Episode Transcript
Welcome to Within WordPress, the podcast you want to be listening to if you want to learn all about the people. Making up the WordPress community on today's show. We have Joshua Wold as our guest. Hi, Joshua. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you. Glad to be here. It's good to be chatting.
Um, well, we'll be, we'll be chatting for sure. Uh, so please introduce yourself, um, and what it is you do with
WordPress. Hi, I'm Joshua. I'm a. designer. I've worked on WordPress with contributions in the past, and right now I'm helping companies improve their onboarding in WordPress and just enjoying
that.
That's um, I think that's a very small introduction for something that's quite big that you do. Introducing, uh, onboarding to companies. Is that, is that, can you give me an example of what that looks like? Cause I kind of know what that looks like, but for those listening and watching. Yeah. The
idea is when someone first tries out your software, they have a sense in their mind of what they're trying to accomplish.
They know who they are. They're hoping to get something done. Usually they're busy. So the first time they press the activate button on a WordPress plugin, for example, they're. Trying to get their website faster, or they're trying to get a form on there. And you have a couple of seconds to either exceed their expectations or disappoint them.
And when I've built my own software in the past, I immediately get blinders to those expectations. So I'm able to come in and help a company with a new perspective and say, here's what customers are likely to feel. And here's the emotions they're going to walk through for those first couple of seconds, and we have a chance to hold them, or if they're the wrong kind of customer, we can quickly show what the software is for, so they can opt out because there is some customers who are not going to be beneficial for your software.
So it's actually a lot of fun. I'll do this kind of a teardown of software where I'll. offer a gentle roast, someone's probably going to be disappointed right now. And my goal is to lift up companies by improving, not just destroying, but I call it a teardown. And when in any software, there's always opportunity to improve any software I've ever built.
I can show it to a friend and they'll point out something that I just missed. And that's what I'm offering to companies. It's a lot of fun.
Yeah. That's a good explanation. Um, you, you're calling it a teardown, but you're, you're essentially trying to uplift, uh, whatever's there or not there.
Yes. Yes. And we have a lot of really awesome products in WordPress.
And I think what happened, we may talk about this, but what happens in an ecosystem that is different from others is you kind of diverge a bit. So we have certain expectations and unique things about us as a software In the mobile app world, the SaaS app world, I'm seeing differences and there's opportunities for us to improve based on what they're doing out there, but also we have a uniqueness we don't necessarily want to lose.
Yeah. That's a good example of a product blindness, I guess. Um, one of my long standing issues with, um, um, yeah, any, any plugin theme, whatever you add to your WordPress site, as soon as you do. Like, where's the settings, whereas how do I configure this to my needs or what if I have, um, I don't know, 15 different options to choose from and which mix is, which mix is my mix.
I, I'm always baffled by why this is not solved within WordPress, um, coming from having been a long time. So I think I'm on Apple products for about 15 years now. Before that, that was windows. And when you installed something new, you had that installation wizard that you click through. And there were options that were choices.
And when you were done, you kind of knew what you had set. And for some reason we never did this in WordPress and I'm baffled by it. Are you solving that
problem? In most cases, most plugins will benefit from an installation wizard. So I am suggesting that when I'm working with them, I'm saying, ideally, we probably want to set one up to walk someone through.
In design, you, you'll call it a happy path or in product management, you'll call it a happy path. What is the typical use case that someone wants to do when they're using your plugin? Let's help them do that. And then we'll show the doors for other things. And that's best accomplished through a wizard.
And I remember the old windows days where I'd go through a wizard and I kind of knew what the software is about to bring. That is not the only way to do it. It's not that we must do this way, but it's often improvement over nothing. Well, when someone activates a plugin and nothing happens, that there's this abrupt moment of uncertainty.
And that's not ideal when it's a plugin and you're trying to offer them help.
Yeah, but I'm, and I mean it in a literal sense. When, when you activate something, you are quite lost if there's nothing presented afterwards. And I don't mean the little pop up thing that says, Hey, subscribe to my whatever. Uh, but I actually mean like, okay, is, will I find this under tools?
Will I find this under settings? Well, I find this on the dashboard, because there's some, some will inject them over there. It's just weird how this is not being solved. So you say you come from a background as a designer. So how did you make this sort of switch?
I about, it's an evolution. I started in graphic design and visual.
When I first got out of high school, I was starting to go to college and I got an internship as a graphic designer at a screen printing shop. Someone would say, Hey, I've got a t shirt. With something on it, Joshua, can you make graphics and illustrator? So it's actually really fun to just work with visuals, get them on a computer.
But then I discovered something called the web. I'm not that old, but I kind of knew about it. And I started tinkering with websites, HTML and CSS, and realizing that you can just do so much more if it's not locked on a t shirt or some printed product somewhere. And over time, I've tried to get closer to the software, to what people are actually going to experience.
So that's led into working on applications, working on the web, working in WordPress. And then this is a journey designers will often follow. They realize they don't understand any language of business and they get this frustration of why are we not being heard? Why are we not being listened to? And I realized part of the problem is me.
