Building with WooCommerce in Uganda

Abha: And hello and welcome. I am Abha Thakor and I’m here for Do the Woo. And we are doing yet another one of our Woo Builder Stories. Today, we are jetting off to Africa. And I’m absolutely delighted to be welcoming our very first guest in this year’s show from the African continent. And it is Arthur Kasirye. So welcome, Arthur.

Arthur: Thank you so much for hosting me. I’m really delighted.

Abha: And he’s so committed to spreading and helping the community that he’s actually doing this interview right before a major family celebration tomorrow. So we are very, very lucky that he has joined us. And Arthur, you’re coming to us live from Uganda today.

Arthur: I’m glad to be here. My name Arthur Kasirye. I’m a WordPress developer, designer. I also do search engine optimization. I wear a lot of hats with me when it comes to digital. I’m really honored to be here.

Making the jump to WooCommerce

Abha: And we are going to tell people a little bit about your story and your journey to hopefully inspire others to make that journey into development and to work with eCommerce. So I’m going to just share with our audience a little bit about you. And we promised that we will get lots of opportunities to talk about all the things that are happening in the WordPress space and WooCommerce too in Uganda and beyond. So Arthur, you’ve come from a background where you studied business computing and software development too in locally. When was it that you actually made the jump to WooCommerce?

Arthur: Well, it’s quite a story. This was in my last year at campus because everyone had a project they had to work on. And I’ve always admired to see how websites work ever since when I finished my secondary, that is a level, it’s higher level, and then you go to the university. But after I finished my secondary level in school, I felt like I had the urge to see how websites work, how does code feel like? And after that, I had the passion with me. So during my first year at campus, I was lucky to get a job. And this was just me with no tech knowledge, only that I had the passion, but still I passed the interview. So from there, I started learning how websites work and I got a few tutorials. So during my last year at campus, each one of us was asked to do a project as their final year project to hand in for marking.

And I really love to see how eCommerce websites work. There was a lot that was involved in coding, learning new languages. Some of these things I never really had a chance to study or have anyone to teach me how to do them. And back then, YouTube content wasn’t so much, but there was this one video that I saw. It was around two hours. And after watching it, that’s when I jumped on to eCommerce. And guess what? It was WooCommerce. So there was this one website that used to run back in the day and it was running WordPress and WooCommerce. My father used to do graphics designing for them, and printing. So I would sometimes deliver these printing material, printed material. There’s business cards, quotations, and then deliver them to their offices.

So I really got a lot of inspiration to an extent that I started exploring how their website worked. And when I realized that this website was running WordPress and WooCommerce majorly, that’s when I chose to dig in with WooCommerce. And that marked my beginnings, my journey to WooCommerce. I did my final year project. And I was one of those best students because in our class, none knew what WooCommerce was. It was just me. So that’s how I was introduced to WooCommerce.

Abha: So how long ago was that?

Arthur: That was, I think, five years I think now I think.

Abha: It obviously was quite a major point in your life because in people who’ve known you and seen what you’ve been working on since, and heard you talk about how web programming has enabled you to transform not only your life, but try to transform the lives of communities that you are in as well.

Arthur: True. True. It was quite a turning point for me that even the lecturers that marked my final year project, some of them are business partners right now.

A love for computing and learning the skills

Abha: So take us on that odd journey. In terms of when you were growing up in Uganda, was computing something that you had envisaged that you would spend your working life focusing on?

Arthur: Well, computing was something that I really loved, but no one was available to teach me how things work. And I think this is why I’m part of the WordPress community because there are things that I realized and I’m like, what if I knew some of these things when I was still young? If I even graduated, if I even left school, I would have been so far away. So whenever I meet some of these other colleagues or young people that are out there that are still in school, I make sure that I share this knowledge out so that they can see how they can focus and dig into the tech world because sometimes I wonder, if it wasn’t WordPress, what would I have been doing? Just to go back a little bit when I was still at campus before I finished, I got my first job in first year, and this was, by the time, one of my dream jobs to manage our website.

Abha: That’s fantastic.

