The Web Agency Summit 2025

BobWP:
Hey BobWP here and welcome to WordPress event talk a Do the Woo podcast show. I’d like to thank our sponsor Kinsta. We will be chatting shortly about the Web Agency Summit and yes, they are one of the sponsors, so make sure and check out their virtual booth while you’re there. But speaking of the summit, I have Andrew Palmer with me today who we’re going to chat with. How are you doing, Andrew?

Andrew Palmer:
I’m good, thanks Bob. It’s nice to see you virtually, but we see we do meet up occasionally in real life. Yeah, I did have a little bit of a six week sabbatical until I was recalled from retirement. So yeah, it’s quite amusing. But there we are. What can you do?

BobWP:
Yeah, very cool. So we’re going to just talk a little bit. I know I did a post earlier on our blog about the web Agency Summit, but I thought it’d be good to maybe dig into some things I didn’t cover in that short article.

Andrew Palmer:
Sure, yeah, I read the article. So yeah, go ahead, ask me anything.

BobWP:
Yeah, why don’t we. I’ll put in the specifics date wise, but give me a overall synopsis of what this event is about and who it’s for.

Andrew Palmer:
Well, the Atarim and Omnisend Web Agency Summit is really for anyone that’s in the web world. Doesn’t matter where you are, whether you’re using a CMS, whether you’re building web apps, certainly using anything creatively if you’re into AI, which a lot of people are. So there’s a lot of, there’s a good few sessions on AI and how to improve your Personas out there, how to use AI, certainly using AI to improve sales, to improve customer intake, onboarding, lots of things like that around AI. But there’s also some very experienced people out there talking about SEO. The way that SEO is changing, it’s still content is king as far as I’m concerned. That’s where my world started in web was SEO. And then I went on to be an agency or creative agency rather because it was back in the day. And then when the web came up I said, well, we can transfer our skills from creativity to building a web agency as well. So we did that and that’s great.

And I let that go in December of this year. So, you know, also there’s a guy presenting who actually bought my agency on there who’s going to be talking about outsourcing and stuff like that lovely man called Ben Tiffin. But , you know, we’ve got. Canva we’ve got Google, we’ve got Vitali from Smashing magazine. You’ve also got a lovely man, Anton the Seeker who’s with Lovable who’s AI. You know, you can build a, an AI website there. And he’s talking about how to scale to a seven figure agency on that. We’ve got Bubble as well, that’s apps and got the lovely Cami McNamara who is WordPress and a way, you know, a web agency owner as well. She’s really experienced and she’s talking about managed wp. And we’ve got Louis Dezer who’s the founder of Yala AI as well and he’s talking about transforming salespeople into top performers with AI. And that’s quite appropriate because we’re all using AI to help us with our daily lives in the web world. But also it’s good for kind of hints because it’s because the LLMs are trained on lots of things we can say. You know, how do we improve our sales pitch, how do we make it less salesy, how do we make it more about personality? Because we like to buy from people that we get on with. So that’s going to be a great session.

But there’s loads going on. I mean talking about scope creep, that’s really important for agencies to really get a hold of. And that’s partly why Atarim was. Well definitely why Atarim was, you know, envisaged because it was all about communication and once you get your communication right in web and the summit is all about communication and turning off your email. But nevermind, I’ll do that now. Bear with me. So you know, we’re all very busy. We’ve got things like email on when we’re doing a podcast. We’ve got things that we’ve got to do. Dealing with scope creep is one of the biggest things in agencies. And then we’ve got obviously Vito going around saying, you know, from months to weeks on development of websites and things like that. We’ve got the lovely grade there who have really come into the space of block editing and making sure that what they do is compatible with WordPress. We’ve got Mike Demo who originally came from the Joomla arena, then went into WordPress hosting, then went into being in Codeable and helping grow Codeable and now he’s at World Host Group which is great.

