Content, Gutenberg and the User Experience

BobWP:
Do the Woo podcast, everything WooCommerce. Hey everybody, BobWP here, and Do the Woo—another podcast, another episode down. I should say many of them are coming out one after another. For this one, I bring in a co-host to chat about some stuff from WooCommerce, e-commerce, whatever comes to mind. And of course, I had to have Cody Landefeld in because Cody has been on my other podcast, and I’m sure you’re probably going to be hearing his voice on this one every so often. Hey, Cody.

Cody:
Hey, Bob. Thanks for having me.

BobWP:
You bet. Let’s start by giving a little bit about yourself in a nutshell—what you’re up to lately—and then we’ll dive into some Woo.

Cody:
For sure. Yeah, it’s been a busy start to the year. At Mode Effect, we’ve been focused on providing solutions for clients who have challenges with their stores and just their business in general. It’s been interesting to take that journey with them. We also just brought on a new partner who is a local e-commerce consultant with over 17 years of experience, so that’s something we’re really excited about.

BobWP:
Yeah, I saw that announcement and thought, “Okay, pretty cool.” Saw the picture, the welcoming pose that you and Raquel both had with your new partner. So yeah, pretty exciting. Just cruising right along. One of the things I thought about talking about a little bit, and I think it’s something we’re both big on, is content. I was talking on another podcast about blogging, and I’ve discussed this with a few other people—blogging in e-commerce stores and whether they should do it or not. As an agency, when you’re talking to clients—small stores or bigger shops—are you typically finding that a lot of them are already blogging, or are they not blogging, and do you feel like they should be? Do you try to convince them? What’s the overall landscape with your clients as far as creating up-to-date content via blog on their online stores?

Cody:
Yeah, good question. Our biggest store is actually doing a pretty good job with their blog. They have a huge social following, push out a lot of things through Facebook and Instagram, and use email marketing. I would say that it’s hit or miss—some companies are just using a different source of information or a different avenue to drive traffic to their stores, while some do a really good job with blogging. I know Red Headed Hostess, we did a case study with them with WP Engine just at the close of last year. They’ve done a great job with their blog. They create a lot of content, and it does really well for them. Interestingly, they actually started out as a blog and then eventually became a store, so they’ve always had that component.

BobWP:
Yeah, well, that is interesting. Do you think it’s a little tougher on the small store scale because they maybe don’t have the resources to blog, whether it’s just themselves running it or they’re trying to figure out how to produce content while keeping the store online? Or do you find it’s really more about their needs or whether they understand the importance of content?

Cody:
Well, yeah, it’s a good question because the biggest thing is a lot of small stores, with very few employees, are just trying to keep things running efficiently. In many cases—well, in a lot of cases, I should say—they don’t have a writer, someone who’s really taking that on. Obviously, we’ve written articles about this—it could only serve your business to have somebody focused on blogging. But yeah, it’s definitely not something that a lot of stores are diligent about, for sure.

BobWP:
I think sometimes I look at them and think, are they a little too concerned or a bit tentative because they’re in a position where they have X amount of products and wonder, “How do we convey this to our customers on the blog without it sounding like a big ad? Hey, here’s our whatever.” It’s basically just their product twisted into a post that doesn’t really provide the reader with anything more than, “Oh, okay, that’s another one of their products, and that’s what this does. I could have read that on their product page.” They probably struggle with finding that balance or wonder what the content should look like, whether it’s storytelling, using testimonials, or whatever the case may be.

Cody:
Yeah, I think you hit some key points on how stores should be writing their blogs or content. The main thing is just having a strategy. I mean, if a store can afford it, find somebody to take over that content strategy—someone who’s not inside your business—to provide the right type of content that will have the most legs. The great thing about content, Bob, you and I understand this well, is that a really good piece of content can be chunked into smaller pieces, put on Instagram, separated out, and get a lot of mileage, especially when you’re not just trying to drive people to the blog post URL. There are so many opportunities, especially with people browsing online or window shopping. You can take pieces of that content and do so much with it.

