More ways to monetize with Woo  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: More ways to monetize with Woo - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [ecommerce, woocommerce, agency-best-practices] author: WP Engine source: YouTube reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ date created: 2024-12-28 20:25 --- # 🏷️ Title: More ways to monetize with Woo ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Identify five complexity touch points before starting any e-commerce build — product variants, pricing, tax, shipping, checkout #complexity #planning - [H2] Test site speed after every plugin installation to prevent performance issues — avoid the needle in haystack problem #performance #testing - [H3] Rebuild inherited sites from scratch when speed/complexity issues are too costly to debug — faster than troubleshooting #rebuild #efficiency ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [WP Engine](https://wpengine.com) - [WooCommerce](https://woocommerce.com) ## 📝 Summary - Sean Owens from Granite Digital shares e-commerce agency best practices for building profitable WooCommerce stores - Focus on identifying complexity early: product variants, pricing structures, tax rules, shipping, and checkout customizations - Performance is critical - test speed after every plugin installation and consider rebuilds over debugging inherited sites - Key stakeholders: agencies, in-house developers, e-commerce store owners - Bottom line: Plan for complexity upfront and prioritize performance to maximize revenue ## 📖 Main Content Sean Owens, head of e-commerce at Granite Digital (Dublin, Ireland), discusses strategies for building successful WooCommerce stores. With over 20 years of e-commerce experience since 1999, he emphasizes that complexity is the biggest challenge in e-commerce development. His agency serves over 120 staff and works across diverse industries from jewelry to automotive to whiskey. The conversation covers practical approaches to handling complex e-commerce requirements, performance optimization techniques, and strategies for inherited site management. Key technical considerations include multilingual support, custom integrations, and shipping optimization for international commerce. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=0) — [H1] Introduction and Background - Key idea: Sean Owens has 25+ years e-commerce experience since 1999 - Evidence: "I've been building e-commerce since 1999 which is a pretty long time" #### ⏱️ [03:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=192) — [H2] The Five Complexity Touch Points - Key idea: Always expect complexity in "simple" e-commerce projects - Evidence: "No matter a customer will tell you oh it's a very simple standard store...but I would say always expect the unexpected" #### ⏱️ [04:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=285) — [H2] Product Variants Complexity - Key idea: Product variants range from simple clothing sizes to complex medical products - Evidence: "You could have something that's as complex as a contact lens where you have a whole set of variants for the left eye and a whole set of variants for the right eye" #### ⏱️ [05:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=323) — [H2] Pricing Structure Considerations - Key idea: B2B growth creates complex customer-specific pricing needs - Evidence: "As they get busier and they start to go into B2B which is a really growing sector pricing is a huge thing" #### ⏱️ [06:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=375) — [H2] Tax and Shipping Complexity - Key idea: International commerce requires understanding complex tax and shipping rules - Evidence: "From state to state the different rules in Europe we have different rules whether they exporting what you're importing" #### ⏱️ [07:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=450) — [H1] Burn Smokehouse Case Study - Key idea: Specialized food products require calendar-based delivery and multilingual support - Evidence: "Their product actually has a long enough shelf life...but it doesn't last forever and it's all about delivery date" #### ⏱️ [09:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=585) — [H2] Calendar Plugin Solution - Key idea: Florist-designed calendar plugins work well for perishable food delivery - Evidence: "There's actually um a calendar selector that was actually designed for florists and it actually works for this particular selling model" #### ⏱️ [11:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=680) — [H2] Custom Integration Requirements - Key idea: Production management integration requires custom development beyond plugins - Evidence: "We have built into their production management system we've actually built a link from woocommerce back into that system" #### ⏱️ [13:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=795) — [H1] Performance and Plugin Strategy - Key idea: Test site speed after every plugin installation to prevent performance issues - Evidence: "At every time you install a plugin you test the site for Speed every single time and this is absolutely vital" #### ⏱️ [15:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=930) — [H2] Mobile vs Desktop Trade-offs - Key idea: Beautiful carousels slow mobile performance - must choose between aesthetics and speed - Evidence: "You can't be running beautiful glossy video on mobile if you want it to render absolutely really really quickly" #### ⏱️ [17:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=1065) — [H2] One-Second Load Time Goal - Key idea: Aim for sub-one-second load times in e-commerce for revenue optimization - Evidence: "Every second in e-commerce is money lost every we will always aim to have our sites render and under one second where possible" #### ⏱️ [19:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=1160) — [H1] Inherited Site Strategy - Key idea: Rebuilding inherited sites is often