that. It just hasn't, um, gone through to completion yet. But I think it will at some point. Yeah.
I, I'm tempted to, to think that, uh, any company growing, for any company growing it, it's going to be inevitable. Um, uh, at a certain point you need people who have kind of understand the path you're on.
So the, the, the talent you're also getting is interesting. Uh, if it is the full company with the employees, um, it's the easiest way to grow. Um, because they're already hired. You don't have to do the selection. All that, the, the combination already works. So it, the, the challenge is how do I integrate them and the product into our company?
Uh, but I still think it's a faster route than, um, developing an entire market, uh, creating a new team and, you know, um, step-by-step, moving yourself forward like that. Um, I question for you in term, you, you, you, you mostly focus on plugins, right? So the, the, the theme and the agency is not, uh, the theme creating themes and, and, and designs and stuff.
That's not part of your business at all? Or is it, or No,
we don't have any kind of theme development. Right. Other than integrations with, of our plugins. With themes, yeah. Right.
So is the next step, um, uh, continuing on on finding solutions for WooCommerce? Um, Like, do you look outside of WooCommerce?
Um, yeah, when it seems appropriate.
Um, our joint bestselling plugin is Document Library Pro, which is not a WooCommerce plugin. Um, right. So it's funny cuz I'd like to be kind of a specialist with WooCommerce plugin. Like someone like Iconic can say we are a WooCommerce company and we can't say that. And sometimes I think, well, maybe if we discontinued our non WooCommerce plugins, but we couldn't discontinue Document Library Pro and we couldn't sell it because functionally it's very closely related to some of our WooCommerce plugins.
Yeah. So like behind the scenes, um, so we haven't specialized, but it leaves the door open that when opportunities come up, it doesn't have to be WooCommerce. Right. So,
uh, any, any other, uh, uh, un um, Undeveloped, uh, niche within WebPress is, is fine, uh, for you to chase, uh, essentially.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It just depends what's growing at the time and so on.
And in terms of, cuz you have, uh, products now, are you also looking at, uh, venturing into, um, sas, um, type of solution services?
I always think it's. When you have an, when you do client work and you sell your time, your goal is to sell like themes or plugins or some kind of digital products. And then when you sell something like a plugin, your goal is to move to SaaS because it's an even better business model in theory.
And you know, you that you have to get paid every month, otherwise they lose the software and all that kind of thing. Uh, you can't have people not renew and still use your product like with a theme or a plugin. So people do sort of chase that business model, and I definitely haven't. Element of that. We have a spreadsheet with the formula that we use to evaluate new plug-in ideas when we are looking at new plugins to develop.
And one of several factors on that is the potential for SAS functionality. Either completely SAS or just some of the features or something. And none of the ideas we have evaluated yet have had any kind of. Sense in doing it as a sas and largely because of the WooCommerce side of things. That's kind of weird.
And I know of some, uh, WooCommerce, um, SAS products. For example, there's Set sary, which is a bulk editor that does it through the API in its own dashboard away from the WordPress admin, which can help with performance and things. So there are some sensible business cases for what could be a plugin to be a SaaS, but none of our new ideas have happened to fit with that business model yet.
But it is something we actively consider. And again, it will probably happen at some point.
Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting, um, and not for the sake of, of SaaS, but for the sake of, um, you have more control over, uh, what is actually happening on a site and, uh, uh, not necessarily to bring in awesome motive again, but one of their products, opt-in Monster is a good example of, uh, doing conversions inside of WordPress.
Uh, and wanting to have full control over what is actually being outputted and, and then integrated with it makes a lot of sense to do that from a SaaS. And it makes way less sense to do that inside a theme where you actually don't have that much influence over what is being outputted, what, what css you need to overrule, what JavaScript is conflicting.
Cause you have, you have con conversions, uh, as part of your, your, your, um, expertise as well with, uh, barn two plugins. Is that, is that a problem?
Um, I suppose our focus on conversions is about, um, improving conversions by improving the shopping experience, so, right. Okay. So you, you stay within theme. Um, you, you stay within theme.
We try to inherit. Styling and things from the theme, which does often lead to a lot of work in terms of support and compatibility fixes. Uh, we're actually thinking of adding a kind of an alternate checkout to fast cut, which is our own styling, for example, which could be a SAS because at the moment it's all taken from the theme, which can lead to compatibility issues.
And there are certainly benefits of taking everything from the theme if, if it works, because it's all integrated, it fits with the design of your site, the fonts, the colors, everything just naturally works. Whereas if you're doing it via a sas, then even if you've got quite a lot of styling options, uh, in the sas, you're probably not gonna be matching your theme exactly unless you are a developer and know how to do the CSS and so on, which is not really true.
The point necessarily of using a hosted solution for things like popups.