So I've tried to learn more. Of how businesses have to operate to succeed. And that's led into onboarding, conversion rates, uh, attribution, acquisition, all these things. And frankly, I'm having fun with it because a designer can improve software. If they're working with the right leader and the two of them together, or the group of leadership together are trying to accomplish something.
If a designer is 10 levels down in an organization, you're not going to make too much of an impact. Don't worry about it. Just have fun.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a difficult one. I think, I think I kind of recognize what you're saying in terms of, um, a lot of products are built by developers because they see a need or because they have an annoyance or, you know, anything that need is solved in code.
And the result of that code is some sort of integration within WordPress, right? Maybe that's just front end, maybe it just does something, doesn't need settings, but most often times it does. And yes, we have a settings API and you can create that little page and all of that, but usually the idea is it stops from the moment the problem is solved.
Um, but then there's the rest, you know, I, it's a big
rest. Yes. And when I've done front end development years ago, I don't really do that much anymore, but there's this moment of I've, I've launched something I'm done. I'm exhausted. I've already put out all this effort. To do the equivalent of two, three times more than that.
It's pretty overwhelming. Not to say developers can't do this. Some are fantastic. They're able to put on a hat and think through this. Um, but if you can't, let's say that you're a developer developer and you. Say, well, I can't afford someone else to help me with this. There's a couple of things you can do.
One, show it to people who kind of fit who this is for, but haven't seen it yet. Just get on a 15 minute call, offer to buy them a gift card and say, Hey, um, I know this software has problems. I'm excited for you to tell me all the things wrong with it. And let me just record you talking for a little bit.
If I've found, if you do that with three people. That'll often uncover the biggest problems and we'll encourage you to go work on that some more. Um, so this does not have to be some overwhelming big capital D design endeavor. You can just get out of your head, talk to a few other people and find big ways to improve it.
And the something you'll realize is they might say, how do I find your plugin? What does it even do? What, how do there's 20 buttons you've got in the setting screen? Which ones do I turn on? Which ones do I turn off? And those kinds of things will. Encourage you to just start making improvements. So it's absolutely something you can do on your own.
Yeah, it
is. And, and I think at this point we have to say it, uh, it is a mandatory thing to do as unnatural as that may be for some to seek out feedback, right? Cause again, they've solved it. It's working. One of
the, the chief product officers that I worked with a couple of years ago. I, what I loved about his approach is he didn't, he did not come from a design or product background.
He came from a data analytics background. And so because he understood that what he would do is he would constantly just look at other, this was outside of WordPress. He'd look at other apps. He would have. Thousands of screenshots on his phone as he's just looking and understanding patterns and seeing how does someone else do their onboarding?
So that's another thing you can do just go look at 10 other wordpress plugins and you'll start to get in your mind this ideology of oh I hate how they're doing this, but I love how they're doing this. And that, that can kind of trickle into your thinking.
Yeah, it requires a mindset of wanting to solve it for not just your itch, but, um, uh, the whole gamut, the whole array of, of any type and kind of user.
When we were building software back, this is more than 20 years ago before I started my WordPress career. But when we were building software for an HR department for a large insurance company, Uh, we quickly learned that the way we thought was not the way they thought, which is awesome feedback at the, at the beginning of the project, not so much at the end, uh, and you burn once and then, okay, let me, let me try and fix this better.
So yeah, seeking advice was the, was the solution.
Uh, I've got to share a story from my mid, let's say earlier design career. I was working on some software and. The CEO of the company came up to me and he was like, Joshua, who is the user of our product? And I'm like, Oh, well, it's the, the customers, the 500 customers who are using this, that we're trying to build for.
And, um, they are the ones that will help us to modify it and we'll. And he just puts his hand up. He's like, no, let me cut you off. It's not that it's me because I pay your salary. So we do whatever I want. You will design and build whatever I think. And I like, and that just struck me. Um, And help me realize I probably was going to do better having a job somewhere else.
So I started looking and did my best. And this understanding that the product was only going to modify based on his wants and desires, not based on the 500 people who were already using it, that they were. Almost not considered at all, which had an effect on the software. The software was never going to be able to get to a certain level because of that.
I thought you were going to go with the story. I thought you were going into the direction of where he would say, you know, it's for the 5, 000 next customers. We're going to onboard, but
there were never 5, 000. I think it stopped at that. Oh,
wow. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the, the whole expectation, who is my, who is my customer?
Who is my end user? That's an interesting one. So. If we look at WordPress now, um, you've done some breakdowns, right? Teardowns of onboarding, and you've shared a couple. So, um, I'm kind of curious. What kind of, what kind of stuff do you encounter? Like, obviously the, the example that I gave, just activate and nothing happens.
Um, that's probably the worst. Um, what are some other interesting examples of, like, good try, but doesn't really help?
So this is an easy one. I'll call out because it's used to be a massive flaw of my own. You'll see a lot of plugins. Try this tool tip, uh, wizard for back lack of a better word where they'll say step one of five, click up here, click down here and it'll, it'll black out the screen and have these little tool tips pop up all around and the general advice for.
Well designed software is that we should actually move away from those. Now, what it's doing, it is, is it's helping a user see a very rigid system and they can't possibly imagine all the use cases when they're just seeing little arrows here and there. So instead it'd be better to remove all of them and have a short YouTube video.