more cost-effective than debugging - Evidence: "It's actually too expensive to actually spend weeks or days looking through a haast stack for the needle" #### ⏱️ [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=1290) — [H2] Beauty and Award Standards - Key idea: Every e-commerce site must be beautiful and award-nomination worthy - Evidence: "Every website you create has to be beautiful it does not matter what you are selling online" #### ⏱️ [24:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=1485) — [H1] Shipping Cost Optimization - Key idea: Accurate shipping costs prevent cart abandonment and enable premium delivery upsells - Evidence: "Customers who see free shipping will absolutely opt for NE will pay a premium for next day shipping" ## 📚 References - [Granite Digital Agency](https://www.granitedigital.ie/) - [WooCommerce Extensions](https://woocommerce.com/products/) - [WPML for Multilingual](https://wpml.org/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - E-commerce complexity comes from five key areas: product variants, pricing structures, tax rules, shipping requirements, and checkout customizations that must be identified upfront - Performance optimization requires testing speed after every plugin installation, choosing mobile-first design over heavy carousels, and aiming for sub-one-second load times - Inherited sites often benefit from complete rebuilds rather than debugging existing issues, as rebuilding with known requirements is faster than troubleshooting unknown problems ## 📰 Newsletter **Master E-commerce Complexity with WooCommerce: Lessons from 25+ Years of Experience** Sean Owens from Granite Digital shares battle-tested strategies for building profitable WooCommerce stores. His key insight? Always plan for complexity upfront by identifying the five critical touch points: product variants, pricing structures, tax rules, shipping requirements, and checkout customizations. **Performance is Revenue:** Test your site speed after every plugin installation. One second of load time can mean lost sales, so aim for sub-one-second rendering and choose performance over flashy carousels on mobile. **Strategic Rebuilds:** When inheriting complex e-commerce sites, rebuilding from scratch is often more cost-effective than debugging inherited technical debt. Resources: [Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/), [Developer Docs](https://developer.wordpress.org/), [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### WordPress - Core Performance: Document e-commerce performance best practices, sub-one-second load time guidelines - Plugins: Develop plugin compatibility testing frameworks for WooCommerce - Documentation: Create complexity assessment templates for e-commerce planning #### Community - Contributors: E-commerce performance optimization working group formation - Sponsors: Fund WooCommerce performance research and tooling development ## 🧪 Hypotheses - E-commerce sites with sub-one-second load times convert better than slower sites - Rebuilding inherited e-commerce sites costs less than debugging in 70% of cases - 50% of customers eligible for free shipping will pay for next-day delivery upgrades - Sites testing speed after each plugin installation have fewer performance issues ### 📊 Methodology - A/B testing load time impact on conversion rates across different industries - Time tracking studies comparing rebuild vs debug approaches for inherited sites - Survey analysis of shipping preference behaviors in e-commerce checkouts ### ❓ Questions - What specific performance metrics correlate strongest with e-commerce revenue? - How can WordPress core better support complex e-commerce requirements out of the box? - What plugin compatibility testing could be automated in CI/CD pipelines? ### 🔮 Future Research - Automated complexity assessment tools for e-commerce requirements gathering - Real-time performance impact monitoring for plugin installations - Cross-cultural shipping preference studies for international commerce ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Implement speed testing protocols in all e-commerce development workflows - Policy: Establish performance standards for WooCommerce plugin directory submissions - Education: Develop complexity assessment training for WordPress developers - Funding: Invest in e-commerce performance optimization tooling and research ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: 10th grade #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Case study examples, website portfolio references - Improve: Performance testing workflow diagrams, complexity assessment flowcharts #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Video interview format with clear explanations - Improve: Audio-only version with enhanced verbal descriptions #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Clear definitions of technical terms, real-world analogies - Improve: Glossary of e-commerce complexity terminology #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Step-by-step plugin testing approach - Improve: Interactive complexity assessment checklist, hands-on labs #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Five-point complexity framework, systematic testing approach - Improve: Decision trees for rebuild vs debug choices #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Interview format with Q&A discussion - Improve: Community discussion prompts, agency collaboration guides #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual assessment frameworks - Improve: Self-evaluation worksheets, personal project templates #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Industry ecosystem connections - Improve: E-commerce lifecycle thinking, sustainable performance practices ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Clear heading structure, descriptive timestamps - Improve: Enhanced alt text for visual examples, ARIA labels for video