In our debut episode of our WooCommerce podcast, Brad Williams from WebDevStudios joins me in some talk around WooCommerce, the enterprise space and some odds and ends.

Today is the official start of the Do the Woo podcast. Listen in as I chat about what you can expect and what the direction and future holds for this WooCommerce podcast.

You probably find a lot of WooCommerce stuff on our blog here. Wondering why? I've sold a lot of different stuff on our site and, well, I wouldn't have ever done it differently.

Reaching triple digits in our podcast episodes is pretty exciting. And having Chris Brogan join us seemed appropriate for the celebration of show #100. He is CEO of Owner Media Group, a sought-after public speaker, and a New York Times bestselling author of nine books— and working on his tenth. You can find him hanging out over at chrisbrogan.com.

In today’s show, I had the chance to hit him up with five random questions around eCommerce. I wanted to pick his brain a bit on some stuff he has been talking about on social as well as on his blog.

We chatted about:

How Chris believes authenticity is not as tricky as it appears, even for online store owners.How Chris would approach selling his new (fictional) product, the Brogan Ice Tray via video blogging.What it means to up your game on YouTube and how online retailers can do the same.Which of his books he would recommend to the eCommerce startup and why.

And most importantly, learn what, if anything, Chris would never buy online.

Thanks to Our Podcast Sponsor: AffiliateWP

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Brogan: Thanks so much for having me.

Bob: You are so welcome. It’s pretty exciting having you here. I don’t think we’ve ever actually talked to each other in person, although maybe we have. Who knows? I can’t remember. It’s been so many years…

Chris: I couldn’t remember for sure either, but I know that we’ve been aware of each other from afar at least.

Bob: Yeah, for quite a few years, it seems like. Before we get into the main stuff, I have five random questions I’m going to ask you. But before I do, I know a lot of people know what you doing, but can you give us an update what’s going on right now?

Meet Chris Brogan, CEO of Owner Media Group

Chris: Sure. No, absolutely. I appreciate the question because I think, especially with me, I seem to change up my plans quite often and people are talking about the me from six years ago, or even two sometimes.

Bob: That sounds like me.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Moving targets. I think it’s better that way.

Bob: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, my company, what I work on, is I’m helping companies use technology to drive better human interactions. In some ways that might be with content marketing. I’m showing people why they need to stand out a little bit, be a little bit more disruptive, create video and audio and other stuff to reach people, but with business in mind. A lot of my clients are people who are trying to answer a really specific question, which is in a world where they can buy from anyone, why should they buy from you? I really try to solve that.

What would you say to the eCommerce retailer who says, “Authenticity can be tricky online”?

Bob: That’s cool because a lot of these questions are around that. I’m going to dive in because I was watching you—well not actually sitting and watching you— but I happened to come across a tweet the other day. You said, “Why is authenticity so tricky? Hint, it’s not.” I thought, interesting. I did read the article, but what I wanted to ask you is, since the online retail is a unique animal when it comes to authenticity, how would you respond to them regarding that tweet if somebody’s saying, “Hey, I’m a online retailer. How can I be authentic? It is tricky.”

Chris: You know, I think one of the things that people don’t realize is that you can do the same things you do as a human even if you’re doing something like e-commerce. A lot of people when they setup their e-commerce shop, one, a lot of them just follow the Amazon model, which is not a bad thing to do. They’re doing really well. They have multi billion of dollars, you probably should. But then the other is, you’re not Amazon, and so people are going to want to know, “Who is this shmo? Why should I trust them wi

In today’s podcast, we are venturing into what many find to be the second most complex part of running an online store with physical products, and that is shipping. As with taxes, it’s a maze of variables and choices that can often bog you down.

And to help you to get a better grip on planning our shipping, we invited Robert Gilbreath, VP of Marketing & Partnerships at ShipStation. Robert provides some great guidelines that not only help you get started but also to get you thinking on preparation for scaling as your product inventory grows.

We chatted about:

The first two important steps to make once you know the product that you need to shipHow to navigate the maze of shipping optionsSome of the major challenges store owners face when working through the shipping processWhat products can be a challenge to shipRobert’s four points to consider when planning your shippingWhen shipping is no longer a DIY part of your business

In this podcast, I chat with Jonathan Martin, President and Founder of Cool Blue Web, a full-service web development agency.