Arthur: And this is the one website that was, the website had billboards all around Uganda. It was okay, shut down now. But it was called ugo.co.ug, short for Uganda Goes Online. I don’t know how I can explain this to you. I still have the excitement still with me that I worked with that company because it’s like admiring yourself to be a pilot. And then maybe the same company that you really want to work for picks you up and then walks you through the journey of becoming a pilot. And then it takes you on. So that was my biggest part. This website was ranking number two in Uganda. And well, I was an amateur web developer by then, but I used to spend a lot of time learning. Internet wasn’t so cheap, so there are some, we call them data bundles that are sold, and midnight data bundles. So that’s data that’s given to you from midnight up to morning, 6:00 AM.

And it’s usually a higher volume than the day bundles. So I used to work during the day. At night, I sit or download tutorials to research and educate myself. And that’s how I learned. Those nights really did a lot of inspiration. They inspired me to be the person that I am now.

Discovering the local meetup community

Abha: Yeah. And of course, you’ve gone on to continue that learning and through your computing lessons and through your local WordPress meetups as well. I know you’re a great advocate for people joining the WooCommerce meetup and the WordPress meetup to continue the learning journey that you and others can share with them, but also hopefully inspire people to share their learning too. When did you first discover that local meetup communities that you’re now part of?

Arthur: I discovered the meetups, that was around, I think 2017. It was from a friend of mine called Frank. He had just come from Kenya. And back in the days, Kenya was one of those best countries that was really doing good with WordPress. So I was part, I can call them founding members of the WordPress community in Uganda. We started about seven people, and now we are quite many. We started with one meetup in Kampala, and now we have four. So when I joined the local meetups, I realized that sharing was actually beneficial to all of us. The developers, the non-techies people who aspire to be SEO people, people who are just content writers. This was one place where we could share out and then learn from each other. So when I participated in some of the meetups, then I ended up becoming a speaker in 2017.

That’s the point where I realized that when you impact other people, that impact also comes back to you at the time, because everyone I tried sharing with, most of these people became my friends. And then all of these people, whenever they had an opportunity, they passed it onto Arthur because they knew Arthur understood these things. And whenever some of these people also had issues regarding to their website, by the time I was managing a website, which was receiving about 50K hits or traffic a month, it came with a lot of issues. I learned from my errors and it was a hard learning, but yes, I appreciated them. And now that I learned through that, I realize that whenever a website is hacked, the first thing you don’t do is panic.

Abha: Good advice.

Arthur: How to correct these WordPress websites? So many people used to succumb to the same errors I was doing. Someone panics, and then they delete the entire folder. And you ask them, where did the folders go? I deleted them because they were hacked. And then, at a point, you’re like, but you can search around and see where these hacks come from. You can go through these files without even using a plugin. And you know the major files that can locate these things. So we troubleshoot together and that’s how we started impacting other people. And then we shared and they also shared their knowledge. So that’s when we created a meetup I can say where people understand each other. And well, here we are.

Abha: Meetups are such a wonderful route for learning. And your story is very inspiring, Arthur. Is your local meetup now meeting in person or are you, because you’re both involved in these WordPress meetups and the WooCommerce meetup in Kampala. Have you gone back to meeting in person or you still online?

Arthur: Well, we’ve tried meeting in person a few times, whether there are also some other challenges that come in when it comes to venues sometimes, and then after this COVID, a lot has changed. The COVID situation, a lot has changed. So sometimes we try meeting in person and other times, virtual, although we always prefer meeting in person because this is where you get the gist of how things work, troubleshoot together, avoid the network issues. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I can’t hear you.

Abha: Absolutely. The endless can you hear me conversation that has become part of post COVID life.

Arthur: Yeah.

Abha: I hope to be able to join you in one of your online meetups at some point, and come and see all the wonderful things that you’re all doing.

Arthur: I can’t wait.

The importance for WooCommerce for African businesses and beyond

Abha: As part of the meetups, which also have the opportunity for people to learn, you and I talked about how they can help give people pride and how the WooCommerce, one of the things that you enjoy about it is, and that democratization of eCommerce so that everybody can be part of that. Can you share a little bit about that sense of why you think the ability to use WooCommerce is so important for businesses in Africa and beyond?

