[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Within WordPress, the podcast about WordPress and all the fine people working in and outside of WordPress with us today is Derek. And Derek, this is your first time, so. And for all of those people who haven't understood what it is you're doing with that wonderful cap you're wearing currently, how about you introduce yourself?
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, my name's Derek Ashauer. I live in Colorado in the United States.
I've been doing WordPress since I think maybe 2005 or so.
I got into it like many people do, building sites for clients when I started doing my own freelance work and needed something beyond building static HTML sites like we used to in Dreamweaver way back in the day, because that's how long I've been doing this. Since I got into making websites in 1999 though.
Yeah. Previous century.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Certainly the previous millennium.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but, but, yeah. So got into WordPress and just use it mostly for doing client sites and then over the years started building some.
I started one plugin called Sunshine Photocart. That one I started a long time ago for my now ex wife. And that is Beast of a plugin. That's a comprehensive e commerce plugin for specifically photographers. So it's not built on WooCommerce or anything because I built it before WooCommerce even existed.
Long ago that I started that one. So.
But these days I'm now in the process of trying to move away from doing client websites. I've been doing it for just so long, I'm kind of losing interest in it, to be honest. And I've really enjoy making products. It's been really fun in really trying to handle all aspects of, of doing that. I just find myself having more fun doing coding, development and even doing support and the marketing for it. I just, you know, I'm still new to the marketing side of it. It's all, it's a whole new game.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: But I think there never, there will never be a point where you're no longer new to it. It's. That's an ongoing thing.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: But how did you go, how did.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: You go from Dreamweaver? Did you just jump from dreamweaver straight into WordPress or was there something in between?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: No, it pretty much was. I mean, I was really interested in doing PHP coding, so that is something I've always done. It wasn't just front end stuff. I've always done PHP stuff along with it. If you search like there's something called Ash News if you want to search for that, or even before WordPress and basically what it was was an attempt to make it really EAS for my clients to add news to their website. When I was making just static HTML stuff and it was a flat file, text file based, very bare bones version of what I guess could have if I kept doing it evolved into something like WordPress. But it was, you know, so I've been coding and making those kind of things for.
For clients and various stuff for a very long time since I first started.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: So you and I are both from the era because I started my first front page site that I built was in 96 and then played around for a little bit. But the, the era of basically something flat and then turning into something interactive. I think that was a very interesting period.
It was also the time where everybody thought they could build a cms. Like everybody had this as their pet project. I'm going to build a cms. And then certainly quite a few were in the quality range where you go, I guess this works for you.
Difficult to explain this to somebody else, but okay, how. How did you. How did you stumble upon WordPress? Because for.
I remember in the early. Because I started in 2004. Five as well. Four or five.
You. This wasn't. It wasn't omnipresent as it is now. Yeah. Do you remember how you found it?
[00:04:30] Speaker B: No, it's so long ago I don't really remember. My best guess is probably, you know, some kind of article mentioned it or you know, forums were big back then. You know, being part of Webmaster forums like SitePoint was a big one that, you know, I was.
I would use for reference at times and stuff. So probably stumbled across it and then, you know, like we all did we download and go what's this thing? Let's give it a try.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, this is funny.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: So yeah, you've had you. You something you mentioned in your introduction you have a, a preference for also the PHP side of things. Does that mean you quickly started tinkering with WordPress and like in terms of plugins, was that a very immediate second step or.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it pretty much was. It was, you know, I think, you know, back in the WordPress 2 point X days, you know, there was little things that I would realize. WordPress just doesn't do this. Let me see if I can create it. So there's even little things like I think it was like creating a link within the visual editor and making it very easy to search other pages, create a link to it. Like that just simply didn't exist at the time. So there was, you know, So I created a little tiny plugin to do stuff like that to solve my own little problems that I found that were annoying, which is basically a theme for everything that I've made my products. And all this kind of stuff were solving problems that I ran into that I found frustrating.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Hey man, that's the best way to learn. It's as simple as that. If you find something that boggles your mind and you go like, let me try and see and fix this, that's the best way to learn.
So how did you go from just sort of learning the WordPress thing, playing with it and then going like, let me build this ridiculously large plugin? Because that's quite a step.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: By the way, I know your plugin. I remember it.
I think I even had two, two or three clients on it. Certainly more than one.
But it was, it was one of those things that if you wanted to do fancy stuff with, with images, that's pretty much what you had.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, you know, so it was, I think it was 2010. No, sorry, 2012. Because it's before my son was being born. Well, my ex wife now was pregnant with my son, so. And I, for whatever reason she was a photographer and, and so it was not solving my direct need, but it was solving her need. So. And at the time, there was no, there was one solution at the time that photographers could install on their own website to where they would take photos for like a family or a wedding and then upload it to their own website.