BobWP:
Do you find that any of them are looking at this whole change—Facebook seems to change a billion times—and they’re always deciding their algorithm is going to do this, and now it’s like certain content isn’t showing up as much? Everyone says they’re pushing more towards ads and away from content on people’s pages. Some online retailers, I’m sure, have built a fairly good following through their pages, but now they’re starting to stress about this new algorithm. Is their stuff really going to show up without them having to pay for sponsored or ad space on Facebook? Any thoughts on that or anything you’ve experienced?

Cody:
Well, there’s definitely pressure all around with all social channels because it’s hub and spoke. I think that’s the biggest challenge companies face. That’s why WordPress is so great because there’s an opportunity to take control of your content and have it drive everyone back to your website’s domain. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or whatever social channel drives the most traffic to your blog or store, the key thing is making sure you’re doing it right on your actual site. Then, secondly, worrying about the rules of other social channels.

BobWP:
Right. Speaking of content, and this is interesting—I just had Morten on talking about Gutenberg and e-commerce. Morten’s been really involved with Gutenberg—I don’t know what to call it—the Gutenberg drama, the Gutenberg story, the Gutenberg evolution. It’s crazy. But as an agency, and I think this is where I step back because I’m in a space where I don’t have clients anymore, and I’m not training, so I kind of go with the flow. But I look at developers, plugin developers, and understand their concerns or what they have to do. As an agency—pardon me—you do quite a bit of e-commerce, and we’re talking about blogging and WooCommerce. How are you preparing as an agency for Gutenberg?

Cody:
Yeah, I think it’s education first—really just letting people know exactly what they need to expect and what changes are coming. But with e-commerce, it’s a little trickier because when websites are primarily stores, they tend to be behind the curve on updates, a little behind the bleeding edge. WooCommerce and Gutenberg, I think, will have a slower adoption rate than sites dedicated to marketing or publications. It’s important—something we get questions about all the time—and something we’re trying to educate our clients about. But at the same time, it’s something that all e-commerce clients, specifically WooCommerce clients, are gingerly making their way into.

BobWP:
Okay. I’m going to play devil’s advocate. When I talked to Morten, it was the first time I’d really discussed Gutenberg publicly. I’ve waited, I think the post will have been out by the time this podcast is out, but I’m going to, for the very first time, dive into Gutenberg. I’ve just been sitting back, kind of like, I don’t… So I don’t know, besides everyone telling me what it’s doing. Do you feel—or is Gutenberg going to be part of WooCommerce? Is it going to affect the actual product pages or not? Or is that something we don’t know yet? Do you have any indication of that?

Cody:
Gosh, I’d love to give a sure and certain answer on that, but I personally haven’t been digging into it myself either. I know our team members are digging into it, and they’re a little more up to date. It’s something I’m making my way back to as well. But again, I don’t yet know if that is the case. It’s a good question, and maybe someone listening out there can tweet at both of us and let us know.

BobWP:
Yeah, it seems like I’ve heard bits and pieces, but I haven’t heard anything definitive. It may still be up in the air. I mentioned to Morten that I was thinking, okay, I wonder how the only potential effect I see with e-commerce sites, especially using WooCommerce or any e-commerce site with WordPress, is that those people we talked about before who are reluctant to start blogging—you finally talk them into it, and they start doing some regular or fairly consistent blogging themselves—then suddenly we throw in this new thing. In the end, whether we say it’s potentially great in the long run, it’s still a new

way and a new learning curve. I sometimes wonder if for some of those reluctant bloggers it’ll be like, “Oh God, now I have to learn something else,” and if that might be a barrier for some of them.

Cody:
Yeah, that’s a concern of mine too. Just like I mentioned before, with companies not necessarily having someone in-house, an expert, I think that can also extend to having someone outside your company assist with that. Especially if your company is at a certain point of health revenue-wise or has been around for a certain number of years, you’re really going to get a good return on investment there.