You know, there’s lots of people in there that have an immense amount of experience in or dealing with web agencies. You know recently we just went to CloudFest as well and the interest there In Atarim was, wow, you can really help speed these things up. And you know, we’ve got Omnisend who are in partnership with the summit as well. You know, make sure that we communicating with our customers correctly really. And that’s what the summit’s about. That’s what the inception of the summit was during the pandemic because obviously we couldn’t get together in word counts and meetups and things like that. So the summit really is for everybody who’s involved in web. Wherever your footprint is, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in WordPress dooda wherever doesn’t matter. You’ve got, there’s an opportunity to learn and really improve your business by just visiting the summit. And of course it’s free, so that’s cool.

BobWP:
I like that because I know with our podcast we’ve been doing more things, not just WordPress, you know, talking more about the open web, talking about other agencies, developers, the stacks they have out there that maybe aren’t always just WordPress. And I think what’s the best thing about that is it invites a lot more people, they get more exposed to everything. But especially for WordPress, people that are in the bubble, they start to learn about these other things that are going on and see the options out there and they find that it’s just not WordPress. It’s good.

Andrew Palmer:
Yeah. By visiting a summit like this, it allows you to have a more open view of what’s out there and then you’ve got exactly. More strings to your bow, more arrows to your whatever it is and every. And you can say, right, okay, well maybe WooCommerce, excuse me, Bob, isn’t suitable for this particular thing because you need it to do this particular thing. Let’s have a look at something else. You know, it doesn’t matter. Or it also gives you the strength of comparison because you can say, well actually that solution, I know that you want to talk to me about that solution which is out of WordPress, but in reality we’ve got WordPress and WooCommerce, self managed, self hosted, all that kind of stuff. And so it gives you a real knowledge base of where you can guide your customers. Because agencies, what I’m seeing these days is a lot of freelancers particularly are guided by their customers desires. Whereas if we take a hold of, and we go into that in the summit as well, if we take a hold of our clients, realize that we are actually not just building a website, we’re building a website business for them, you know, we’re enhancing their business and become more of consultants that will then help us raise our prices to be more livable on, you know, because some people are feasting famine and that will also persuade the customer that we are there for life, the life of their business.

So therefore they’re going to need that maintenance contract, they’re going to need that consultative couple of hours a month, they’re going to need us to manage their email marketing campaigns or their SEO campaigns and they will then become to rely on us as a trusted consultant business rather than just a guy out there that builds their website or a girl out there that builds their website. So, and I think what people will learn from the summit, certainly I learned from the summit. I presented it for a couple of years, I was co host for it. And because you’re co host, you’re on all the time, you know, you’re on for the full 16 hours or whatever it is because just in case something technical goes wrong, but then you end up watching all of the presentations. And I definitely learn lots and lots of things about the way that I thought I was running my business absolutely correctly. And then you could suddenly go, oh, maybe if I did that would improve my life and I wouldn’t have to work seven days a week and talking about outsourcing, talking about using the right tools and things like that. And I think that’s the way the summit can help people.

BobWP:
Yeah, I think being more well rounded is so much better. And I like people’s learning about everything instead of just one or two things. So that’s great. One of the things that I believe you’re going to be doing and you’re going to be hosting them are the networking. Yeah, the, the networking times. And I know that. Wow. So what was it called five years ago? It was called the Feedback Summit or it was the.

Andrew Palmer:
I think it was the WP Feedback Summit. Yes. Or it was similar to what it’s called now, which is the Web Agency Summit. And we’ve got some fantastic sponsors on Bob, you know, they’re amazing. They just, they sign up. We even signed up someone, Cloudfest, you know, who saw the potential of being a sponsor and have and everything like that to be able to really advise people on the best way to use certain software, even their own. We’ve got the smaller, the smooth sponsors are the Big Scoots, the Kinsta, the Convesio, Grade Q Box email as well, Cuebox Mail Market, Goo SEO, y WP Umbrella Oreo, I shared a podium with Big Scoots Grade and WP Umbrella at Cloud Fest because Vito couldn’t make it. So I took his place because we had a good chaos from, you know what Tech Stack. From chaos to clarity, really. And that’s what this summit is all about. From chaos to clarity. Give me some clarity about how I’m going to be able to grow my business or even sustain my business. We definitely couldn’t do it because it’s five days of really intense work from all at RIM as well. We’ve got to attend be wandering around the networking lounges. I haven’t booked my own networking spot yet, but I think Kadishu is going to sort that out. But the. Because I used to be a co presenter on there or co host, I’ve been replaced by the ultimate co host, Robert Jacobi. You know, he’s a, he’s an amazing guy. Because I was out of the space, you know, I went to, I was retired, so I wasn’t going to do anything in the web. But Robert is a brilliant replacement for me and of course with Stephanie in there as well as a co host and Vito as well, I think. And my role really now I’m a cast manager at Atari and my role is really to ensure that customers are using the platform as a platform to help them grow rather than just manage their business, you know, or manage the sites that they’re running. Don’t just stay in your business, help it grow, that’s the key.