Arthur: Well, thanks to the developers of WooCommerce, thanks to Automattic, if this, I sometimes call it software, if this plugin was to be sold, it would have been, I don’t know, millions and millions of money. But they chose to open source it. That is quite something which is, I don’t know how to explain it very well, but it’s really something that they did. And it has really impacted us a lot. When it comes to the pride that comes with WooCommerce, a number of people who wanted to push their businesses online, there was a lot that’s involved if you were to develop a website from scratch from the backend, front end, the entire customization, the cut, there’s a lot that is involved in there. But the fact that WooCommerce open-sourced this to run on top of WordPress, this has helped a lot of businesses to push forward.

A number of people that I meet and a lot that have advised who sell not only goods that are physical goods, but services as well online. For example, there’s a lady who joined part of the WooCommerce team, not the WooCommerce team, but the meetup. And she used to do her sales, she used to do her sales offline, and sometimes on Facebook. And she’s a tailor working with art and craft. And when I met her, first thing I thought of was if we put this business out there using an eCommerce website, things would really, really be big. You would have reached a number of people out there, and with the best strategies, you can win the market. So when we developed this website, it’s called trillionlooks.store, we developed it two years ago, and this lady was ranked as the number one entrepreneur in TotalEnergies challenge. It was a big challenge that had about 1,000 applicants, but she came through as number one because she was using an eCommerce website, which is running on WordPress and WooCommerce to sell items, ship items to the world.

Abha: Wonderful.

Arthur: She shipped items to England, UK, all over Africa, but using WordPress. Now other people out there who thought that WooCommerce wouldn’t have been that robust or pushed a high end traffic website because many were comparing it to other CMSs. And I told them frankly that whatever the other system can do, WooCommerce can do. And that only was one of those stories that really increased my bond with WooCommerce, that there are a lot of lives that have been impacted by WooCommerce.

Abha: It’s a lovely story. And for the people listening, we’ve got a series of blogs from a lot of our guests who’ve been featured in the Builder Stories, and you’ll be able to hear more of the wonderful examples in that series too. I think people learn from inspiring stories, and the ones that you’ve shared have certainly been that.

Arthur: Thank you.

Understanding the heart of your clients business

Abha: When you’re working with businesses, I know you like to get a sense of what they’re really about. Why do you think it’s so important to get to the heart of the business when you’re creating a WooCommerce site?

Arthur: Well, the one thing is if you don’t really understand a business, you may create the wrong product for them. And sometimes when I ask, when I meet, sit down with a client, I ask what, yes, you want to have this kind of website. What do you expect? What do you want your website to be doing? And with WooCommerce, I take them through the journey of what my expectations are, so that they get to understand what it would feel like to have a website because some of these people may come to you, and then they want an online shop that we are going to be using WooCommerce. And then they don’t know that there are things that are involved in like updates, updating your catalog, updating your card, some of these things, and for, I don’t want to use the harsh word, but some crooked developers just push out a website, and then that’s it.

And the next time you meet a client is when you’re asking for money to renew for their website, which is not right. So meeting with a client and taking them through the journey of what’s going to be like having an eCommerce store, what will be required, what is the financial cost to their business, and what will they achieve with their website, this gives them an insight or a full view when they’re going to make this decision to develop this website. And because of that, I have many people that can trust you because of that kind of honesty, and then meeting their expectations.

Abha: It’s really important, isn’t it, to get that customer dialogue and to maintain those relationships. I think it also helps in people thinking beyond what they might be able to see right now for their business and thinking about more opportunities in the future.

Arthur: Definitely.

Thanks to our Pod Friends Trustpilot and JetpackCRM

Working together and creating tools

Abha: You also talk about people and organizations working together in Africa and creating tools. Can you share a little more about the importance of creating and sharing those user and developer tools in WordPress and WooCommerce communities?