If you can't do anything else, if that's the simplest little thing you could do, just say, Hey, watch this five minute video where I walked through it. And then let them figure it out on their own. And then there's lots of things you can do beyond that to build a happy path, to make sure that they're seeing one focused thing at a time, but that'd be the simplest fix.
Uh, another is
that's a good fix. So the, the, the, I've never liked those pop ups and I find them annoying. Yep. Beyond anything. Um, I think I remember the monster insights by, um, Awesome Motive, uh, it still has the pop ups even after, long after you've used it, it keeps sending you, uh, reminders and stuff, and I, I, if there was a filter that would just disable all of them, uh, please, somebody listening, let me know, because, uh, it's not just me that I would make happy, but being able to quit that and just figure it out on my own works way better for me, truly understanding what the software is doing, uh, I'm, I'm happy to hear that that's a consensus we're reaching all of us now, but, but indeed, um, five minute video.
Thank you. You can do the world in five minutes.
Yes. Just walk through it. And at least I'll know I'll probably ignore that video, but if you make it available for me to find later, that's another principle I've thought of. Just make it easy reach so that if I start to get stuck, I'll, I'll watch that first.
Yeah, really good one. So what else you, you, I interrupted you. So. We
have a, um, a challenge in WordPress. How does a plugin suggest that someone should start paying for it? And just last night or the night before we released a filter on wordpress. org for commercial versus community plugins. And I, I was kind of playing with it a little bit to see how this would help or could help.
And some plugins that are fantastic and have a paid option are so afraid to even talk about it that I don't even know there's something better for me that as a user, I would happily give you 50, a hundred dollars to solve my problem, but I can't even see how I would do that. There are other plugins that will not stop reminding me the entire time I'm using your free plugin, that there's a paid option and they're.
Has to be a balance between those two for users to really be able to enjoy what you're building. And outside of WordPress, um, let's say the iPhone mobile app space, this has been solved in a decent way. There's always opportunity for improvement, but it's when I'm ready to use it. Power feature. I know that ahead of time with the label and I see, Oh, this is about to help me.
I click on it. I get the paywall and then I go through that. There's opportunity for us to improve that in WordPress. And there's some plugins that I think maybe this developer is so hesitant. They could probably improve their business. They could probably get more sales by being a little bit more open with that in a.
Helpful way that it's something I'm starting to investigate. And I think more businesses can grow if they can figure out this balance.
Do you have an example of a, of a plugin that solves this really well, like right on the balance of not too much and definitely. Visible when you want it.
Yes. There's one.
I love it's a very simple one. It's called, um, all in one wp migration I'm forgetting the exact name, but it's by serve mask Yeah, and uh the free plugin does something hilarious It limits your uh, basically if you're trying to migrate a website from one server to another that's the purpose and i've had to do This many times.
Yeah, and it allows you to zip up I'll just say zip up your website and move a file around when you're uploading to the new website. It does this hilarious thing. It's like, Hey, just a heads up. As long as it's up to 64 megabytes, you can do it. Technically that's possible. Some websites are 64 megabytes.
And I've done that. I even gone through once and removed all the attachments so that I could do it. But then finally I got tired of doing that. And I saw, Oh, maybe it's 50 bucks at the time I could solve this problem. I was happy to fork over that 50. I felt that it was a genuine helpful plugin. And at the time I was ready to pay, they had that little prompt and I've used it for many websites since then.
That was a free to paid upgrade that I felt was just really well handled.
So inside the actual action, there's a small nag that says, look, there's only six that we can, you can do 64. You want more on lock and we'll have Billy. Yes.
And that's a very fair trade off, uh, candidly 128 would be more websites, but I technically did use it for a while for free if I was willing to do the extra work.
And that's a, that's a good way to think about it, that if someone's open to manual work free can take care of them. But if time is more important than pay my, pay me 50.
Interesting. Yeah. So you're essentially saying hijack it in a, in a nice way where it makes sense to, uh, solve whatever mini problem you're having within the solution.
My example would be, um, I like what Yoast, uh, Yoast SEO does in, uh, it shows premium in the menu. When you click on it, you'll see there's redirections and there's some other stuff there. I care for the redirection mostly. I like how they. Make it clear that we, we love to help you, but, um, for this particular function, you're going to need to upgrade, uh, and it does, it's because it, it catches a 404 that you created, right?
You deleted a post and it then says very, very gently says, look, this is going to cause a 404. You probably want to solve this better. Here's how you can, similar, uh, in, in terms of, uh, interrupting your pattern. But, uh, in a upgrading, Hey, this makes sense kind of way.
I haven't run across that specifically with the 404s, but I love that because it's the moment that I need it.
You're calling it out and Yoast also, they have a nice little banner. That's not annoying. That's always on the side that says, if you want to pay, here's what you get. That's a really elegant way to handle both sides of that.
Yeah. I, I know a lot of people bash Yoast SEO for how they're doing things. I think there's always a lot of it.