There was only one software that was available and it was like $750 at the time, which back then was a massive amount of money to pay for a piece of software to do something like that. And these even before there were SaaS options. So the idea of doing online client galleries was still very early and new. There wasn't much out there. And then I naively said I could probably build something like that in about six weeks. That's not a problem. If I just build it on WordPress, it takes care of a lot of the aspects of it and then I could build something on that. And it is true, WordPress helped solve a lot of the initial getting started. Things like it could create pages for me, user accounts, all kinds of stuff were already solved, so I didn't have to create that from scratch, which made it feel more possible as, as something to build. And then, you know, six months later, you know, I had like a, you know, a 0.1 version that kind of worked and, and could, you know, meet some of her needs and which is the common thing that we do. And we.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: I was going to ask how long did it take you from the initial idea? Like yeah, oh yeah, I think. I think I can build this and then go like holy crap. That. That was six months.
Yeah, but that was six months. Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: So yeah.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Next gen was that. Was it existing at the time or.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Next gen existed but it was just purely photo galleries. It wasn't a tool for selling anything like that. I think. I. I don't know. I can't say I'm not part of their team. Never heard of it. But I think and I can't recall it was so long ago now, but I think they were inspired to add that maybe possibly because of what I had created.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: I would think so.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So.
So I think it was one of the first that was purely dedicated for selling and interesting. Like I said, WooCommerce didn't even exist. What would existed at the time was Jigo Shop, if you remember. And so I actually did remember. Well, yeah, I, I, you know, didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Was started as far as building a WordPress plugin and I actually took Jigo Shop code as a foundation to start building some of it. I quickly ripped out like 95% of it because I realized it's just not what I really needed. But it gave me the foundation of okay, how do I start the first file? Where do I even go from here? And that's what I used at the time as like a foundation. And just how that. Just how they structured a really large plugin and things like that. Architecture. Yeah, exactly. Doing like static classes and just things like that of just how they organize code at a larger scale. I never built anything of that scale. So it was great to use that as a reference at the time.
I mean I've since, you know, come out with Sunshine Photocard 3, which was. I stripped it down to zero line, you know, nothing. You know, an empty text file to start and rewrote it from scratch after having 10 plus years of experience. But it was great to really have that as a foundation. When I was first starting with a plugin to create.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: You must really like developing backend stuff because to I know a lot of folks who have had some sort of solution built in some version of knowledge they had at a certain point and then later on realized, you know, I can do this smarter now. But they usually slowly but surely move into that direction. If you're saying like, no, no, no, no, let me just strip the whole damn thing and just start from scratch. If that's literally what you did, hats off to you sir, because that is daunting.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Yeah, so that was, that one. Took me about a year and a half, but it was rewriting the whole E Commerce. It's like rewriting WooCommerce plus 20 different add ons as a side business because I was at the, you know, I'm, I'm not product first. It's not my main thing. My main source of income is still client work.
Yeah, it is still. I'm still like 60, 40 client work at the moment.
If I did my.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: But that's, that's, that's wild, Eric. 18 months of rewriting on the side. Yeah, my word, that's. Well, I mean that, that takes dedication.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Or stupidity depending on your point of view.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: So I was going to give you an example, but I'll ask you a question first. Did you learn from it?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I learned a lot about coding stuff. In the end I think it was worthwhile.
It's one of those things like, yeah, I don't regret it in any way. Just because I was able to set up the code base to be something that I can extend so much easier. I've been able to add a couple new add ons just in a day or two, whereas before it would have taken probably weeks to do those. Just because it's a lot more structured, because you start it, you start this massive E Commerce plugin and you start how you build it in the beginning you're like, let me just get it done, let me just get it done. Let me just get it done. And then you go, okay, well now I'm 10 years later and now I gotta work with, I don't want to work with this old stuff. It's just so, so frustrating. Let's just make it more optimized. And it's just, it made it more fun to work with too, and easier. So it gets me more excited to work with it. So I'm more willing to. And that's a big thing when it comes to.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to give you the example of there's a few different developers that I work with and I use them for very different use cases. Generally they're freelancers and first of all, I need them to be very, very independent.
That already is a different mindset, but that's less about the type of coding that they do. Some of them love doing exactly what you just said, deconstructing something, building something from scratch, but then solidifying Everything and making it as they're starting as extendable as possible, all of that.