BobWP:
Cool. And that networking lounge, I know that, believe it or not, 5 years ago actually did a podcast from the networking lounge. There was a group of people in there and I asked them, you know, I said, hey, why don’t I just do a podcast while we’re here and talk about stuff and can actually go in the archives. I think it was in May of 2020 or something like crazy. But what can people expect? Do I just go in, hang out? Do you know, well, how do you foresee it or going to be actually.

Andrew Palmer:
Formatted when the networking lounges are as they. People are afraid of the word networking. I prefer to call them chat lounges really. You know, they’re really a few people getting together, telling their stories, you know. So yes, you have a leader in there, like with yourself, you know, as a media partner. We’ve got other media partners as well, so thanks for that, Bob, it’s great. But the key really is to go in there with an open mind, make sure that you’ve got something, you’re going to say something. And also it’s a support mechanism as well, it’s really hard running a business, right? Doesn’t matter what business you’re in, you’ve got schedules to keep, you’ve got wages to pay, you’ve got food to put in the fridge. And one of the greatest benefits of the networking lounge is showing people that they’re not alone, you know, and there’s lots of advice going on and you might can issue, or you might come up with a timing issue or a hosting issue or a platform issue or whatever it may be, or you might have some great advice in how to use a particular form like Bubble or Lovable or WordPress or Shopify or Squarespace, you know, all of them. Or Laravel, you know, so you want to do a web app and you’re thinking about Laravel or you’re thinking about some other platform to use and people in that networking, those, they will have experience of that and then, and that’s again getting your own knowledge base really fixed in. And so also community making connections. So therefore, you know, I know that people from those networking lounges have now, five years later have become friends and colleagues. And you’ve also got lots of busy agencies. So if you’re happy to do some white label stuff in the networking lounges, you will meet those busy agencies hopefully and they’ll build up trust because again you buy from people and then they’ll explore opportunities for you or you can explore opportunities for them, you know, so it’s just like a lovely little meeting room and it’s very friendly and very informal and you know, anything goes, it’s great.

BobWP:
Yeah, very cool.

Andrew Palmer:
And also actually just talking about networking lounges, all of the sponsors will have their own lounges as well. So you can go in and have a chat and ask them anything. They’ve got the wheel of fortune as well. So you can win prizes, you know, it’s great, you know, discounts or folks or a one on one meeting or maybe them helping you or you can book a meeting and say okay, well let’s look, let’s talk about what you, you for instance grade can offer me. You know, I know that they do onboarding and stuff like that. So it’s a good opportunity for people to get to know the infrastructure of suppliers out there that can help you build your business as well. So go pop into their networking, see the benefits from their perspective as well. Be cool.

BobWP:
Yeah, I remember, I don’t know that I probably several years I went around to various sponsors booths and just kind of popped in, said hi. But I think what people need to know is that this is not a hard pitch thing. You know, you’re not dropping in to be pitched and stuff. It’s. You’re dropping in to be able to have the chance to actually sit down, which you can’t always do even at a live event. You know, too much going on around it. You can ask the specific questions you have and have total focus versus, you know, a bunch of stuff going on around you.

Andrew Palmer:
And that’s what I think we wanted to do with the first summit was really make it as much of an event as a real life event. Tracks. We did different tracks I think at the first one. Now it’s just one track and it’s just all day and whatever’s going on, but also have booths, you know, the lounges for the sponsors are basically booths. Know you can pop it. I know that when I was certainly at Cloud Fest this last into the booth, it wasn’t about selling, it wasn’t about, it was about relationship building and it was all about telling people this is, these are the advantages. And it was nothing on the dotted line. Now you know, yeah, can I take your email address and maybe follow up with you? But that’s fairly common business sense really. So yeah, it is more like an event where you go see the presentations and you can still see them 24 hours afterwards. And this one, you can always go log back in and see it, but also to visit and really interact with the sponsors on a one on one as well.