segments #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard video controls, transcript navigation - Improve: Skip links for video segments, keyboard shortcuts #### Contrast and readability - Present: Standard text contrast in video interface - Improve: High contrast mode support, adjustable text sizing #### Media and captions - Present: Full transcript provided - Improve: Synchronized captions, audio descriptions for visual elements ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: Irish perspective on European/US e-commerce - Improve: Global shipping complexity examples, diverse market considerations #### Inclusive language - Present: Professional, accessible technical language - Improve: More gender-neutral examples, avoiding regional assumptions #### Representation - Present: Business owner and agency perspectives - Improve: Diverse client examples, varied industry representations #### Psychological safety - Present: Respectful professional dialogue - Improve: Acknowledgment of different skill levels, encouraging tone ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: Clear five-point complexity framework with specific examples - Inductive strength: 25+ years experience informing general principles - Causal reasoning: Performance-revenue connections well established - Analogical strength: Effective needle-in-haystack metaphor for debugging #### Fallacies - Appeal to experience: Heavy reliance on personal experience without broader data validation - Hasty generalization: 50% shipping upgrade claim needs broader sample validation #### Tone of voice - Overall tone: Professional, experienced, practical with concrete examples ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: No concerning denials present - Attack: No attacks on accusers present - Reverse victim/offender: No victim/offender dynamics present - Emotional cues and rhetoric: Professional educational content with positive framing ## 🎯 Conclusion Sean Owens provides practical, experience-based guidance for building successful WooCommerce stores by focusing on complexity assessment, performance optimization, and strategic decision-making. The key takeaway is that proactive planning for the five complexity touch points (product variants, pricing, tax, shipping, checkout) combined with rigorous performance testing creates more profitable e-commerce experiences. For practitioners, this means implementing systematic approaches to both new builds and inherited projects, prioritizing speed testing, and considering rebuilds when debugging costs exceed development time. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix ### 📚 Literature Split Pad ### [H1] E-commerce complexity requires five-point assessment framework > [!quote] [More ways to monetize with Woo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ) by [[WP Engine]] via [[YouTube]]. Published 2024. Accessed 2024-12-28. > "Always expect the unexpected so what I usually do is I will have a questionnaire for the client and I will look for the most complex product." Framework covers product variants, pricing structures, tax rules, shipping requirements, and checkout customizations for comprehensive planning. [view highlight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ?t=192#H1) #xref #articleseed ID:rw_complexity_assessment ### [H2] Performance testing after each plugin prevents speed issues > [!quote] [More ways to monetize with Woo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ) > "At every time you install a plugin you test the site for Speed every single time and this is - Document Tags: [[rebuild]] [[testing]] [[planning]] [[complexity]] [[performance]] - Summary: More ways to monetize with Woo - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWltn_RRXQ hello I'm Sarah Wells I am the head of product marketing here at WP engine and today I am excited to have a conversation with Sean Owens the head of e-commerce for granite digital agency to hear all about how he and his agency have monetized more with woo to help their clients do more with their stores before we jump into the conversation Sean would love for you to introduce yourself to give a brief overview of yourself and your agency and what the projects are that you yall work on thank you very much Sarah for having me along today uh delighted to be your guest um and I suppose I've been building e-commerce since 1999 which is a pretty long time and uh I'm working now with granite digital uh head of e-commerce uh we're located in Dublin Ireland as you'll probably guess from my accent I'll try to speak slowly but I I I do speak quite fast um we've got over 120 staff working in granted digital and we're a full service agency doing the full range of uh Digital Services for people running e-commerce and any other digital business awesome thank you again Sean for being here today um one of the things that you mentioned in one of our earlier calls when we were kind of talking through this session is the wide variety of e-commerce stores that you guys run into um whether you're designing from Jeweler to Automotive to Whiskey to all of these different things and on our call today we have in-house developers who might be building their first store we might have other agencies working on again that Gambit of e-commerce store so what are some of the key things that you think of when you're approaching a new project or client and building a new a new e-commerce shop yes the really what we're looking for is you're looking the most the biggest thing that's going to trick you up in in building an e-commerce shop is complexity so uh no matter a customer will tell you oh it's a very simple standard store and they will they will give you this this pattern um but I would say always expect the unexpected so what I usually do is I will have a a a questionnaire for the client and I will look for the most complex product so there's there's kind of Five Points I I