Some folks just don't like to work from scratch. They need an ex live living examples. And there's a category who is just absolutely keen on throw whatever spaghetti code you can find. And I just love to untangle that. Yeah all. And I'm sure there's a fourth or a fifth category but those are the ones. Those are typically my type of clients, so those are typically the types of jobs that I have and it's fascinating to see them do the thing. I lost interest in back to backend development long time ago, but it's fascinating to me how somebody goes from, you know, I'm going to spend the next 18 months of my life on this rear. Right. And then hopefully learn something along the way. That's fascinating. It's fascinating to me.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: I mean I had no idea it was going to be 18 months or 18. No, I was, but, but yeah, I mean I Did you have, did you have a guess?
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Did you have a guess like this will be.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: I had no idea.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Like this is a task to be done. I mean I'll do it.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: I did have that thought of and I did start down that road a little bit of let's take the existing code base and we'll take, you know, this section and we'll reformat it and make it nicer. And then we'll take this and reform it, make it nicer. And then it just was like the balancing of all that, it just, that was going to end up being more complicated than just doing it fresh. I, to me it felt it was going to be more challenging just how I organize it and think about it in my own head and understand my code base. So I just was like, nah, let's just toss it all out the window. And in some respects, I mean I did was able to copy and paste some of it back.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: But yeah, sure, I mean there's some logic and there's, there's certain functions you can rewrite and whatnot. But I still, I think most people listening go like, yeah, you know, hats off to you Derek, because that's not me.
Let me just write stuff and if it gets too big, I'm going to hand it off to somebody else to do the, whatever the next phase is.
What would you say is the most fun part in the, in those early days of, of learning how to go from your, your you know, now ex wife, as you mentioned, like, I need this. You go, okay, let me, let me fix that for you. What was the most fun in, in that process that then ensued, ensued, ensued. There you go.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I just found that I enjoy coding. That it is something that I enjoy.
Um, and as right now, as I mentioned earlier, I'm in this transition of going from clients to hopefully I can transition to doing products and have conversion bridge or, you know, my WP Sunshine brand products and stuff be my primary thing. And hopefully the only thing that I'm really working on is just.
I think I just found that I have a passion for it. And for me, one of the things I've learned over time is it is really important to be excited when I wake up to go to work.
And I got to a point where I would get an email from a client and I wouldn't even read it. I would just see the subject and see who it's from and just have this feeling of anxiety and just like, I don't want to do this, I don't want to deal with this before I even read it. And I would let it sit and fester and just ignore the email for a couple days even. And then I click on it and open it and then go, oh, you just wanted me to change some text on this page. Okay, yeah, that was, you know, five minute tasks, not a big deal. But I let it annoy me and bother me for a couple days and I just realized that I've been, you know, making client sites for 20 years now at this point, and it's just something I've lost all interest in. But when I started like all of.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: All versions, all types of sites or.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Like I'm just, I just, it's one of those things. I doesn't matter what it is. It's even if it's a text change, a logo change, I just have zero desire. And it's not hard. It's something I could almost do blindfolded at this point. It's nothing hard, but it's just realizing that I.
Not even that I just didn't like it. I had like a negative physical reaction to it. Made me really realize that I needed to a change of direction, a change of focus. Because those days when I woke up and was like, you know what? I luckily didn't have any client stuff. All I have to do is to work on some coding stuff. I woke up energized, went straight from bed, I work from home. So I went straight downstairs, went into the office, didn't even eat, didn't get breakfast, didn't do anything and just had ton of energy and Excitement to start coding. And that's when I was like, is that wild?
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: And so I was like, this is really what I want to be doing. And so that's why I made that decision about a year and a half ago, I think two years maybe to really, okay, I need to work on this transition and do that. And that's what I learned from that process of recoding the whole thing is that even though it was a lot of work, a ton of stuff, I was excited every moment while I was doing it. And yeah, it's just something that's really important to me more than maximizing revenue and all that kind of stuff.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, those are the things that come with it once you make that decision. But what I was going to say, the, the, the amount of people that I hear that, I wouldn't call it burnout because I think that's, that's, I don't want to label it like that, but it's, it, in a way, it's, it's, it's debilitating. Right? You, you, you get to the point where you've done it, this thing so many times that there's nothing new about it. It's just routine.
You start to lose interest. And for me, certainly I, I, I kind of recognize it, but I went in a different way. I lost full interest in back end stuff. I still like the architecture of it. I still like to scour through code, but I don't like writing it anymore.
I'm much rather. So my, my, the decision that I made because I think I was kind of in similar, on a similar cross path, crossroads. Geez, I can't find my English words today.