Jonathan’s agency has worked with tons of clients on eCommerce sites, guiding many of them through the process of going from brick and mortar to online. Some have added the online as a digital version of their store. Others closed their brick and mortar shops after making the move to online. Listen as he shares his experience and gives you some great tips on making this transition.

We chatted about:

Whether physical shop owners are aware of what the transition to online takesThe top two things that a shop owner should think about before making the transitionHow many products you should start with when launching your siteThe benefits of having both and how you can use your brick and mortar store to market your online shopJonathan’s experience working with a client who shut down their physical presence after going onlineOne of Jonathan’s most challenging projects when taking a client through this transition

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone, welcome back to the WP Commerce Show. Bob Dunn here, also known as Bob WP on the web. Today is the third show of our series, Starting your Word Press Online Store. Last Monday, we talked about how to make sure you have the right stuff in place when starting your online store, all the things beyond the plug-in, the theme, and building the site. The week before, we covered the plug-in part and looked at some tips for choosing your e-Commerce plug-in.

Today we are talking about a specific scenario: when the owner of a physical store decides to go online. There are some practices that apply equally to an online shop and a brick-and-mortar store. But there is also a learning curve that comes with its own set of challenges. To help you as a retail store owner to make this transition, we have Jonathan Martin, President and founder of Cool Blue Web. I know that the team there has helped numerous clients through this process, so I'm happy to welcome him to the show.

Hey, Jonathan, thanks for joining us today.

Jonathan Martin: Awesome, Bob. Thanks for the great introduction there.

Bob Dunn: So Jonathan, can you tell us a bit about yourself and Cool Blue Web?

Meet today’s guest: Jonathan Martin from Cool Blue Web

Jonathan Martin: Yeah, absolutely, Bob. We actually started out as a merchant seven years ago. I ran five eCommerce stores. They were small stores, on a different platform, called Magento. I wish WooCommerce was around then. It would have been awesome. They were great little drop ship business models. We never had to touch product. We processed orders. Then I fell in love with the building of eCommerce stores. As we were building out a web agency, everyone said, "Hey, you have experience working on eCommerce stores. Can you work on mine?" We started up as a Magento shop. As WooCommerce came on the scene, we began doing a lot more Woo. Now it’s about 50/50. That was seven years ago. We're an agency of somewhere between 20 and 25 people. All focused, all of our people here in the U.S. out of our Seattle office.

We work on stores ranging from small stores that do half a million dollars a year in business, all the way up to larger platforms that are 70+ million a year.

Bob Dunn: I also want to add that you're a huge supporter of our local WooCommerce meetup. We've had several meetups at your offices, which are always fun. And you’ve done some presentations. I want to personally thank you for that as well.

Jonathan Martin: Awesome.  Thanks, Bob. It's a lot of fun. One of the great things about the Woo community is that it's broad. Some communities are all sales people looking to find something to do. It's a really broad community and the WordPress community and WooCommerce-specific community here, at least in the Seattle area, you have a broad mix

In this podcast, I had the chance to chat with Dale Reardon, owner of My Disability Matters. He keeps busy with his three sites: My Disability Matters, The My Disability Matters Club, My Disability Matters New Site and a My Disability Matters Shop, which will be coming soon.

In today’s show, we look at how Dale uses eCommerce on his club site, as well as reasons he chose WooCommerce, the roadblocks he has navigated, and of  his own challenge working on the web as a visually impaired professional.

We chatted about:

Why he chose to use WooCommerceWhat has been his largest challenge building sites as a visually impaired personThe accessibility issues he confronted and the solutions he came up withHis biggest challenge with starting a membership siteWhat lies ahead in the future for My Disability Matters and what is his big dream

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone, welcome back to the WP eCommerce Show. Bob Dunn here, also known as Bob WP on the web. Today, we are talking with Dale Reardon from My Disability Matters. Hey Dale, welcome to the show.

Dale Reardon: Yes. Thanks for having me along today, Bob.

Bob Dunn: Now, I know that your newest venture is a social networking community, but I also know that you have run and are running several membership sites. Give us a short rundown of what you're doing. A little bit about yourself, Dale.

Meet our guest, Dale Reardon

Dale Reardon: Yes. I work in the online businesses with my wife Jo. Her primary venture, which we started off just as a blog and has now turned into a full blown consulting and membership site, is Move to Tasmania, where she helps people relocating to Tasmania, where we live. Over the time, she's built up a site of resources, a discussion forum and other things. That's all been implemented using WooCommerce and Woo Memberships, which is a terrific plugin that you've reviewed on your site. We have also offered a WordPress blog-building course that we designed videos and, once again, an online membership site using WooCommerce and Woo Memberships.