A lot of it is a little bit of hate of, uh, here's a popular plugin already doing really well. Do they need to do even better, you know, that sort of sentiment is always involved. But, um, no, I like, I like how they, uh, guide you in, in you're making a mistake here. Let me help you fix it. But we're going to ask a little compensation for it because we've, we've solved it more than a little bit for
you.
There's a podcaster. I follow Ben Thompson. He's ranted about this a little bit that if you have a business, granted, this is different than if you have truly a community focused plug in that you have no interest in her. There's a separation. But if you have a business. He's commented that his customers would be happiest if he was free all the time.
If he did not charge for anything whatsoever, but there's going to be an inherent tension between trying to build a business and what your users want. And he's found a nice middle ground where I pay him 12 a month and I get access to his podcasts. I'm happy to do that. And to the extent that he continues to give me value, I'll be happy to pay that.
Would I be happier if it was free? Of course I would. But then he wouldn't be able to take care of his family. So I'm okay with that trade off.
It is a balance. It's always a balance between, um, fixing an annoyance, running a business, offering something for free. It's, it's a lot to juggle if I'm honest. And, um, I think that if you look at the WordPress ecosystem as a whole, uh, for years, there's been a tendency, like, uh, if you're, if you want to make money here, this is not the place.
Yeah, it is, because the, what are we on now, 43 percent of the most popular websites, that's, that's ridiculously high number, so that means there's a huge market, and if you're going to do it, you might as well do it in the best and the most optimized way. You mentioned data driven, um, how would you... How would you determine whether one option over another option is the best way to go?
Well, first of all, it's WordPress, so that's hard, um, by default. I, I've, I've thought about this and I'm, I'm trying to figure out what's ways to advise people. I was talking to one developer and he's like, I have no data whatsoever. What's the best way for us to go forward? Um, And I'm, I'm starting to just ask around because I don't know all the technical limitations.
So I'm, I'm still learning. And if you have any insights, I'm definitely open to this. I've seen some plugins. They ask, Hey, would you mind if we attract some data because it'll help us to improve it?
You know,
and see, that's interesting. I want the data. To be used to help a developer improve not for third party tracking that that's what I would love to see more of where this will only be used because this is a paid plugin, and we just want to understand how to better serve you that that's what the kind of prompts I'd love to see more of.
With that said, in the absence of that data, you can look outside of WordPress and see principles that generally apply. For software where they do have tons of tracking, you can generally see that if you, I'll take the mobile app world, a long onboarding flow is generally not a problem. We saw a tight, about a three to 4 percent drop off from screen five to screen 20.
And one of these apps that I was helping to build with the long onboarding process. So as long as it's the right customer and they know what you're about to offer, you can. Go take them through a lot to customize their, your offering. You're probably not going to lose them. The next
curiosity is that app solving a big problem or
a small problem?
It's a small problem. It's helping people take care of their indoor plants with watering, fertilizing reminders. Um, so they cared, they cared deeply about it. They're very emotionally invested in it. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that's an interesting factor to keep in mind as well. So it depends on what you're, what you're actually building.
Are you building a convenience or are you solving a pain point?
Yes. Uh, vitamin versus band aid. It's one of the great questions in design. Yes. The other thing is if you, so Nielsen Norman group, they're this design research group. They have a saying that if six people give you feedback and you record it or observe it, you will capture about 80 percent of the problems of a given task that you've asked them to review.
Yeah. And beyond that, you'll get diminishing returns. So. 20 people does not help you solve 100 percent of the problems. It's not worth it to spend more time. And if roughly, they give a data point, if roughly every six weeks you do this, you will uncover a lot of challenges. I will give a caveat. This is not for version one of a software.
Follow up iterations after something has already launched that a user group does not help you create a product. It will help you refine it. Yeah. With, with that way of thinking, I've even shortened it a bit more where I just try to grab three people really quickly to find, let's say 40 to 60 percent of the glaring issues.
Then come back a couple of weeks later and do it again in the absence of data. That's a great way to kind of shortcut through and, and figure out if this is serving someone.
So I mentioned Freemius as one of the. solutions I see used most in terms of collecting data. Um, like, how is that, how is the plugin actually used?
What, what is, what's happening inside of the actual usage of the various settings and options pages and whatnot? Um, is there a solution there other than Freemius that you are aware of that, uh, if you're building a plugin or a theme or, or Really anything that will allow you to collect data usage data.
I'm not aware of one, and I would love to know because I love to be able to recommend it to people if it's generally a good option. Um, and actually I had misheard. I thought you said like freemium model plugins. So freemium, I'm going to look them up and see if they're helpful.
It's a solution that I think it's originally built to help you go from free to pro.
So it helps you with a whole bunch of stuff, um, upgrading, collecting data, um, all sorts of things that you actually want from going from free to, uh, pro. I haven't used it myself, but I, I've looked at it and I think I have a general idea of what this, what, what they're trying to solve. Um, it, for instance, also adds, which is a feature I don't particularly like, but it adds an option that when you turn off that plugin.
It will come up with a pop up first asking you why you're turning it off. Um, I think, I, I understand that that's valuable data, I just think I find it annoying as hell.
Have you ever wanted to answer it or you just wanted to type a bad answer to you have to
click and other times telling no, or I don't, I don't care to share something like that, but there's like five, six options and then at the bottom, there's the option that I don't care to share, but it's an extra step.