But the, the realization that I had is if it's simple, I don't like it anymore. If it doesn't engage me, if I don't, if I'm not forced to think about it like, oh, oh, okay, oh, well, hold on. It's bigger. You know, if that's not my initial thing, like trying to size it up and gauge what, what all goes into the question that was just presented to me. If that's not part of it, I go like, yeah, you know, this is not me anymore.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Which is for me why I started focusing on performance and scalability and that sort of stuff. That's very specific. But nine out of 10 times. That's an interesting one. Yes. There are familiar things in that and in those processes or even from site to site, there's some, some similarity here and there and there's, there's A, you know, certain plugins do the same thing on all the sites. Sure.
But to find the challenge again and thus the excitement and thus, hey, this is fun work. That's. That's a monstrous thing to have become a new reality in anyone's life. Certainly if you're writing code. Because it. I think it, you know, I think it generally means if you're writing code, the tendency to repeat is way bigger in, in that. In our line of work than in other lines where, you know, you just do what the day brings.
But that's, that's a very.
I like that you've outlined it so specifically. Like from the moment you made that decision, that's when the energy started flowing again. Yeah. Because that's basically what you're saying. You. We already mentioned the cap you're wearing. And for those who are just listening to audio, Derek has a cap that says Conversion Bridge and he already mentioned it as well. It's the thing, I think that I see you promote on the socials the most or only almost.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Can you tell us a little bit about it? Because I'm very curious if it's as daunting as a task as the photo stuff or like what was first. Let me, let us let please explain what it does.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So Conversion Bridge is a way to add analytics platforms to your WordPress website. Whether it's Google Analytics, Fathom plausible.
It works with over 10 different analytics platforms and then it makes it really easy to add conversion tracking with. Right now it integrates with 50 different other WordPress plugins. So that's things like WooCommerce, so you can send your conversions, your purchases and all that kind of stuff and go into your analytics platform like form plugins like WS form or something like that. So when someone submits your form, then you can track that conversion in Google Analytics or Fathom or plausible and all those kind of things.
I created it because they're, you know, I had the idea when Google was going to be deprecating the old UA, the universal analytics, and only making Google Analytics 4 available. And I think.
Yeah. And so there's a lot of people that were looking to move towards some of these new alternatives that were popping up. Google Analytics 4, which I understand and agree with, is an immensely complicated piece of software. Way more complicated than what UA was. The Universal analytics version was. Yeah. And so I was interested in moving to one of these alternative platforms. I wasn't doing it necessarily for privacy concerns. I was more for just usability. I just wanted something to go back to that was easy to use, that I could just quickly look at my stats and get a broad and good understanding of things within just a few seconds. So I was looking at those options. I was like, well, great, I want to move over to one of those. Well, in order to do that, I need to continue doing my version tracking. I use easy digital downloads, for example, for selling Sunshine Photocard and a couple of my other plugins. And so I was like, well, I need to do an integration for that. Well, there was no integrations for those.
And also in the past I always found that there's a couple ways you could add Google Analytics. You could do like a code snippets plugin and copy and paste and do that is one way. Or there was, you know, there's a couple plugins that allow you to add Google Analytics.
But again, I wanted one for one of the alternative platforms. But I also wanted to try some of the alternative platforms and there were several of them. And so it just made me quickly realize that there was just nothing out there that could do what I wanted to do. I also got frustrated, Sorry. One other thing I got frustrated with when making sites for clients is you go get a plugin like say givewp and then you have to get the givewp Google Analytics conversion tracking add on. Now I go to the events calendar and now I got to get the events calendar Google Analytics conversion tracking. And the it just keeps adding up over and over again. Having to, you know, you have to get this plugin and then get their version of the Google Analytics conversion tracking. And again there was nothing for fathom, nothing for plausible, nothing for any of the other alternative platforms that were out there.
And so I was like, I, it's, I hate the idea of all these one off individual plugins. I could just quickly create one, quickly create one plugin that just basically does all of it. So that's basically what I did is I wanted to make it really easy for especially agencies is mostly my target for these people who are building lots of sites so that regardless of what site their client is using, whichever analytics platform they're using and whichever plugins they're using, they can just go to one solution for their analytics. And it's just tick, tick, check a couple boxes and you're done. And I have a couple videos on there and everything showing that I can set up, I can get Google Analytics. You can literally set up 10 different analytics platforms at the same time if you wanted, you could try them all, see which one works best for you. And then the couple extra clicks have conversion tracking for your E commerce, for your forms, newsletter subscriptions, for any special button clicks and you can have it all set up. Less than one minute.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah, here's a question. Because conversion is, it means something to me, it means something to you. But let's have a definition of what a conversion is.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Right. So a conversion is something when a user on your website takes an interacts with your website in a way that you want to track that is really important for you. That could be something like they make a purchase or they fill out a form or you could even could be as small as. I just want to track when everyone, when anyone clicks this specific button button on my site, maybe it links to a third party site. Like if you're doing like, like you have a day spa and they go to a third party site where they can actually sign up and you know, schedule something like that. So you just want to track how many clicks are, are going to that. So those are all important things to track so that you can determine what is working well on your website.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: So you can so from the 100 people landing on this page, how many actually click that thing, purchase that thing, check out, do the whole thing.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: So if, if conversion. So that's the conversion.