As you say, the latest venture is My Disability Matters, which we are concentrating on as our main business.  At the moment the primary focus is a social networking community for the disability sector. That's been built up using BuddyPress, bbPress, WordPress of course, WooCommerce and our membership site. Yes, that's been going along very well.

Why did you choose WooCommerce for your plugin?

Bob Dunn: Obviously you've kind of answered my first question, but I'm going to poke it a little bit more as far as you choosing WooCommerce for your platform, or I guess I should say, your plugin. Why did you choose WooCommerce? Was there any specific thing, or was it several things?

Dale Reardon: Yeah, really several things. As compared to a hosted platform like the other solutions that are out there or other plugins, WooCommerce gives us a lot of flexibility. It has tremendous support for a lot of payment gateways, which was always one of the problems. We're in Australia, so I mean we have access to Stripe and PayPal, of course, and some other gateways, but unfortunately not to Amazon Payments and other things that you've reviewed. Using WooCommerce on our own site gives us the ability to control the whole process and tailor the whole payment process.

You can, using one page checkout plugins that you've spoken of on your site, make the payment process very streamlined. People don't even know they're using a shopping cart plugin, which makes the whole checkout process and conversion much better. WooCommerce being open source means you get so much support from the community. There are so many plugins and add-ons to WooCommerce that it makes it much more powerful for our site. I guess they were the primary reasons we have chosen it, yeah.

The advantage of a flexible plugin

Bob Dunn: It sounds like you're like me. You've u

In episode 50, the last show of Season 1, I had the pleasure of chatting with David Bradley, co-founder of Patterns in the Cloud , where they offer scalable and affordable web production. They are also the force behind WC Autoship for WooCommerce, which enables your customers to add any item to a future Autoship order without changing your store’s products or checkout process.

In today’s show we are talking about the customer experience. David shares his experience of creating solutions to help online store owners analyze and improve their customer’s experience. He also shares how AI (artificial intelligence) plays an important role and will become even more prominent in the future of customer experience.

We chatted about:

The role his company takes when helping clients with their customer experienceThe biggest challenge that online stores have when it comes to customer experienceHis own unique and challenging experience with a clientWhat conversational customer experience is with a real-world exampleWhat their focus on replenishment purchasing might look like in the future

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: Patterns in the Cloud

In episode 46, I have the pleasure of chatting with Jason Cosper at WPEngine. And today’s topic is fine-tuning your eCommerce web site. We are in the middle of Web Week, where often when traffic is lower between the holidays, it’s the perfect time to do a tuneup on your online store. Jason brings his experience of working with clients of all sizes on their sites and what you should make sure and revisit throughout the year.

We chatted about:

Cleaning up the clutter on your WordPress siteWhat red flags to look for when improving your product imagesTips to buff up your SEO and what to look forWays to improve the search on your online store and other issues you may want to consider to help customers find the right productHosting and what to think about when making the decision of if your host is right for your needs

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: WPEngine

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone and welcome to episode 46. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. Well, as we wind up the year, you may or may not know that we are right in the middle of Web Week and our sponsor WP Engine is stepping up for today’s show. I’ve taken the liberty to call it eCommerce Web Week. What do we mean by Web Week? A lot of sites find the time between the holidays, and with the lower traffic, it’s a perfect time to get your new site ready or, even better, tune up your existing site. As we all know, your site needs to be a finely tuned engine. Even more so with the eCommerce site. It’s critical that your online store is running smoothly year round.

Today we are going to be looking at tuning up your eCommerce site. Now we know this shouldn’t only be done at the end of the year but also regularly throughout the year. Get ready as we chat with Jason Cosper, Senior Technical Advisor and Developer Advocate with WPEngine. By sharing his experience and knowledge, he’ll help you construct a plan for that tuneup. Hey Jason. Welcome to the show.

Jason Cosper: Hey Bob, it’s so great to be here. I’m a big fan of everything you’ve done and it’s great to actually to get the opportunity to come on the show.