And in the process that I'm already finalized on, I don't care to jump into that one. But having said that they provide data, uh, and for those answering that, those sort of pop ups and all the usage inside of the plugin, it's a very valuable what it, what it provides. But again, it's, it's very specifically geared towards going from free to premium.
I would be curious to learn more about that because we did see. Uh, for instance, on this mobile app, it was really helpful to understand where we were losing people. Oh, half of people, we had this area on the plugin that I think 23 percent of people would try to tap on. There was no button there. It was just a little open space and.
It felt like there needed to be a button. It's like they were expecting there to be a button right there. And that kind of insights can be quite helpful to a product team.
That's an interesting finding, 'cause that's one of the things you can catch on the screen. Not necessarily inside of WordPress, but that's an interesting finding.
They want to have a button there and there's not, so what are they solving are, are they trying to click out of it or progress or, or something like that. Yeah. Interesting. Um, When you do these teardowns, um, what does that process look like? So how do you, from a perspective of, uh, you're rarely a new user, at least not on the WordPress side of things, so you already have sort of expectancies.
So how, how do you prepare for that? How do you prepare yourself to be as a, a blank canvas as humanly possible? That's got to be a challenge.
There's two things I like to do. One I, I think every human likes to tell stories and likes to hear it. If I say, let me tell you a story, we've actually seen that the brain goes into a different mode of listening and thinking.
If you've ever been at a WordPress conference or a talk or a church where the moment someone starts to tell a story, you're just locked in. Uh, I approach these that I want to tell a story, I'm not doing some kind of a boring evaluation. I'm not doing an analytical breakdown. I'm trying to pretend that I'm a hero on a journey, trying to accomplish something.
And I'm going to see if I can get that done. And that immediately puts me in the mind of. Of being in a fictional universe with this plugin. It's a way of kind of tricking myself. The other is I put on blinders. I will only look at a screen for about two or three seconds before I, I close my eyes, I decide what I'm going to do and what notes I'm going to take down.
And if I didn't see it, I pretend it's not there. I've, I've sometimes gone, I've done a teardown and I've realized I missed a tiny button that solves a huge problem I had. But I leave it in because I didn't see it in about two or three seconds, which kind of matches what's going to happen with the user.
So I'll take you as, for instance, I did a teardown of their software. I have used it for 10 years, right? I know it intimately, but in that moment, if I'm only giving myself a couple of seconds, I'm going to not remember everything and I'll, I'll just make a decision which button to press and then I take a note down.
So it's actually, I have a lot of fun with it that way.
Oh, interesting. So you, you have found a mode to get yourself into a blank boat.
Yes. Yes. And people who build product, whether you're a designer or developer or product person, you often get into that because you do have a lot of empathy for people wanting to experience a new software and you have a way of making yourself an empathetic person who maybe thinks like a five year old or thinks like a first time user.
So it often. Folks of that type of career path can fake it a little bit and pretend that they haven't seen something.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I was making this way harder in my head because I'm trying to think of something that you go into fresh, right? Then you, you, you kind of have to be fresh. There is, there's not that much room in, in one's head to be fully fresh.
So, but I hear you're saying you're not actually fully fresh. You're just starting with a. Let me see what's going on here, uh, type of attitude, and that'll be as fresh as it needs to be.
And the first idea I have, I write that one down because sure, I, you and I may know that this software does these 20 things.
What's the first thing that comes to mind? Let's just use that one for the teardown and it often helps to, um, simulate what a new user might feel when they come there, what big button stands out the most, what picture grabs your attention the first, first.
So when you do these teardowns, do you, so I would imagine this.
Once you've installed it, activate it, that's when the most, um, relevant information is being presented, right? So that's, that's the actual teardown. How much are you incorporating the... Um, here's the data in marketing speak on their website, on their plugin page, and then from there to installing, obviously, that's default for everybody, but then from the, from the marketing to the actual activated plugin, do you take that into account if there's a mismatch or if there's, like, I can imagine you, you testing something and you don't still, you still don't fully, fully understand what is, what's, what it's about to do, what it, what What's capable of
there's two approaches I've taken for a couple of products.
I've said, I've come to your marketing website. You make me a promise. I'm going to go through with a whole plugin and see if that promise is fulfilled. Other times. I pretend I'm in the dot org repo and I want to plug in that SEO. The first thing that pops up, I'm going to compare it against a couple of others.
And then I'll just see if they fulfill a need that I'm seeing not based on the promise of their marketing website. So sometimes I'll do one, sometimes I'll do the other and the. I lean more toward the ladder just because that's an entire problem to solve. Yeah. Solving the marketing problem. Uh, that's something that I may spend a little bit more time on in the future, focus on, but there's so many other aspects of how does a person first come there?
Why are they there? What are they trying to do for me? I want to first see if I can improve their onboarding. Then there's a lot of other aspects we can look at or someone else can help with.
So onboarding, um, the, the teardowns that you do and the service you provide, is that mostly geared towards WordPress plugins or do you do services as well?