Arthur: When it comes to creating tools and then sharing tools with developers, the things that we realized that when, okay. Back in the days when it had just come to Uganda majorly because of the meetups that we put up, there’s a day where we had a CMS Africa, it’s a summit, but I think it stopped in Nigeria. So during that day, I realized that even when my final year project that I was creating, there were languages that were missing in WooCommerce. There were prices, for example, the UGX that we use was missing. And then, I had to use dollars instead of Uganda shillings, the local currency. So during that meetup, we met with some developers from Uganda. I credit David Wampamba, who pushed up the Uganda UGX into WooCommerce.

And we were like, there are those solutions that work for people in America, in the US, in the UK, but they don’t actually work in Africa per se, or exactly work in Uganda. Providing local solutions to local issues that arise up by developers in these meetups has really enabled us to create our own solutions that may actually not even apply out of Africa in the US. This come in a way of payment, gateways in shipping confederations. Some of these tools that are being created just opensourced. You sit down, you don’t have enough knowledge to work on this issue, but [inaudible 00:22:52] like, well, in the UK, in the US, these people have shipping addresses that start with numbers. We don’t have those in Uganda. We have districts. We have divisions.

So when it comes to shipping that way, it’s a bit hard to do a calculated shipping when you’re shipping to someone in Uganda. And then we have people from the developer circles in Uganda. One of my friends, Laurence Bahiirwa, he enjoys working with beginners in WordPress and WooCommerce. He just released a plugin that can help us resolve shipping issues by creating custom shippings that are actually best in Uganda.

From an online catalog to a full WooCommerce solution

Abha: Absolutely. And it’s about finding those right solutions for the, be it for the developers for the local community, for where they want to ship to that are really important. And I know that in your work, you are also very keen on highlighting the right size solution for customers. And sometimes I think, in lots of our works, eCommerce may not be the right solution for a customer at that time. It could be something they want to go to in the future. And I know you’ve written a little bit about how sometimes an online catalog is what people need. Can you just tell us a bit more about what you describe as an online catalog and how that could evolve and grow into a fuller WooCommerce solution later on?

Arthur: It’s been quite a journey working with different people. Someone is doing farming products and they’ve heard about eCommerce and then they want to sell there and then, so they come to you and they want to doan eCommerce website for them. But yes, you would want to take that money. But again, you have that second thought and you’re like, can you handle an eCommerce website? Are you sure? Is there eCommerce website that you need or you need an online catalog? And then you join to their mind to have a second thought, not in a bad way, but in a way that would make them actually understand the impact of what you’re going to do for them. Because at the end of this, if you develop a website or an eCommerce website and it doesn’t do the job, it’s meant to do the client will blame you, that you developed a website that’s not working.

So in some cases, yes, advise clients to use online catalogs. For example, you display your products on your website and then see how this goes with time. If you see that you’re getting so many inquiries, then you can still push out for a payment gateway, so that it’s fully eCommerce with all these payments. But starting with a catalog that will help you or help your clients understand the products that you do. I’ve seen some of these people who have developed these websites and most of the clients that come in only take screenshots. They come to you, they ask do you have this kind of product? But the website is an eCommerce website. However, someone is just taking a screenshot of the product and then inboxing the owner of the website that you have this kind of product.

Now, if a client invested in a website, which is supposed to make actually a sale where one can come and purchase, pay, then have the item delivered, some people may complain that this website is not doing what it’s meant for it to be doing. But, in fact, they just did it the other way around. Instead of developing a catalog site, they just chose to jump with the eCommerce site. So I’m always advising them it’s after the catalog site works best, then you can jump to the eCommerce site.

Abha: Absolutely. And sometimes it’s actually helping the customer and the client find what is the right solution for them, which may not be what they think. And I think that’s the job of us as the developers and client liaison, and even all the people who deal with a business is to help them find the right solution at the right time and hopefully grow into what they would like to be later on. So thanks for explaining that difference. I think it’s a really important one. I know you’ve used it in products as ranging from high quality tea, to clothes, to even dishwashers online. So it can really can be applied to different things, which is the joy as a WooCommerce solution as well.

Arthur: Sure.