No, I can see both arguments. I can see the argument for, for having a unified way of defining it. But yes, you still will have to manually copy what you have on your production side in the SaaS to be matching if that is your, your goal.
Mm. Um, I, I find, uh, SaaS an interesting, uh, avenue. Um, and I'm, I'm, uh, I myself am currently developing one where it makes a lot of sense to build it as a plugin, but it makes way more sense to build it as a SaaS because I have way more control and I can do way more than what the, uh, what the solution will offer.
Uh, I'm keeping it vague, uh, purposely. Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, this is one of those things where I needed the, the, the, the service it. Uh, but yeah, you then start thinking like, if I need the users for the next client and the next client Mm. Does it make a lot of sense to do it like this, uh, As a plugin and then my answer quickly was, no.
Cause I have way more control over what I can do, what I want to do, and be more complete in how I do it if I take it outside of office and just, um, connect it to the side, so to say.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's more and more of that with the all the rest stuff and everything that came in a few years ago that people are still Yeah.
I think people are still exploring the opportunities in that regard. And it'll grow. And grow.
Yeah. Is it inevitable that most will move over? What, what, what is your stance on that?
I don't know. Um, cause there's also, there's a lot of move to improve WordPress itself through Gutenberg and, and full site editing and all of that.
So that kind of goes against the idea of doing things outside of WordPress, doesn't it?
I don't know. Um, To a degree, but there's also, um, there's also a lot of stuff that you can do inside WordPress that, uh, for, for, um, controlling, um, the environment is, is a, is a great argument due everything outside of WordPress where the experience still is happening inside WordPress.
I think that particular direction is something we'll see more and more happen. Mm. It doesn't make a lot of sense in all directions in my, uh, in, in my mind, but, uh, I personally, I do expect there's there to be a, a soft switch from, uh, certain plugins that where it makes sense to move to a assess simply by con, cuz you end up controlling the output much better, um, to, uh, in, in that direction.
And I just don't know, um, I. Where that limit is. Uh, but I do see a big push in that direction. Um, mm. Hence my curiosity. If, if that's something you are considering or if it's even on your radar, but it clearly is.
Yeah. It's an interesting one and well, something I hadn't thought of until recently is just having elements of your plugin serve by, um, something that's hosted as a SaaS. Um, I did a podcast, um, we had as a guest on my WP Product Talk podcast, uh, Aaron Edwards, who's, um, currently working on the, uh, doc spot AI side of things.
And that topic of that was about Exactly, yeah. And he had lots of insights about using SAS in different ways from the different, um, plugins and projects he's worked on. And even just serving one side of it, uh, from a sas, even if the plugin is then installed on WordPress, it's still Yeah. Just so it is about analyzing every component and where the most appropriate way, but we shouldn't be assuming anymore that every part of the product should be in that plugin, which is installed on the customer's website.
Correct. There's other ways to do things, and we need to think more widely.
Yeah. And that is, that is one of the examples that, uh, uh, prompted me to think of my solution in terms of I have way more controllable what I actually want to do if I take it outside of workplace, there's, I'm limited by P H P, I'm limited by, you know, uh, the underpinnings of what P H P does and how it does it.
I'm limited by MySQL. I'm limited how MySQL does things. Okay. So what are the ways around it? Okay, if I do it in this system and I do it in that and go, and I do this in rust, then I have faster solutions, like way faster solutions at scale. Okay. If that's the case, then, you know, how can I pull that outside?
And, and, and that's an interesting, uh, Avenue, um, where I think, um, you know, looking at what plug-in companies are doing, uh, are are trying to figure out how to move outside of the workers' bubble, so to say.
Yeah, I think it's an interesting time for the industry because you have to put the customer first and think about what they expect.
And I've seen, I can't think of good examples, but I've seen SAS products that I think, why was that a SAS and not a WordPress plugin? There's no benefit for the user in having it as a sas. No. And they try and do things like forcing monthly pricing in when it doesn't necessarily fit with the model of the plugin to have it price monthly.
I, I agree. We see a lot of those as well. And then that don't make sense. No, I was
gonna say, and there's also things, yeah. And you just, like, even things like paying monthly for a migration plugin or something when you might want to use it once or whatever, and like it just becomes about the company rather than about the customers.
So, um, that's interesting. But it's also interesting watching, you've got to do WordPress products within the ecosystem and the way things are going. Mm-hmm. So five years ago it was barely acceptable to charge annual subscriptions for a theme or plugin. And you had the norm being set by companies like Invato that you would just pay once, like $39 or something for lifetime access and a ridiculously low amount.