I do
services as well, just because I've worked on a, so to be, uh, candid, I've, I've done a lot of just service work for WordPress companies in the past. And what keeps happening is. You end up doing an onboarding flow. That's just, that's just happens. So you work with someone long enough and I saw enough patterns.
I realized I could focus specifically on this. It's not to say I won't do other stuff, but this is a really fun problem I want to solve right now. And if we work together on onboarding, naturally we'll start looking at other parts of the platform as we evolve. And as we. Try to improve that, um, because once you get past onboarding, every product team knows you need to then think about your conversion rates.
You need to think about retention. You need to think about these other things. And that's something I can help with. If you don't get them in the door first, then you can't think about them staying.
Running a business is hard because just by the things that you list that, I mean, for the most part, that's, that's, those are problems any business needs to solve because building a product, while it's not easy, it's not, it's also not hard in terms of once you've defined the problem, there's a gap between what is and what is not that Delta is your solution relatively straightforward, but then getting them there.
So it starts with marketing, then the conversion from the marketing, uh, pages to actually installing it and using it. And then once they are using it or installing it, then activating and optimizing that onboarding. But then there's onboard, then you're onboard, and then the next step comes, and how do I keep them happy?
How do I keep them using it? How do I keep... Innovating it's it's a long list of stuff that you have to take care of
something that helped me. Um, this was the chief product officer I worked with in the past. He had a good way of thinking about it. He's like Joshua in this period of time for let's say the next three months, we could pull one of three levers.
Acquisition activation or retention acquisition is getting people into the door through marketing activation is getting them into the aha moment of using your software and then the last one is keeping them there. Don't try to pull all three levers at once because what you'll find is you pull one. And you get an improvement yet, you're going to see a decrease on the other.
So just work on one at a time. And over time you can improve all eventually, but don't stress all three at once. You will overwhelm
yourself. Smart advice. I would agree with your manager. Yeah. So with the onboarding, you focus on a, on a small portion of, um, using the software and where the software is WordPress itself.
Have you looked at onboarding, um, of WordPress itself or specifically onboarding solutions? There's, there's a, there's one particular solution I'm thinking of that solves the whole onboarding to WordPress. Is that an area you have, have dived
into as well? I've not been diving into it with this project, but I have been thinking about it a lot, just being part of this ecosystem for a long time, because I'm sure this, this happens to all of us at some point where a friend asked for a website and you immediately go through the logic of all right, domain name, host provider, uh, which theme builders should I put them on or which theme should they have, what plugins do they need and.
Uh, frankly, I'm open to ideas you have, because this has been a little overwhelming to me still to this day with how do I walk someone through that? And I had a friend that I basically said, Hey, Hey, let me just, let me log in and buy your domain and let me set you up on a host provider. I'll then put on a theme for you.
And then you're ready to go before that. Don't worry about it. You'll be too stressed. extendify.
And Extendify is essentially a, uh, solution. I think it's mostly geared towards hosting parties. Um, but it's a solution that it's in, that, that essentially, uh, is being put in front of WordPress. So it stops being the, the, the famous five minute install, uh, but for good reasons. So instead of just installing it, and then you see that horrible dashboard with widgets that make absolutely zero sense to you, because it's like, what am I doing here?
Um, Extendify has the option to say, once you've installed, that's just the beginning, right? But the next step is asking you, what are you going to do with your site? So if my goal is to run a e commerce site, It automatically installs WooCommerce, but not just that it automatically installs the right type of plugins.
So you can actually have people pay your products. Um, so it might ask you if are you going to sell, uh, sell physical products or not, or do you need taxes to be calculated, you know, that sort of thing. Uh, but if your goal is to have a membership site with a newsletter and, uh, build extra, I don't know, upgrades or any of the kinds of stuff that you see nowadays, um, it, it sort of guides you through that and the end of that onboarding wizard is you have a WordPress that is geared towards the goal that you started with.
And I like that. I like that principle a lot.
I was looking at their marketing site and the premise of what they're doing feels right. I haven't worked with the software specifically to know if it's hitting all the right points, but what the story they're telling and connecting with the host provider, it means if your host provider offers it.
In theory, you might have a much, your users might have a much simpler flow to get to the actual problem they're trying to solve.
I think what I ideally would like to see is that much of what they're solving now inside their entire suite of, of solution, of solutions, uh, is that much of what they're doing is, should be moved over to WordPress itself.
So that famous five minute install, maybe we've seen the best of that and, uh, kind of move on from there going. From installing it and then actually asking the same question. So what extendify also offers is an integration with whatever control panel the hosting company has. Right? So. Uh, data's being fed in there and back and forth and makes fully, uh, make, makes total sense to fully have that automated and geared towards hosting companies because one of the largest pain points of hosting companies is the retention.
Yeah. They may figure out how to install it and they have the site, but then no action. So a year, two years, and then they quit just because they, they didn't start, um, beyond the first step. So I'd love to see more of that inside of WordPress. And I think the, um, overhaul of the dashboard is a.
Something that is, that is going to have to happen at the same time.
It's not friendly. The first time you come there, it doesn't really inspire you to do anything in particular, and you bring up a good point that the host providers can be a partial solution to this where. If the moment I, I wish I could tell a friend, just go to this one spot and you'll be done.