Blending technology and conservation

Abha: I’m going to take you a little bit into a different direction now to talk about another topic that’s close to your heart and also being part of your journey and your story about conservation. So I know you’ve done a lot of work with organizations like Eden Conserve, which is a great charity in terms of what I’ve been able to find out from myself and other people about how it creates awareness about environmental conservation, climate change, and also that protection of endangered species are so important at the moment. And its focus is through technology. Now I’ve really been eager to find out a bit more about this today. So I’m looking forward to you telling us a little bit more about this.

Arthur: Well, that’s a huge story there. Well, Eden Conserve was a product of Zoohackathon, which was powered by the US Embassy, the US Mission in Uganda, together with UWEC, which is Uganda Wildlife Education Center. So during that Zoohackathon, it was in, I think, 2018, 2019. And we emerged as the winners. We are a group of four people. Cerinah, Fanny, me Arthur, and Arsen. So each one of us had a job to do. We had use cases that we had to do during the three-day hackathon. However, some of these use cases were actually Sumatran rhinos, which is not even in Africa, but forgotten which country it is from. So what we did was our team was, our team was called Eden because I’m a Christian and Eden is where life began. That’s Eden.

So what we did was we created a game that matched human characteristics with animals because we know animals have feelings too, have feelings too just like us, the people. So if you really hate an animal, then you’re not even an animal, you’re something different because animals have feelings just like we do. People who own dogs know, even pets know. So during that time, we emerged as the winners, and then we were supported by the US Embassy. We were registered as an NGO. And we also were supported by a law firm, which is called Ortus Africa, as well as UWEC, which is Uganda Worldlife Education Center. And after fully registering our NGO, what we went on to do is we realized that we went through, we read quite a number of things, and then realized that the pangolin was the most endangered animals in the world.

And yet actually pangolins do a lot of things from eating insects. These insects that would have caused more issues. But pangolins are used for rituals, not only in Africa, but even abroad. So in Asia, they sell scales. They have a number of myths that are attached to them. And amazingly, we have about four pangolin species in Uganda. There are about five and then four in Uganda. So in Uganda, the pangolin was one of those most endangered species. So what we did is we put up our website. As well, we pushed further our project that we had done in the Zoohackathon into relation with the pangolin. So we started matching character traits of human beings to pangolins, realize your pangolin, so what kind of pangolin are you?

So you play that game. It’s on Eden Conserve. edenconserve.org/mypangolin. That’s where it is. So these pangolins have different character traits. And some love to live with people. No, not with people. In huge environment, others don’t. So they’re those traits. So when you play the game, you realize. From there, after creating that, we’ve gone on into different schools, educating them that, hey, come on, don’t eat this bushmeat. You don’t know where it has come from. And you don’t know what kind of animal has been killed for you to have that meat. And because of this, there are a number of things that have really, really been caused because of bushmeat.

On top of that, we also created a Twitter bot. But what this Twitter bot does, it retweets everything about wildlife. And the fact that how we’ve we’ve managed to track its reach is the Twitter bot has about 3K Twitter followers right now, currently. And it is on the Eden Conserve Twitter handle. I think you can find it there. And it keeps on retweeting wildlife related articles, tweets. And this is beneficial because a number of people have really reached out to us and they want to still share our stories and collaborate. We had a symposium in Athens with Gaia, where we met high school students and we took them through this game that we did as well as educating them what it means to be a conservation person. Why is it really beneficial? There are a lot of climate changes, well, we are basically working with the endangered species.

Being part of polyglots

Abha: It’s a very inspiring story there. Thank you for sharing that. And we’ll be able to share some links about that in the blog series that we’re doing, as well. I was going to take you to your translation background, because you were also involved in the polyglots in the WordPress community as a translation, contributor, and editor. So, what language do you translate WordPress and WooCommerce into?

Arthur: Well, I translate into Luganda. I’m a Muganda by tribe. So Buganda is in the central of Uganda, and most people in Uganda speak Luganda. However, we have a number of other languages. But aside from being a developer or a designer, I enjoy reading Luganda literature, which is a bit rare for people of my age met. And a few people always digging into English literature here and there, but allow reading the Luganda literature.