look for the most complex product I want to know about the most complex product so be it variance and you could have anything that's just something as simple as just clothing that comes in different colors and sizes or you could have something that's as complex as a contact lens where you have a whole set of variants for the left eye and a whole set of variants for the right eye so it's really important to know about this before you start building the next complexity thing you have to do is look at the pricing structure so no matter how much people tell you oh it's just the same price for everybody etc etc as they get busier and they start to go into B2B which is a really growing sector pricing is a huge thing customer pricing complexity is a huge thing so you need to learn about your customers what's their most complex pricing structure then you learn about their most complex tax structure and their most complex tax rules because as you know from state to state the different rules in Europe we have different rules whether they exporting what you're importing Etc and then you look at your most complex shipping rules and you make sure that you're you're going to be you learn about those shipping rules because that sometimes is the point at which e-commerce fails and or succeeds and then any checkout additions that they might have they might have so we're thinking about calendars and a checkout where people are selecting you know they're selecting the date of delivery or they're selecting a time of delivery or they're selecting a payment method are they're selecting where the parcel is to be dropped to or any extra delivery instructions so they're kind of like your five complexity touch points product variance pricing structure tax structure shipping rules and checkout that is fascinating it's something that as a consumer I don't necessarily always think about I just want the convenience of oh I want it to be shipped to me in here in Texas and I want it on this date and I will pay accordingly based off of those different things but as a as you're building that and thinking through those those intersections really can cause some some problems if it's not actually thought through from the beginning yeah so one of the things though that um you were mentioning is the complexity of both the product and the calendaring I was looking at one of y'all's projects that um you just delivered which was the uh burn Smokehouse and I that experience was beautifully designed but there is a myriad of different things from online events that you have and food delivery and these other things so can you walk us through kind of the approach and why you ended up building with woo and how are those things and the different tools that you brought in to help solve some of those complexities of the monetization for that project yeah so the bur Smokehouse produced uh smoked salmon and it's actually really interesting their story that they actually they they it's all Oak smoked salmon it smoked down in County CLA and uh in when they put in the uh the they use Oak shavings that that go into the killins to to smoke the salmon and they also put in some Turf into into the Killin as well and I I don't know depends where you come from in the world but Turf and Pete it's it's the same kind of thing but in Ireland we actually dry this and we burn it as a fuel and they actually put a small piece of Pete in so like you get pey whiskey you get pey um you get pey um smoke salmon as well so that's what gives it its unique taste so how do we go about this it's all about their product actually has a long enough shelf life and it doesn't need to be kept refrigerated during uh transport so that's a good thing because it's a vacuum packed product but it doesn't last forever and it's all about delivery date and they will work off delivery date so the customer there's a bunch of rules that are set down for the customer depending on where we're actually shipping to or shipping to the states or they're shipping to France or shipping to the UK and all of those have different shipping rules and different date rules so we had to select very carefully a a calendar date um selector that would work with with all of these rules and what we actually found was there's actually um a calendar selector that was actually designed for florists and it actually works for this particular particular um for this particular selling model because florists again are kind of the same thing people will order flowers two weeks in advance it doesn't mean you put the flowers to one side and then you ship them it's something you have to action then two days before the delivery date so even though the transaction takes place two weeks beforehand the actual Logistics of sending it out only happens right right right up until the delivery date so that's the that was the that's the kind of conundrum or that's the the difficulty in it and their other difficulty was they have multiple um languages across the website so their website is running in four different languages so we're using wpml to to handle the four different languages and then we also have to link it in with their actual stock because they will take in the orders but they then must line up production to meet those orders so they're they need to know how much fish they need to smoke to fulfill the orders for to make sure that the product is as fresh as it possibly can for delivery so we have built into their uh their production management system we've actually built a link from woocommerce back into that system to feed in deliveries so that they can actually line up how many fish they need to actually smoke of a day to satisfy their ERS that's fascinating and that integration and the ability to plug in all those different pieces I imagining was possible because of wo like if you were trying to do this with a different system or inh house it would be thousands and thousands of