BobWP:
Speaking of new, I know that WooCommerce 3.3 came out, and it’s a minor release, so it’s not like anything that’s blowing our minds or that we’re raving about. But I did notice a few things. I don’t know—have you looked at any of the new features? I think there are about four new features. Is there anything that you’re thinking, “Oh, this may be a minor release, but this is a cool update”?

Cody:
Yeah, I think the thing that we are most excited about is helping our clients take advantage of the new features, like with tagging. I was reading about the release today, or even a little while back, and I think the tagging is done a little better. Also, some of the order screen improvements—I think those will really help the core of a business that runs online. Notifications and color codes make it easier for people to understand, even if they’re a little uncomfortable with using WooCommerce.

BobWP:
I noticed they say there’s better support for non-WooCommerce themes and the ability to set the number of rows and columns for your shop. Do you know how that plays into things? It’s great for the small shop that opens up and maybe finally their theme will display better. But does that affect you guys as far as theme customizations? Or is it just kind of, “Oh yeah, well, that’s an option,” and it doesn’t really play into what you do in the big picture?

Cody:
I’d say it would definitely help when we inherit a store that was already built, where perhaps the theme is not set up primarily for WooCommerce. It’s going to make our lives easier in terms of cleaning up some display flow. Other than that, when we’re involved in recommending a theme, it’s always out-of-the-box supported by WooCommerce or supports WooCommerce. So yeah, I think that’s going to be helpful, but it’s not something that’s necessarily going to be a big step up or a big leg up for us in providing solutions.

BobWP:
Right. I’m thinking back on some of the podcasts I’ve been doing lately, and I had Scott Bollinger and Patrick Rauland pull together a video talking about their predictions for e-commerce in 2018. I know those are everywhere, but I always like to get people’s perspectives. Since I have you on, do you have anything you’re thinking is around the bend in 2018 that’s really going to have a big impact, not just in WooCommerce, but in e-commerce overall? Any products or trends that come to mind? Give us the Cody crystal ball for 2018.

Cody:
Yeah, I think user experience is more important than ever. In a world where we’re moving beyond just launching a store and making money, businesses really trying to get noticed and convert users need to focus on experience. When I say user experience, that’s a broad term. It’s not necessarily very specific in the sense that if you’re focused on user experience, you’re going to have a better conversion rate on your store. I think it goes more specifically into how your single product pages are laid out, what type of navigation you have on mobile. I think mobile is everything. Keep in mind, e-commerce continues to be an absolute force with more and more people being comfortable buying things without knowing much—just seeing an ad on Instagram or Facebook.

They’re taken to these pages where there’s one chance to get somebody to buy a product. I’ve been there myself. I clicked on an ad last week, and honestly, you can lose somebody quickly, especially when you only have one chance or even if you get them to come back again with an opt-in or retargeting. My point is, user experience is more important now than ever because you want to remove all the barriers for people to convert and buy products on your store. It’s not just about single product pages—it can be about category pages, the front end of your store, your homepage, even your blog. Blogs are so important, perhaps showing someone a product and then retargeting them with a blog to convince them, but yet when they’re in that blog, how do you get them to convert easily? It’s all in the science of user experience. I think that’s the biggest thing for me. I know it’s probably not an answer like “Facebook Messenger bot” or something very software-based. I think it’s about getting better at engaging with users. It’s still shocking how many stores neglect conversion rate optimization and user experience, especially given the maturity of the business.

BobWP:
And it makes sense because as competition gets crazier on the web, especially in the e-commerce space—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve landed on… I mean, when I go to Amazon, it’s like, “Okay, Amazon, I’m here.” I buy so much on there—bam, bam, bam. I know how to move around. Everything’s familiar to me, and the user experience is probably up there at the top in terms of how they have everything set up. But how many times do I go to a new site, and the user experience… It’s like I just get to a point where I think, “What happened? How did I get here? What do I do next?” Unfortunately, it’s still going on. I think you’re right—it’s a constantly evolving piece, especially with e-commerce when you’re banking on people to actually buy something.