Meet Jason Cosper, Developer Advocate at WPEngine

Bob Dunn: Thanks so much. All right, I’m glad this isn’t actual a visual thing because my face would start to turn a little red now and I’d go, “Oh.” So it’s great it’s just audio. Well I am so glad you’re able to join us. This is a busy time for everyone and I know we all have plans for the week so let’s just dive right it, get the show on the road. Before we get into the questions, for those who don’t know about WP Engine or what you do there, give us an introduction.

Jason Cosper: Yeah, so WP Engine is a managed WordPress platform. We host websites for WordPress, only WordPress, so a lot of shared hosts, a lot of other VPS solutions, things like that. You can bring in whatever you want. However, WP Engine specializes in WordPress. It’s what we do. We live, sleep, breath it, preach it from the mountaintops and really we want to make sure that everyone who hosts with us gets the best possible WordPress experience that they can have.

What I do over at WP Engine, as you mentioned, I am the Developer Advocate over there. I get to talk with plugin and theme developers and work with them. If they have a problem on our platform, if something happens where their plugin is problematic or plugin theme whatever is problematic, if we have a problem on our platform where we’re doing something that’s interfering with their plugin or theme it is my job to be the advocate for them and try to get that fixed in as timely a manner as possible. Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet gig. It’s cool work if you can get it.

Where should site owners start cleaning up their WordPress online stores?

Bob Dunn: Excellent.

Everyone loves a cupcake. And our guest today, Matt Teske from Cupcake Royale, brings some tasty tips on how they use WooCommerce on their site and how selling online for delivery and pickup also is growing interest in more people to come to one of their physical locations around Seattle, Washington for a treat and some coffee.

We chatted about:

Why they moved online and if WooCommerce was their first choice.Some of the challenges they faced and if WooCommerce met them.The most effective way they have found to advertise their website and stores.The differences in their sales when it comes to delivery or pickup.Their largest order to date.

Transcript

Bob Dunn: Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 25 of Do the Woo, a podcast for WooCommerce shop owners. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. Today we are talking about something we all love, and that is cupcakes. Yummy, yummy cupcakes. In fact, I can safely say that I have personally enjoyed the delight from our guest today, Matt Teske from Cupcake Royale, based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to today's show, Matt.

Matt Teske: Oh, thank you for having me on.

Bob Dunn: You bet, and I also wanted to throw in that I had the chance to hear Matt talk about his WooCommerce adventures a couple of times at the Seattle WooCommerce meetup, so I have heard a bit of his challenges and his love of WooCommerce, and obviously that is where I tasted his treats. In fact, nothing like some leftovers I was able to snag and take home. The good stuff. My wife was like, "Oh, what are those, what are those?" They didn't last very long around here.

Matt Teske: I imagine.

Bob Dunn:

I want you to tell us a little bit about Cupcake Royale, what you do there, what you sell? All that good stuff.

Matt Teske: Sure, well we are a local dessert bakery and café in the Seattle area. We have been around for about 13 years. We started in 2003. We currently have 7 locations. We do a strong retail sales as well as wholesale, and we do some customer delivery, so we will deliver to your home, and that is powered through the online store with WooCommerce. Our owner, Jodi Hall, she is pretty active in the Seattle social scene and activism scene, but she was originally employed as a marketing person at Starbucks, and she just felt like she wanted to get back to what they started as, which was just the experience of being at a café in the community.

Our company's mission statement is to create joyful experiences, and that is with cupcakes (obviously), with coffee, just with our interactions with people, how we interact with the community. We do a lot of donations and things like that. Just the events that we support and causes that we get behind, it’s been a great place to work. We have about 100 employees across those 7 channels, and it is continuing to grow. It is a good climate for cupcakes right now. It seems like it always is. It is definitely a comfort food. We've expanded into ice cream and donuts and things like that in the last couple years just to keep up with all the demand for sweets in Seattle and beyond.

Bob Dunn: Wow, everybody loves a cupcake. There's no doubt about that.

Matt Teske: Yeah, that's nice. It's nice to work at a place where pretty much everybody that comes in has a smile on their face when they leave.

Bob Dunn: Definitely. When did you move to online ordering, and was it a decision to use WooCommerce then, or did that come down the road?

Matt Teske: We originally set up our online ordering in 2010. I am not even sure if WooCommerce was around then. I think WooCommerce has done about, is it 8 years or am I ...?

Bob Dunn: Actually WooCommerce was released I think late 2011.

Matt Teske: Okay, so it wasn't even an option at the time, and we were still a younger company at the time. It was originally a platform that was built for production bakeries, so if you have your bread company or things li