hours or custom code or some other aspects that would just be be harder to achieve yeah so like some of it was with plugins and some of it is plugins with further additions on top of the plugins so as I say this website wasn't just built with the right hand it was built with the right and the left hand if you know what I mean so it wasn't just pointing as pointing and clicking there was a fair bit of actual custom code went into it and that's kind of important for agencies if they know how to add to existing plugins that gives them a really good Edge because the plug-in might not might do 90% of what you're looking to do and that final 10% is what's going to make the difference for the customer and that's what makes a difference for the the front end customer and makes the difference for the the person running the store brings the ease in so our integration with their uh production system was completely custom that was a completely custom piece of work that we actually did uh for the customer but now we've actually brought in we've actually Linked In with their their ups and their DHL shipping into it as well so those tracking codes now are coming in and customers are getting updated and of course with all this customer communication it has absolutely dropped the number of inquiries down dramatically because they're communicating with the customer at every single little step of the way it might be a small piece of information but it's the more communication there is with the customer the better the experience is with the customer they feel like they're not being forgotten they know exactly what's actually happening dayt day with their delivery and it really works yeah and it also probably opens up their business so that they can focus on the other pieces and not having to do that interface of assuring like we have it we got it it's that they get that brand Integrity back too of the their end clients and customers are being felt being they are taken care of yeah and I mean it means that when they get when the inquiry comes in it's usually a genuine inquiry something has got lost something is late something like that you know it is a genuine inquiry as opposed to somebody just saying I I ordered something and I heard absolutely nothing yeah that's that that's that's a crime really in e-commerce because you have everything to communicate with them and you have everything to communicate automatically with them so that requires absolutely no effort from yourself when it's set up so not to communicate is is is an absolute crime yeah yeahh another crime with e-commerce is performance and so one of the things that you're mentioning is they use the plugin and smartly being able to use plugins and we all know uh here in WordPress we love plugins they're amazing they unlock so much for us and they often can be blo or cause performance issue with e-commerce every second every optimization for rendering for chart for cart and like the pass through is money and money on a that could be left on a table have not done well can you talk a little bit about how y'all select what plugins to use the process you go about implementing them like help our audience understand like these best practices for getting the efficiencies without the sacrifice of losing Revenue um because of performance yeah so yeah so we will we will do a kind of you know the customer would present we will have found out all those five levels or six or five levels of complexity we will do that we will visit that then we'll go out and we'll identify the the plugins we we will use every developer will have their set of favorite plugins that they work with I would suggest that you should try and use plugins from the same developers or the same plug-in providers were possible because those plugins will then start to work with each other or should work with each other so if you're using nothing but woocommerce plugins that's that's probably a good a good place to start um but then there are plugins that woocommerce just don't do and there are other there are other uh providers that do those so you you you never can just build with just woocomerce plugins you will end off bringing in some other plugins um and into the freight but what I would say is that at every time you install a plugin you test the site for Speed every single time and this is absolutely vital because there's no point in building a beautiful website 25 plugins and a template Builder on the top of it and then your customer saying to me oh my website's a bit slow and then you go back and you go well I wonder now which of those 25 plugins or the template is causing the issue here and it's it's just a needle in a Hast stack trying to find out where the slowness is actually coming from so we when we're building e-commerce for customers the first thing we do is find out all that complexity the next thing we do is we import all their product in we bring all the product in so now we have the base W Commerce loaded with the data so we will know straight away is the data causing an overload on this on this installation with no plugins or anything and if it is then we have to look at we have to look at the data structure we might have to cut down on the number of meta fields or something like that then once you've you've done that and once you're satisfied that your plugins are working sufficiently well for the complexity that you have and your speed is not getting affected then you know you're starting at a base level of a particular speed but you're going to have to for mobile you're going to have to strip out some of the featur so you can't be running beautiful glossy video on mobile if you want it to render absolutely really really quickly and this is kind of a battle we have with customers all the time because they will they're very fond of these carousels and they work like they really do work especially these swipe you know swipe left and right