I think my biggest curiosity is understanding where do I define the conversion.
Do I do that in plausible in Google Analytics? Do I do that inside your plugin? Do I do it in both? Because I need to connect them. How does that work? Yep.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: So I've made it as simple as possible and it's all within your WordPress admin. So once you connect your analytics platform, it integrates with, you know, all the top form plugins like I mentioned, WS form, Gravity forms, all those things. And so it's literally just you go.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: To the form, just the two best ones. Basically.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: You just basically check a box and say I want to add conversion tracking to this. That's all you have to do.
And that's what I and I noticed that there's a lot of agencies, a lot of people who set up sites for clients. They'll add analytics like Google Analytics or something to it and then stop there and they're not actually tracking anything because it can be really hard to do that. You have to learn how it works, how to add the JavaScript, where to do it and all this kind of stuff.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: And this is the reason I asked because there's a lot of people who know their well used to know their way around Google Analytics now are still struggling with GA4 lots of other folks using all different kinds of other tools. You mentioned a few plausible fathom. But here's the thing. Most of them are not aware that there is such a thing as conversion tracking and or how to actually set up their site and their analytics tool to make them visually like here this is what actually happened. Like I think for me working with my clients, there's a. There's a whole bunch who have just no clue whatsoever on how to even go about defining what a conversion is, let alone then tracking it and finding it and all that.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: So what I'm gathering is that you're saying conversion bridge actually solves the entire gap.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean it's kind of funny you say I don't even know what to track. It's funny being this point of it it's. To me it's, it's so clear having done it for so long and making websites for so long, it's. It's clear.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: I can promise you Derek, there's a, there's very big group of people who kind of just want to see their analytics meaning who visited my site which is my most. Which are my 10, 15, 20 most popular pages and just you know, that's about it. If they, if they can find that they're mostly you just. I'm already happy because I don't know there's more conversions.
So I figured I have a wide array of clients right. So most of them are quite technical because their site is actually making them a lot of money. So that means small, small changes is noticeable in the lot of money part and they're really smart about that part but they're less smart about really understanding conversions funnels a critical path of where somebody is expected to go. Because I write this, I publish this, I, I. There's traffic. Yay. But now what that group that sort of understands the base and quite a bit above it doesn't fully grasp the oh, I can optimize this once I start tracking what actually is working that, that it may. I mean I can be biased because given my type of clients, but I'm pretty sure there's, this is quite universal. If I listen to, you know, people talking to me left and right where they say it is just too complex for most even begin understanding what conversion tracking is which is why I'm very curious on, on your product because it's, it just obviously I've looked at it and understand what it does. But what would you say is the, the biggest pain point that you hear from other Folks saying, oh, I'm. I didn't know it could be this easy.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: I think it's really about that. Yeah, it's, it's just making it. I mean, it's just. They're thankful that it was so easy because it was just something that was. Oh yeah, what code snippet do I have to do? They just don't even get started because they didn't know where to even get started with how to do that. Like, you know, they have some plugin and they go, well, I know I, you know, I have this newsletter subscribe form that I added to my site.
I mean, it would be nice to know how many or, you know, is it from, from a Google Ad or from, you know, a Facebook ad or something like that. But they just have no idea where to even get started on how to do that. So I think that's, like I said, that's why there's so many people who will add just the basic analytics and then stop there. And that's all they'll do.
Because it's just. Because it's a huge leap of where do I go from here? I don't even know where to go. Oh, you're telling me it's just a toggle. Oh, great. I can do that. Click. And that's what I really want to make it. Because. Just because like you described, great, you knew a hundred people came to the site, but. And you created a new blog post. But how do you know which ones are actually getting you more customers? Because you could be writing 50 different blog posts and then learn that there's actually a certain type of blog post that you're writing that actually gets people to buy. Maybe there's a bunch of people that get you a bunch of traffic, but if none of them ultimately buy, who cares, you know, if you know. And that's the big thing. Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: I mean, my, the oldest clients that I have are from. Some of them are almost from the very, very early, beginning.
There's, you know, friends and family types of sites that I also maintain. The only thing they need is I install Cocoa Analytics. It's super simple. There's just the dashboard thing. That's it. Nothing more.