Yeah. But then I have to tell them, well, actually get your domain separate because you don't want to lock that into a host provider and run into those problems. Then in this current calendar year, this host provider is probably going to be the one that's kind of okay for you. And there's a lot there.
Same with the mail and same with, you know, all the little things that go with that domain.
Oh yeah. And guess what? Your WordPress site won't actually send any emails out unless you also install a plugin or have your host provider set that up as all these little things that there's an inherent tension between closed and open software and we embrace and accept.
That open software is the solution that has made the web grow so well. So we're not throwing that trade off away. We want that. But what that means is you will never be able to lock things down to the extent that something like Squarespace can, right? Where the entire vertical stack is controlled. And as long as we understand the challenge, we can still find ways to improve it and make it better.
And that should be our goal to not say, Oh, well. It's open, let people do whatever they want. We can still give guidance and suggestion improvements to walk people through that.
I think we, um, I think we, I think we need to say we, we, it's not that we can give guidance. I think we should. I'm, I'm, I'm very, um, careful by using the word should, because I don't think there's a lot of.
There's not. Should has some sort of force in it. I am, I'm forcing you to do it. Um, so I, I use it carefully, but should is, I think we're at the time where we should start saying we should improve that because the end result is, uh, yes, while we may not be able to replicate Wix and Squarespace and all of those providers, um, there comes a point where we're going to have to, going to have to make it better.
Smarter to start using WordPress. Um, and I, I, I know this from just, you know, friends and family using WordPress maybe four times a year. And every single time they do, I get a text like, um, I forgot the login and that's where it starts. So this is the location. Okay, great. I mean, um, remind me how I, cause I'm kind of lost.
I don't know where to start. And all they're doing is writing a, you know, a little blog post or update or simple stuff. But the whole, um, the whole dashboard, the whole arrangement of content, the whole,
and I'm going to say something that most people probably think I'm being paid for, but, uh, uh, there's no entity to pay me, so, but the, the, the block editor, or formerly known as the Gutenberg project, I would probably still name that way, but the result of it is the block editor that we see, I like it. It's smooth.
Yes, it needs better UX here and there. But if we just start explaining this a little bit better, people are just going to have a lot more fun with it. But the whole, how do I get there, and having to answer those questions for clients and friends and whatnot, Um, I've, like, Long ago, defaulted to creating onboarding videos for every single new client that I have.
Every single one of them gets a video of me, five to ten minutes, talking through. So the only thing they have to do is go back to that video, and there it is. So, when clients ask me now, and, no, sorry, I should say friends. When friends ask me now, I force myself to do the same thing. Okay, I'll happily answer you.
We'll do that on a Zoom call. Uh, but I'll record it, and I'll make it available to you afterwards.
I had a moment. This week, and I'm not sponsored by them or anything like that, where I just wanted to create a simple little marketing site and I, someone on Twitter mentioned it and I remembered I'd used it a while back.
Uh, cadence, they have a bunch of block patterns. I installed it. I saw the block block patterns and I immediately felt this sense of relief that they had. 30, 60 block patterns that mostly solved anything a marketing website could need. And they looked consistently the same. The design was not different button styles, not different colors and fonts.
And native. I saw a block I wanted and guess what? It had a little label that said pro and I went and immediately paid the 60 or 70 I was so happy to pay it. And that's an example where I love that someone has spent the time to create a bunch of patterns that all fit together. And then I told another friend yesterday we were on a call and I'm like, Hey, just use cadence, you'll be fine.
Pull it into the block editor, use cadence, and you'll be able to get your marketing website up in a couple of hours. And it shows me some possibility and gets me excited.
Yeah, I agree. I, I, um, I've used Cadence on, uh, two sites, um, mostly because they solve a specific need that that site needed, and they're very close to the, the native block editor, um, maybe a little bit more intrusive than I would like it to be, but I guess that's the trade off, um, uh, and I, I, I upgraded in a similar fashion.
It solved the problem that I was looking to solve. I'm happy to spend money here. Uh, move on. Uh, it's saving me time and it's not something that I needed to overthink necessarily, so. Thank you. Here you go, exactly
like you said. I actually, I love, I want to pull on that point a little bit. Um, some, we have something we call the WordPress way when it comes to doing plugins, themes, et cetera.
And I understand it, acknowledge it, and mostly reject it when I'm actually building software, because that's become a limiter at times to anything that's innovative. In the past I worked on a. pretty popular WordPress plugin. And we ran into this challenge of, we were trying to build within the existing design system and we were not able to innovate whatsoever.
And we finally got permission from someone, which could have been ourselves, but someone's like, Hey, just go build whatever you need to build. And then we'll worry about integration later because sometimes You have to break the established pattern to improve it. Um, other times you'll see some plugins, they've gone maybe too far, too crazy, and it doesn't fit at all, but it's okay to be a little bit pushing the boundaries to try and build good software.
Yeah, I
fully agree. And again, and I've worked, I've worked there, so this may sound like I'm, uh, overly, uh, enthusiastic and, or, or whatever still, but, uh, Yoast SEO with their latest dashboard, uh, revamp. Love it. It's just. Straightforward. Can we please make the whole dashboard look like that? Like it's sweet.