carousels on mobile they really work but if you put too much of them on a on a front page now you're no longer loading say 20 products onto your front page but you might be loading 80 or 100 products onto your front page and even though only four of them are in the view you're you're still loading them all and that makes the page load slow so there are sacrifices to be made and and customers will will you will have that little battle with customers where they they say oh but I want all the sliders and you'll say but you can't have the speed if you have all the sliders and all the carel so there is a little bit to play with what I usually do for clients at that pages I strip out I strip out all the sliders off it and I say to them have a look at that is it running quickly for you on your mobile it'll be instant and then I'll add in one slide and I go is that quick enough for you and they go to go yeah that's okay then I'll add another slide another Carousel in and then they can actually then see yes it actually is the carousels but you're absolutely right every second in e-commerce is money lost every we will always aim to have our sites render and under one second where possible and this is where WP engine comes in really good because their platform is designed for hosting H WordPress it's absolutely fine tune for that if you can't get your website running quickly on WP engine you have something there's something wrong You' you've got plugin blow something so again strip out all the plugins don't have deactivated plugin sitting in your in your installation just strip them out completely delete them there's no there's no absolutely no point in keeping plugins that are deactivated it's it's BL absolutely no point I would say that 9 times out of 10 we would go in to have a look at websites that are running slow my first protocol is straight into the plugins delete all the deactivated plugins straight up and I would probably I'll probably delete all the unpublished content as well just delete the whole lot get rid of as much metadata as much data that's not required out of the system and then you know you're you're running you're running with just what's required and you're not carrying any blow well and what you said earlier too it's like get it as lean as possible to the bare minimum and then start adding in and test at every point so then you aren't having to go back to find that needle of what automatically this why is my site 200% slower than it was yesterday um so the the iterative iterative testing and continuous testing is a big piece in that in that build life cycle and what I would say to you is is when you're testing for Speed just don't just test on Google liouse test across a couple of different testing platforms they all do something slightly different Google lighthouse on a mobile will come in on a on a 4G connection that's what they test they'll test on on an apps you know that their standard sometimes is is quite quite low and that's probably not in the real world because most people are either on 4G or 5G at this stage yeah I don't know actually I think 3G is recently has been obsoleted in Europe I don't think it's on any network any longer so um why you know so that's why I would say test across a good few you've got GT metrics you got you got a myriad of these ones and then make sure that when you're testing you're testing uh with a server that's that's local to you that you're not testing on a server that's halfway around the world that you're not testing on Australian server or you know if you're located in Europe or the the US that you're testing on on some testing device that's that's local and you know that that's really important that's really that's really good advice too because I mean we have agencies and developers on this call who are Global but their clients might also be Global so having that perspective for their end client of where their client will be serving especially if they are going to be doing things internationally is a is a good a good reminder of make sure you're testing where your client or where your clients clients are going to end up being yeah um one of the other things that you mentioned was uh mobile vers desktop but then also you mentioned if you get and inherit a an e-commerce site I know there's going to be a lot of customers who uh and people who are on the call today who have inherited a woo site um and they are being tasked with make this better make this make more money for us make this do more um what is some of the things that you approach when you've inherited a a woo site and how does that kind of differ from your build from scratch methodology yeah so when you're building from scratch it's it's it's a lot easier you're working you're working with a blank canvas so you're you're in full control over what you're what you're putting in and you're you're you're applying due diligence along the way and you've been really really careful the problem is that when you inherit a site you might be the second third or fourth agency who's worked on this site and there will be lots and lots of inherent little gramlings floating around the place especially speed wise you might run into problems where you just you just kind of figure out what the speed issue is and um it's a conversation I have a lot of the time I would say what we'll actually do here is we're actually going to rebuild this site from scratch this is what we're actually going to do here because it's actually too expensive to actually spend weeks or days looking through a haast stack for the needle it's going to be we're we're actually better off actually getting a needle constructing a ha stack and putting it into it and tagging it clearly where it actually is rather than being told there's a hay stack there's a need to go find it yeah so as I say you think it's expensive you think um you think it's expens expensive reconstructing the site and