Anyone else has more than a little bit of a desire to understand what their traffic does, and the vast majority is just swimming in the dark.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: I agree. And that's, and that's why you need to start tracking those purchases, those clicks, those form submissions from day one, even if you don't use it, you know, if you're, you know, Because I understand there's a lot of people who set up and then they only check it once every six months. They check their analytics, you know, stuff like that. But you can't go back in time and go look at, oh, how many people did submit the form.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: It's pretty final.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty much what happens is you can't really, you can't really do it.
So. So it's really good. And that's why I wanted to make this again. I was solving a problem for myself because it's something I wish I had been able to do for my clients over the years, because I fell into the same trap. I would always add Google Analytics, but stop there. I never added really the conversion tracking element so that I could like. One thing I'm going to try and, you know, explain to agencies is the moment you get a new client on their old site, add conversion bridge and start tracking conversions now on their old site. So that when you launch their new site in two months from now, you at least have two months of data that you can look at. And then compare the next two months and say, look, our new site has you now with 50% more form submissions or leads or purchases or something, because then you can use that in your own portfolio to be like, look, we took this site from having, you know, 10 new customers to 50 new customers every month, and we have the data to prove it. And that's something that will make it so much easier to sell on future new customers or new new clients. When you're. As an agency. It's something I tried to do and I would, I would go back manually and try and check and see like, okay, well let's go look in there. To do it is a hard way, but when it's just clearly in their analytics, you can just before, after. How many conversions were before and how many conversions were after done. It's simple, a simple report that you can do in any of the analytics platforms in about 20 seconds. And you can get that data and then put that in your portfolio. And people go, oh, these guys really know what they're doing. They're making a real impact on business. And then, and you're trying to sell a new prospective client. It's so easy to be like, look, we did this for these guys. We can do it for you. But you got to have some data. And if you're not tracking anything, you have no data to use as evidence or proof.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: The data is everything. Again, the, the, the lack of knowledge, or maybe not even just lack of knowledge. But just the, the, the, the generally not knowing it's a possibility is, is probably where I think the biggest problems is in terms of, you know, I guess my, my, my, my head goes to a bigger example, but it's basically if we don't understand the tools we working with in depth and we don't really have our clients to offer what there is to offer.
Yours is a great example. But you know, you mentioned two form plugins. Both of them are excellent, both of them have an insane amount of capability built inside.
And I know plenty of people, for instance, who install Gravity Forms.
Do that one contact form and call it a day. And I go, but if you understood what the tool actually allows you to do, you get to have way more complex build but higher data yielding type of solutions on your site that can do way more than just say give me your name, your email address and what is your message. Right? So, and I kind of see your solution in a similar way where the stuff that it allows you to leverage because you get the data you have that allows you to actually leverage just becomes so much more interesting. And your example as you were explaining it then, you know, I thought, okay, so you have, say you have Gravity Forms and you have.
I'm thinking of a client of mine who has about 35, 40 forms, all of them complex, Some of them have purchase options in there, some of them have just probably six, seven different steps, right? So the next page and the next page with a lot of conditional logic showing text and instructions, you know, quite complex.
They kind of look at what they can do with the information they have from their analytics. As in we see people drop off at step seven. What's happening at step seven? Okay, maybe we should remove that. But as you were explaining, I was thinking, hold on, we can do this way more. If you actually have an easy way to say, let me track all the conversions possible in that entire flow, the end result, as well as whatever happens before and what happens after, you get a much richer experience. I like that, I like solutions like that. I like thinking like that because as you mentioned in your example, it allows me to say to my client, look, this was what it was, this is what it was, what it is. Now look at the difference.
And for me it's mostly about them coming better on top because that is my prime driver. I don't necessarily need to be the, oh, look at him, he, what he did. More like if it's, if it's a tool you understand better, you'll have a better site, you Have a better site, you have a better life because it's that maybe a big jump, that last one, but essentially, you know, their website serves a purpose.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: What are other plugins that you, you kind of look at in the same way? Like where you can. Can say again? Gravity Forms, Conversion Bridge, they solve two wonderful solutions. So, sorry, problem with a very specific solution. What are some other plugins you really enjoy, which you are using in some way?
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. What are some ones?
[00:40:48] Speaker A: I mean, you're allowed to say ACF because I, I mean, nine out of ten people say acf.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that was basically. Yeah, that was the one that I relied on for every client site build when I was doing that. But, but it's interesting. It's. It's harder for me to answer that question because I haven't really been building client sites in the last year and a half. I've only built a small handful as I've been moving away from it. So, yeah, I haven't got, as I know, plugins less these days as a result of doing less client work, which is interesting. But I mean, it's funny because I mean, I use, you know, like Conversion Bridge has integrates with 50 different plugins. So I mean, I've touched them, I've interacted with them and all that kind of stuff, but as far as, you know, but only to the point where I need it for my integration, not necessarily setting up for my own use or for a client, stuff like that.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: So isn't it funny how the stuff that we build sort of becomes a bubble within a bubble?