Cody:
Right. Well, and you brought up Amazon. I did a talk in 2016 in Los Angeles, and there was a guy who stood up and said there are around 130 tests simultaneously running on Amazon at any given time of the day. So you see that it’s a constantly moving, living organism. No matter what platform you’re using, every store needs to pay attention to these things because you’re really trying to sell to humans, and humans need to respond. Every barrier needs to be removed.

BobWP:
Exactly. Speaking of user experience, I have to share—anybody listening might have seen this—I ran across an article in eCommerce Times about Google’s ad mute option. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. It’s for those times when we buy something, we have it, and then we go to other sites and that ad keeps popping up for that particular product. You talk to the screen and say, “Don’t you realize I bought this?” It drives people nuts, and they ask, “Is there some way to stop this?” Well, they’ve done this mute option. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but in order to mute, you have to go into your settings and say, “I don’t want to see this anymore. Get rid of this.” It ends up being a current reminder ad or something. I wonder, it’s a great concept, but who’s really going to take the time to do that? What do you think? I mean, would you do that?

Cody:
Yeah, I don’t know. You’d need to be really driven to do that. I feel like I’ve been seeing that pop up here and there, even just today. So while you and I are thinking about it, Google’s already putting it in front of us. How funny.

BobWP:
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. You have to be… That’s interesting about a lot of these solutions—maybe it’s the only way they can do it, I don’t know the technology behind it—but sometimes the solutions seem like more work than they’re worth. It’s like Facebook with a lot of their stuff—you can stop this, but you have to dig within their settings and go here. You usually have to Google it first to figure out where it’s at. It goes back to the user experience you mentioned—we want to make it better, but sometimes by making it better, we’re just adding more levels to eliminating the problem. I don’t know if that really works in the end, or maybe they do that for that particular reason. I don’t know.

Cody:
It makes sense. Can you imagine if Google made it really tough for ads to be seen on their platform? Why would they do that? Such a big part of their business is ad revenue. Same with Facebook. It’s not going anywhere—it’s going to continue to get more sophisticated, more integrated. But to satisfy a savvy audience like us, who are very comfortable in our web browsers and settings, statistically that option is available. But for the people we’re targeting with our stores, it’s probably the same audience, unless for some reason we’re selling to a very sophisticated crowd.

BobWP:
I think for me, I look at this option and think, well, yeah, if I have the time and it gets annoying enough. But I’ve also learned to really tune out a lot of stuff on the web. If some ad’s popping up all the time, it’s like, whatever. It kind of comes with the territory, and I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it or deciding it’s making my life

more miserable. I just ignore it and move on.

Cody:
Yep, that’s all you can do sometimes.

BobWP:
Yeah. So, anything else going on with you before we sign off here that people should know about? Anything exciting in the world that you’ve seen that you want to share?

Cody:
Just that we have John Morrison, who’s officially joined Mode Effect. As I said, he’s really excited. This has been a long time coming, and we’ve already been working together on multiple projects. We’ve taken a slow approach to partnering up. I’m excited because John, our new partner at Mode Effect, has a wealth of consulting experience and specifically e-commerce scaling experience with building larger stores on different platforms. He brings a lot of different perspectives to WooCommerce and e-commerce as a whole. With that, we want to diversify, grow our company, and provide more value and solutions for our clients. That’s really exciting for us. We’re also looking ahead to the year—we’re looking forward to WordCamp in Miami, where we’ll be sharing some things on the e-commerce track. Other than that, just continuing to help our clients—the same old, same old.

BobWP:
I may make it to Miami. It’s kind of up in the air right now. There are some things I might get involved with, so I can’t commit yet. But if I do, I’ll definitely be bugging you and hanging around, making a nuisance of myself if I’m there. You can look forward to that.

Cody:
Nice. Yeah, hopefully, you get a chance to make it out, Bob.

BobWP:
Yeah, it’ll be cool. It’s kind of from one corner to the other corner of the US, so it’s a bit of a trip, but no big deal. Well, thanks, Cody, for coming in and chatting. I know we’ll be having you back. I’ll just keep finding interesting stuff to talk about in the Woo space and the e-commerce space. Take care, and we’ll see you around.

Cody:
Sounds good. Take care.