It's simple. Maybe, you know, maybe a little bit more contrast here and there, but it solves the problem that I have. Like I need a double layer of navigation, right? I don't want to have everything be a hover. It, uh, It's just nice to look at. It feels nice and gosh, it's been a while since I've, uh, been able to say that about the WordPress Dashboard.
Well, and the WordPress Dashboard Visual Design Language was fantastic. I remember when we shifted over, was it WordPress 2. 1? When it went from the vertical, uh, the horizontal...
So I was just a user at the time when I saw the shift and I immediately was excited. I'm like, this is better. Yeah. But that's how many years ago was that now? Uh, 2005? No,
no, no, no, no. That's it's uh, yeah, possibly 2. 7. I think it was.
Wow, we're dating ourselves a year on
the point is like, that was an incredible breath of fresh air. It was innovative at the time, but we also can't just sit on that there and we've had nine. We've
been sitting on it for way too long now.
Yes. Improvement has to happen. And that's where I. And full disclosure, I, I got to work on Gutenberg a little bit and I'm talking a handful of tiny, tiny little tickets where I was able to like improve things, but I do think Gutenberg is a huge success.
I love how it works. I'm able to point friends to it and say, Hey, just add a block here. And now that we have patterns coming in, I'm, I think there's a lot of opportunity. I
love patterns. I love patterns. It's so smart. It's just, it's such a no brainer. The only thing we may need to solve in patterns, probably at some point, is how do I change the text inside the patterns, because some of those patterns have text in them.
Most people don't find that very intuitive yet, but other than that, it's just... Like, I've, I've, uh, played around with, uh, Oli, uh, the Oli theme by Mike McAllister. It has like 50 patterns in it, 50, 5 0. And I just kept adding them and just playing with them and like, the ease that it is just to make, have, have an author biotype stuff, or have a, a testimonial, or have, you know.
He's got those examples in there, play with the headers. It's just click, nah, not what I want. Oh, wait, this is almost what I want. Change a little bit here. Bam, I'm done. It's so much easier to play with your theme. So I, I, I do wonder at what point we actually stopped calling it a theme and just a collection of design elements.
I think. We're getting
close. We can do that when there's enough patterns that can have a consistent look and feel right. If I have 50, and I'm going to check out the other theme, I'm excited about that. Um, if I have 50 patterns that solve 90 percent of what a marketing website needs, I don't need a theme at that point.
And
Mike's working on a, on a pro I'm really keen to figure that one out, but that. And there's a few more, um, block editor themes that work and full site editor or site editing. It's so confusing the name, but the, the, the whole, uh, the whole future of WordPress is something I'm excited about. And I particularly like your, your place in, in terms of helping improve something that is like do the math on, on, on the amount of plugins you install on a week.
If you're actively building sites, that is when you're playing with it, when you're upgrading it, when you're. All of these things that we don't really think about, but we're doing it all the time and we are annoyed by it all the time, or we just shut down because, you know, you're being annoyed. So you don't like that.
You, you ignore that and you just do what you need to do because you kind of figured it out anyway, but we're, we're end users with a lot of experience and most people are not.
And, um, someone shared this with me a while back that you're not, even if you're a power user, you're not always a power user.
What if right now you've just got a couple of seconds, you're, you're annoyed, you're busy. You've got to run off and pick a kid up from daycare in five minutes. You just want to do something very quickly. And there's a plugin that I'm, I'm talking to a developer about and he suggested it, which really excited me, this idea of there's 50 possible settings with this plugin.
What if when you install it, we say. Typical use case one, press this button, typical use case to press this button. And I'm genuinely excited to work with him on that plugin because he is, he gets that, he sees that value and I'll just help like tweak that as we go to get along the way. And if I'm super busy, I'm like, Oh yeah, use case one, that's going to be perfect for me today.
Done.
I love that idea. Same, same, absolutely love it. So
this is why I'm excited to improve. Help people improve work on this. It's a lot of fun and better plugins. We're all going to be a little bit happier, right? Um, if I, I ghost fantastic team, I have no affiliation with them, but I did a tear down and they immediately said that they were going to put some changes into the roadmap to improve it right after they saw it.
Like that fulfills me when I'm trying to help improve, um, other plugins.
And ultimately that is what open source is about.
Yeah, I, I'm not an expert in this, but I've been following it a lot. This whole open AI, um, learning models, right? You have chat to T you've got barred and then you have this. Open source movement, which is apparently according to Google's little internal letter, which, you know, there's reasons we don't know if we can trust it, but it's interesting.
Basically saying like open source has the opportunity and it's in their best interest to say that, but point being open source has the opportunity to iterate faster because you're not counting on 5, 000 employees with red tape, all getting signed off before they're able to ship a change. Yeah. Instead.
You have maybe someone, a developer who's so inspired by something, they just submit a pull request. Someone else sees it. They approve it. You can just move so quickly. And that, that is the part of open source that I love and can, it will never be beat by any closed source software, as long as there are certain principles we're thinking about in terms of how good software should be built.
I think that's an excellent point to end the show on. Thank you so much.