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it absolutely does.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: I hear this from backend developers a lot where they are working in a very specific subset of things.
I think the most common plugin they all say they like is Query Monitor because it helps them do their work better.
But in terms of functionality, plugins that are something that the client ends up using, they have very similar answers to what you just said. Like, yeah, well, I don't actually build the site, so I don't actually know. And I go, do you use SEO plugins? Yeah, but I need to look up which one. You know, they're just so not in that particular mindset of what is my favorite collection of plugin. Which is why I asked you the question to kind of see, like, how has life changed? But judging by your answer, quite a lot.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if I really had to answer that question honestly, I think the, the, the next closest I could say is actually Gutenberg. That would be the closest thing is that I'VE actually enjoyed. I maybe one of the minority. It doesn't do everything I would want it to do. It's not perfect. I don't, I don't claim it specifically.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Are you specifically referencing the Gutenberg plugin or the end result as the block editor?
[00:43:16] Speaker B: The block editor, I'll put it that way. Not full slide editing, but the block editor that I've thoroughly enjoyed being able to use that as opposed to the classic.
I thoroughly enjoy using that so much more. And even building the few client sites that I've built in the last year or two, I've, you know, used those and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. And yeah, I just, I think it's. I think it's great.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: I mean, I agree. I think it does get a lot of hate still.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And I understand if I was building client sites, like I said, I've built a couple client sites with it. It has a lot to be desired. Absolutely. But as someone who is used to building sites with ACF and building full page templates and then doing ACF with those, it's a huge leap forward. Yeah. ACF stuff. I'm not. I was never a huge bricks or beaver builder or elementor. I've never really used those heavily in any way. I always built very custom themes for my clients because I had a specific philosophy that I did not want clients to have full control to be able to break their website because undoubtedly they will. So I gave them very restricted access. You know, type in this text field with ACL and stuff like that because yeah, I remember early on giving clients access to the classic editor. And next thing I knew, two weeks later there was highlighter yellow text in four different fonts. And all I was like, what are you doing? So that taught me very early that I do not want my clients to have full access. So I appreciate.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: My favorite was if they, if they copied and paste from. From whatever text editor they had everything into and that like yeah, 15 diffs around just a paragraph or whatever reason.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
So. So anyway, that, that was my philosophy. That was my philosophy and building stuff. So I appreciated having having this editor where instead of a classic, I could at least make some columns. I could insert an image really easy. I could put in, you know, and, and just those at least minimal formatting things that I could pre style for a client and all this kind of stuff that it actually is really nice and I think it was. I really like it. So that's my favorite newest thing in WordPress. Honestly.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a good one to Mention, because like you said, it gets a lot of hate. And yes, there's a lot to be desired for. There's stuff that still isn't working the way it should work.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: All of that, sure. But if you, if you look at it from the classic editor where it's just a base thing, it looks like nothing, you don't know what it's going to look like until you actually, I know it says wishy week, but really not even close. So you don't actually know what it's going to look like once you hit publish and to see what the block editor. And again, I have friends and family, including my parents, who have a site and they are using the block editor and they are not the most tech savvy.
None of them have complained about the lack of how easy it is to use the block editor.
I have one little video where I explain them a little bit more in complexity of if you want to do some fancy stuff, this is what is possible.
All of the rest I just say, if you want to insert something that is not a paragraph, anything else, just start hitting that forward slash and you'll see, you'll get options. Yeah, that's it.
And maybe once or twice a year I get a question. I, I can't figure out what I did here. Can you please help fix this?
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Now, given the fact that those are users who have absolutely just no affinity with, you know, they want to have the site for whatever reason it is, but other than that they don't really care what they, why they should be using whichever editor or whatever. I never understood the, all the strong voices being so clear on how horrible of a UX it was. I'm like, I gotta, I got like a dozen of people here who are just like, fine, this is how I gotta work now. This is how I'll work fine. Like, I never understood what the chasm was between what I was, I was experiencing and what they were telling. I'm like, is it maybe just your preference? You don't like change and if you, if you do like change, it has to be initiated by you. What is it? That, that is something I never understood. I've embraced it fully from the moment it was solid enough to use in production. I just used it. I mean, like, fine, let's go, let's learn the new way.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've been happy with, like I said, the few sites that I've made with it. I've been for the most part happy.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: What did you use as a, as a base theme? Was everything custom? Custom or did you have like a stuff something you sort of framework you started using?