BobWP:
So I’m thinking if somebody is thinking about getting into WordPress or actually starting an agency, what would this event bring to them?

Andrew Palmer:
I think if you’re thinking about getting into web development from whatever angle you’re thinking, WordPress, any of the platforms out there, I think this will give you a good overview of what the people are actually like within the community, give you the opportunities of what tools to use. Because the sponsors there are fairly substantial companies and they’re very well established. So that builds a bit of trust because, you know, a lot of people come into this business and then suddenly disappear and you think, oh, where have they gone? And I really like that bit of software.

So you know that you’ve got the consistency there with the people. When you visit a Word Camp or a Cloud Fest or an MSP situation, you know, in real life you go to these things, you know that the companies are financially stable and that’s really what we’re all relying on is financial stability for ourselves as well as the companies we use. Because all of a sudden if a tool suddenly goes away and you’ve based your business on it, you’re in trouble a little bit because you’ve then got to relearn. So what this gives is a great overview of the tools that you can use, a great overview of the type of people that are involved in the business. Introverts, extroverts, a mixture of both. You know, I know that I watched a presentation at WP London the other day by Aaron from A2 where he says he’s an extrovert, introvert or whatever it is because he’s a great presenter. But then when you’re talking to him individually, he’s kind of quiet and kind of humble and all this kind of stuff.

So it’s great and kind of reserved. But I think it’s an opportunity to meet people within networking lounges, see trusted suppliers and vendors and make sure that really you can really exploit your talents creative, creatively and technically and also find out where you can learn more within your chosen community. You know, whether it’s the Joomla Community, whether it’s the grade community, whether it’s the WordPress community, whether. If you’re looking at maybe outsourcing, you know, one of the outsourcing companies that sponsors, obviously Stephanie’s company, which is FocusWP, they’re an outsourcing. If you want privacy policies, we’ve obviously got a sponsored Termageddon who are experts in that business and they’re very stable, they’ve been around for years now and give a reliable service on that and you’ve got all these trusted hosts that know what they’re doing and you know that the service that they’re going to give you is going to be appropriate to your level of knowledge and spend. So that’s really what it’s about, is finding about what’s going on in the industry as well, which is really cool.

BobWP:
Well, I know it’s coming up right around the corner here. Where can people get tickets, the dates and all that good stuff?

Andrew Palmer:
Well, free tickets you can go to. It’s all free. So it’s really. That’s because the sponsors have got behind us, which is great. You know, if we, if we had to charge, it would be a lot. You know, if we didn’t have any sponsors, we’d have to charge at a ticket price, which we don’t at all, which is great. So the web agency Summit starts in six days, 23 hours, according to the website. Now 7th to 11th April and it’s all day and it kind of starts around about, I don’t know the start times, but it’s around about 1pm but don’t quote me on that because once you sign up you’ll get all the details. But it’s aimed at everybody, so everybody can access it around the globe. It’s quite intense. So be ready to have it on in the background. What I recommend to people is have it on in the background if you’re busy and you’re working, then all of a sudden you’ll hear something go, oh, I need to really attend that. And you can pause what you’re doing and replace your walk, really. But you’ve got just fantastic opportunities to connect. And As I say, 7th to 11th April, 2025, I’ll be in the networking lounges and I may even appear on a couple of panels, who knows, depending on what’s going on. But yeah, busy and intense. Five days of knowledge building, it’s crazy.

BobWP:
Cool. Love it. All right, well, again, always a pleasure to have you here and yeah, looking forward to seeing you there. I might pop in here and there, you never know.

Andrew Palmer:
Definitely.

BobWP:
And yeah, so everyone do check it out and yeah, thanks, Andrew, it’s been great.

Andrew Palmer:
You’re more than welcome. Thanks for having me here.