Yeah. And then the companies would go bust obviously cuz they couldn't afford to do it like that. And, and then, um, led by companies like, um, WooCommerce and East Digital Downloads. People started introducing annual subscriptions and that was shocking at first and then became the norm. And yeah, I'm currently kind of waiting for that to happen with monthly pricing of plugins.
We have SaaS leading the way with monthly pricing. But yeah, I think the market isn't quite familiar enough with this for smaller plugin companies like ourselves to be introducing monthly pricing. But I think it is going in that direction and gives the customer more flexibility in the future. Yeah,
I think for the larger companies, uh, so not the small businesses per se, but the, the larger companies, they understand fine that things cost money.
Um, uh, I, I, I know a few examples where they try to circumvent this particular problem that you're, you're raising. They try to circumvent it by having an extra tear on top of what they're already have. But it has a few extras. It, it, it, it takes into account of the, let's call it the custom, with a higher demand for whatever that demand is.
Um, and then they, they, they upscale their offering and, uh, also ask more. And there's even examples of, um, oh, I'm trying to remember who, who told me this, but they had a very difficult time selling their solution to a, a larger company. And this is a company of mm-hmm. Maybe 10, 15,000 people working there.
They had a, they had problems trying to convince them to purchase. There was a perfect match on what the company wanted and what the service offered. Perfect match. Mm-hmm. No debate. It's been tested and they were, everybody was happy, but, uh, their, uh, their finance department was like, no way. 129 a month is going to be something that's good.
That's just a ridiculously low, low amount. We don't think that's ever going to be good. So we're not going to add you to our vendor list. Mm. Interest. Now, that's an entirely different discussion, but, uh, as companies are growing, as WebPress is growing, we're seeing more and more larger companies, uh, adopting to, to use WordPress and, and, and with it, the solutions within WordPress.
Um, I found that a super interesting, uh, example of, How we're limiting ourselves without actually understanding how we're limiting ourselves, right? So this particular client had some, some really advocates for the plugin user, and they said like, we're gonna fight this till the end, but we're gonna make our company force, uh, we're gonna force our company to actually purchase the plugin and we're gonna help you fill the things we need for our vendor list.
Like, you know, they had, they had people working inside for them, but they took that effort to do that. Not everybody's gonna do that. So if you don't, if you don't see those people, you're never gonna learn that those scenarios exist anyway, uh, that you're merely being disregarded because you're just too low on what you're asking.
Cause the, the, the client sees it as a, you know, that cannot be good quality. It's simple as that. That was, I think, literally the quote he gave me. Um, so yeah, that the market as, as a whole has a lot to grow. And learn from, uh, like you said, you started pivoting in 2016, so, uh, you're in your seventh year of plug-in business.
Um, I think it's fair to say that you are maturing as a company now, hopefully, well, I left some space there for you to say yes or no. Um, but, but then the next phase, right? What is the next phase? So what is your next phase?
Um, I think the team has been really consolidating recently, and that's been a really interesting process over the last two years.
I'm much consolidating, meaning in this case, consol meaning becoming a more of an established team, um, feeding like a proper company with multiple people rather than Andy and I with a few freelancers, which we probably felt like three years ago, people whose careers are at band two. That's within the last two years that that has happened.
Mm-hmm. I would say that our, um, development and our support teams are more. Established than our marketing team, which I'm still experimenting and learning about what are the correct roles to have within the team. Um, for example, and I still use a lot of freelancers for things like writing articles about our plugins.
So for me, the next big challenge is what in-house marketing team we need. Like I'm thinking about hiring a marketing strategist, head of marketing type person, maybe. Yeah. Implementer as well. That's, um, to support them in implementing the tasks. A lot of the marketing work still comes down to me and I feel like I need to do better at replacing my skills so that I can.
Focus more on business development than marketing and, um, on a day-to-day basis. And so I see that as a gap that I would like to keep working on. Mm-hmm. Um, we've got some good, um, term marketing hires. Like you've, um, you're just getting to know my video creator who's been amazing, for example. Yeah. And, um, it's really bringing our YouTube channel to the next level.
Um, so I'm looking to have people with that level of commitment in different areas of marketing in-house. Yeah. Which is something that, um, I haven't done as much as I would like to.
Yeah. It sounds you like you are preparing yourself for more growth.
Yeah. So ultimately it's about getting the foundation so that you can handle the growth.
Obviously I need to keep on top of Yeah, of course. Um, support as well. Make sure we keep adding capacity in line with growth, um, and so that then we can release bigger plugins that will, um, get sales more quickly and, and then provide good customer service and, you know, the whole life cycle. Yeah.
Exciting future.
Um, yeah, so I wanna thank you for, uh, joining me on this podcast. I think we've learned a lot about what goes on in the life of a plugin development company, the successful one at that. Uh, thanks again for your time and, um, uh, see
you next time. Thank you.
