You've built a website – congratulations! Now you can venture on the eternal quest to optimize it (speed it up).
Why is website speed important? The one-sentence summary is: No one wants to wait.
The less time people have to wait, the more time they have to browse your site and convert — whether that means filling out a lead generation form or checking out on your eCommerce store.
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I’ve been working in the WordPress and online marketing world since 2009. In that time, I’ve seen little blogs and individual posts blow up and become big deals.
I’ve also seen a more organized SEO research-driven approach at Nexcess, LinkedIn Learning, and WooThemes.
Their process involves finding the perfect:
The goal is to increase a piece of content’s SEO value and draw more traffic — and the bigger the organization, the more strategies and tools are used.
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2020 has been… a lot. I generally don't think of years as good or bad. But I do think 2020 is uniquely bad. We had (and are still going through) a global pandemic.
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One of the things I get to do at Nexcess is influence when & how much we discount our products. There are some obvious dates like Black Friday and the New Year. But there are also less obvious dates like the end of summer, Halloween, and WordPress' birthday.
Should we put our products on sale? And if so, by how much?
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It's a new year and I have a new job.
I'm proud to say I'm joining the Liquid Web / Nexcess team as a Product Marketing Manager for WooCommerce.
If you're in the IT space you might know what that person does – but more than likely you don't. So let me explain why I'm so excited.
A product manager (which is a different role) decides what to build and they make sure the engineering team does so. So after a product manager you will have a list of features.
Of course some features are more important than others so what a product marketing manager does is figure out which features we want to talk about, which ones we need to highlight, and which ones we need to highlight multiple times.
In short a product marketing manager helps with the strategy about how you speak about a thing. And I'll be talking about our Managed WooCommerce hosting.
I've had a few conversations with hosting companies over the years and I've been tempted but never pulled the trigger. With Liquid Web / Nexcess they're doing something I'm really excited about and that are their new Managed WooCommerce hosting plans.
It's my 3rd week on the job and at the end of my 2nd week we launched our brand new plans.
In the WordPress world we've have Managed WordPress hosting for quite some time. I think I got my first managed hosting account back in 2012 or 2013. And they're great.
They turn WordPress from something you have to maintain into something that just works. And that's magical.
Liquid Web announced a Managed WooCommerce plan back in 2018 and they focused exclusively on speed & performance. They were amazing for established stores that have a bit of money to spend.
What's new is they just announced a $19/month entry level plan. This means for $20 a month you can run your own WooCommerce store and have Nexcess manage it for you. That means you can focus on your business while we take care of the boring updates.
You're probably a little confused about the difference between Nexcess and Liquid Web. The short story is Nexcess is now a Liquid Web brand and they're putting their Managed WordPress & Managed WooCommerce hosting under that brand.
In 2020 you'll see Liquid Web / Nexcess promoted at WordCamps and moving forward you'll likely see just Nexcess promoted at WordCamps.
I've been working for myself for 3 years and it's been great. I now get to work more closely with awesome people on the Liquid Web / Nexcess team. And I get to focus on what I do best.
I love articulating what people want and trying to write messaging for them. So I'm very excited for this next challenge.
Last year I committed to building a physical product. And I did this because I understand the people who get into eCommerce. I want know what state of mind they're in, how they handle their finances, and what they do before they even start building an eCommerce site.
Last year I promised to get a product ready to launch on Kickstarter:
By the end of 2018 I want to have a product ready to go. I know the publishing and/or Kickstarter process can be long so by the end of 2018 I want to be ready to go under contract with a publisher or be ready to start planning my own Kickstarter campaign.
And I'm going to officially mark that goal as complete. I'm planning to launch my product on Kickstarter February 5th.
More than just having a product ready to go I learned a lot about:
I've been writing a series of posts about creating a product. And for the most part I've been sharing things I've been learning and things “I've done right”. Today I wanted to share something that didn't break in my favor.
The traditional model of buy ads, get eyeballs on your product, and make sales is a tired model. Sometimes when a new ad platform debuts there's a brief period where ads are so cheap it's easy to get in and get a ton of eyeballs on your product but eventually those cheap ads disappear.
You can continuously innovate in the advertising space making more and more advanced ads to minimize your advertising costs. Or you can choose to not play that game and instead invest in a product that markets itself.
Earlier this year there was a week where I was a bit depressed. I've helped plan or organize every single WooConf from the very first event in San Francisco back in 2014:
#WooConf – ship your idea! (@ The Village at 969 Market – @thevillage969) https://t.co/uYzL2XzTlk pic.twitter.com/wQietuZtc3
— Patrick Rauland (@BFTrick) November 3, 2014
All the way to Seattle in 2017
Every 100ms delay costs 1% of your sales. @mindsizeme #WooConf pic.twitter.com/KsdY8YOHju
— Patrick Rauland (@BFTrick) October 20, 2017
So in early 2018 when I heard that there wasn't going to be a WooConf I was really sad. After all this is something I fought for and loved.
One of the most interesting parts of making my own product has been learning the difference between what you make and what people will buy.