[00:48:27] Speaker B: No, everything was custom themes that I built.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: Yeah figures with, with the backend developer mind and mentality.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: Exactly. Ye never had like a, you know, use like an Astra theme and then built on top of it or you know, anything like that. It was, you know, if, if you go to my own, my own like you go conversionbridge wp.com and you go there. There's no editor, there's no, I don't even actually use Gutenberg on there because I'm just, it is, it's, you know, I just use template files and I just hand code it. I write the content in the template files because it's just so easy for me. That's, that's where I'm at with those. Because I'm the only one that touches it. I'm the only one that does it. That's how much like dude, you're a hardcore. Yeah.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: So yeah, this is, we're circling back to where it started man. You, you said I started with static files. You are basically in static file area.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: I mean it is. I, I fully acknowledge that it is a bit ridiculous. I saw a tweet yesterday where someone noticed, I think it was like the United States Postal Service or something. I forgot site. It was that their little alerts that they show on the top of the page are just commented or uncommented things in an HTML template file. That's all it is. It's not something. Yeah. If you look at the source code you can see all the other notices, they're just commented out and I'm like.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: I mean that'd be you.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like that's me. And for me it's PHP comments. So you don't see it in the nhtml. But you know when I do like a, you know when I have my Black Friday deal, it's in my header template file, I just comment it out and then the week when it comes to turn it on, I just take out the comments. And now my Black Friday deal shows that's, that's how I manage my own websites because you know, I'm the only one that touches them. I don't have a team of people. I'm a one man shop. I, you know, I don't need to organize stuff to anything so it works for me in my situation.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: But yeah, I get it, I get it. I, I only have one static site.
I have a shortener URL which is rmk us if you click on it, it's my link in bio site as well.
But behind it I have a URL installation that provides short links, but it is an index php, but it's basically HTML written inside of it.
That is the only HTML site that I have where I created a CSS file myself and thought about, you know, do I use Grid, do you use Flex? None of that was pre figured out for me. It's fun to play with that. But that's just one page, right?
I'm not, I'm not going to. I'm not going back to the good old days because in hindsight, I don't think they were that good.
[00:51:16] Speaker B: No. I even acknowledge like page builders absolutely are pretty cool. They're pretty helpful and can really make and put out some, some good. Make site management easier. And. And I do have some old client sites, you know, ones that are 7, 8 years old that are still going on a theme that I made that long ago. And then they ask for a change and I'm just like, I wish I had a page builder. I wish this was even in Gutenberg. But I could just quickly spin up a new page and just drag, drop it into place instead of having to hand, you know, hand code this layout again for this new custom page layout that they want.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: So I hear you on that. I've used Genesis from the moment it hit beta to. I guess it's technically still a choice, but it's, it's stuck in development. Meaning there's. I don't think there's been.
I need to look it up, but I think it's two, three years since the last change has been made. It's still solid, it still need. Does what it needs to do, but I have used that for pretty much everything.
I don't even know when the beta arrived. Was that 2011? Ish.
Well, I don't know. Very long time ago, that was my preferred version because Genesis had solid output, but you could turn the output into whatever you wanted. If you wanted to have your own Genesis skin, you could. What I liked about it is that all the functionality that you needed, that was making up from, you know, from opening the body tag to closing the body tag, all of those were functions which were unhookable and whatever was inside was filterable. I just love that concept because basically that's WordPress. Yeah, it was the most WordPressy way of building a theme and I really enjoyed it. But I'm quite happy as a full site editor fanboy now. It has its quirks, yes. But it's just also so simple to do now.
And it's fast out of the box, which is one of my most favorite things.
If it's fast, it's good. If it's not fast, it's not good. Simple.
No need to complicate that one. Exactly.
But I think I have a good idea of what Conversion Bridge is. Which was. Which that curiosity was me prompting you. Hey, are you interested in joining the podcast?
So I want to thank you for that. I think it's a wonderful product and I think people should check it out.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah, you're most welcome.
I love chat with everyone in the WordPress community. It's. That's fun.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Well, anybody listening? Derek is more than happy to talk, so hit him up. Where can they find you?
[00:54:15] Speaker B: You can find me usually on Twitter, Derek Ashour.
You can also find me at conversionbridge wp. You can find Conversion Bridge there. I do have a couple other. My other main new product brand is WP Sunshine, so you can find
[email protected] I got a couple other much smaller plugins, but there's fun ones like an address autocomplete and a confetti one, which are just fun little, fun little things to add to your site.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: By the sound of it, all you need is 18 months and they'll turn into something big.
Thanks so much, man, I appreciate it.