My first time I heard about polyglots, there was a push out request to have Luganda integrated into the WordPress polyglots and it was accepted. So ever since then, we have been contributing. It’s been a slow contribution because we are actually few of people who really contribute to it. And sometimes it gets hard when you have to compare between work and then translating, but we’ve been doing that same job.

I’m looking at a time where Luganda will be integrated into WordPress so that you don’t have to know English to use WordPress. Even someone who is termed to be an illiterate person, who doesn’t know English, can still use WordPress and update. So that’s our goal.

Abha: It’s a wonderful goal, and I’m looking forward to that day, too. And I know that all your community will be celebrating on International Translation Day on 30th of September. You and I have been involved before in WordPress translation days, and it’ll be lovely.

So people are listening to this and you haven’t translated WordPress yet into your own language, then do have a look and be inspired by Arthur’s story to have WordPress available to your local community, too.

Now, Arthur, you’re speaking, in fact, on eCommerce next month at WordCamp Jinja, which is- So we give a big promotion to them on the second and third of September. And it’s the first WordCamp I understand in Jinja, as well. So what is the topic that you will be speaking on?

Arthur: How to Woo Your Customers with WooCommerce. Wooing your customers. That’s the topic.

Abha: Wooing your customers with WooCommerce. So a big shout out from Do the Woo to WordCamp Jinja, and we look forward to finding out more about WordCamps that are happening in Uganda and Africa. So do let us know how it goes and say hello to everybody from Do the Woo when you’re there, too.

Arthur, you’ve not only been a WordCamp organizer and a speaker, but just as a final tip from you, you’re also doing some Learn WordPress courses at the moment. And for anyone who hasn’t come across, Learn WordPress already, it’s a free resource that is available at learn.wordpress.org. So Arthur, tell me a bit more about the WordCamp training course that you’re doing.

Arthur: Well, the WordCamp training course that I’m doing is a mentorship course. And then I realize that still- We have a few mentors here in Africa that engage people or direct people to using WordPress. The other thing is during the WordCamps, there’s that mentorship part where you have to mentor the community to the happening of the WordCamp itself. So, we have a few people who are doing that in Africa. So I wanted to be part of them. And when I finished that course, I was really glad that I was contacted by the WordCamp support team who really helped me a lot. Currently I’m part of the team that is reactivating the WordPress meetups in the world.

Abha: Fantastic.

Arthur: That was quite an honor because I realized that I can still make more impact to not only people here in Uganda, but all over Africa, and still the world.

During COVID, we had a lot of meetups that shut down, people lost hope. There was really… Everyone was frustrated and some of these people actually didn’t even want to meet again. Leaders lost morale. So a lot that has happened, and I thought at first that it was just maybe people here, but when I went and read more, the other countries that still had no meetups in two years, others’ meetups were just there once in these years.

So when we reach out to those people and know what their issue is, how we can help them, and how we can enable them to have live meetups and come back as teams, because working as an individual most times, it’s really a heavy burden. You may accomplish actually little than when you collaborate. So the collaboration we do as the WordPress team is through these meetups that happen all over the world. If we help these meetups to actually meet again, and then have these WordCamps meet and understand each other, then that is the major thing WordPress is for, or open source.

Abha: And there’s lots of meetups surveys out in the world at the moment to help meetups restart, and to find a bit more out about what help they need. So if you see those surveys, please do fill them in and know that people like Arthur are there to support the community together.

Arthur, thank you very much for being with us today. Where can people find you online? If you want to tell us your Make WordPress Slack ID as well, that would be wonderful.

Arthur: Well, my website is kasiryelabs.com. It’s where all my works are. And then I’m on Facebook as Arthur Kasirye, and on Twitter as @Braindventure.

Abha: Thank you, Arthur. And we wish you all the best for WordCamp Jinja and all the other people involved with that wonderful new WordCamp, as well. So thank you for joining us and I’m sure we’ll be speaking to you again.

Arthur: It’s been an honor you hosting me. I’m really, really delighted.