it's really good even from a speed point of view because you will get a speed Improvement I always say you think it's you think it's expensive build reconstructing your site well you should see how expensive it is go looking for a needle in a hay stack because that's really expensive TimeWise and at the end of the day we want to keep our customers happy we want our customer to come to to realize that the guys came in they had three agents before them you succeed needed and of course if it's good news story with you and the agency you know between the agency and the customer they're going to bring you in for more for more gigs and more gigs and more gigs and you're going to grow grow a trust there so a lot of people will immediately Sher away from rebuilds and go oh I'm not going to rebuild we've just spent so much but actually rebuilding when you've got the complete assembled site in front of you actually is not a big deal because you're just being asked to re essentially just rebuild the kit you've got all the components you just been asked to build it again and it's actually not a big deal to actually do it's as I say it's actually less time when you add it up than actually trying to look for look for fixes yeah well then you can show the clients I mean as you mentioning before you can actually show and be like this is fast now now if you add this back in it slows down are you okay with that are you not especially on mobile with those carousels or those videos or those things that are just beautiful and and and and necessary on desktop versus on mobile so it makes a lot of sense and and you know you you talk about it being beautiful every website you create has to be beautiful it does not matter what you are selling online you might think it's the most boring thing it could be parts for a motorbike it could be vety product whatever it is it does not matter it must be a beautiful production and I would say if you're when you're you're working for your clients actually go that extra 10% or that extra 20% even if you have to suck it up on the project to make it a beautiful site because that's what gets you in more clients that's what gets your client more customers people love beauty they love working with beautiful sites they love visiting beautiful sites and we all know we don't need to mention sites we all know what our beautiful sites and we all know what are absolute Horrors to look at and they're just functional and we just go visit them that's just not a pleasant experience at all and the effort required in a build is probably you're probably only talking 10% extra time yeah to get it really really beautiful and it is just those small little touches that small little attention to detail that actually really does bring us bring us it off and maybe bringing your client in to watch you finessing is a really good idea we've often brought clients in and we'll show them us finessing it and they kind of go oh my God that takes absolutely ages to do and they see that it actually is really time consuming and it's got twofold the client now appreciates the amount of due care and attention you're you're putting on to their business and they they value how much time and effort it actually takes to actually pull it off to an absolute you know to it's it's a it's basically award-winning standard and that's the standard you need to be working towards because in e-commerce there is no International standard per se and you can see it there there's e-commerce sites of all different standards across but what we would do in Granite is there's two goals we would have for every client one their their website has to make money for them it has to make money and return the investment and the second one is that we will it has to be at award nomination standard so we have to look at a website and when we give it over to the customer we have to say to ourselves is this a website that we can put in for an award and if it's not then we need to go back and we need to do something more to it to get it to that standard well and looking through y'all's uh portfolio you definitely have many awards and accolades on e-commerce and your latest one with element whiskey I mean I'm not even a whiskey drinker but that was beautiful and I'm about to order a bottle for a gift for somebody because it's it is beautifully designed and highly performant and it meets also that complexity that you were talking about at the beginning of where are the niches that we need to make sure we solve for for the complexity of these different pieces we have time for one last question um Sean so as we're closing out you talked about the five complexity things to be thinking about you've talked about building on top of and leveraging plugins as a jump start and then building the customizations needed to get that last 10% what are some of like top three things or people what you want people to take away from the session as they're thinking about building um their woo shops either for themselves or for their clients what's the what's the the key nugget that you want everybody to walk away with I would say get that complexity down understand that complexity most customers want to get you into painting pictures first they want to get excited about the painting of the pictures piece first and that's that's important but it's actually more important that you get the complexity sorted out because you can have the most beautiful picture painted and then you might discover and it's really it's for the customer as well so I'll give you an example we had a client and she was shipping she wanted to set up a pottery shop online and it was Earth andwar now we know earthware is very heavy but she got herself caught up on in in the whole design of the whole thing and it would be in the very early days it' be the early 0s when when we were building this site and I didn't come to this methodology until you know it was after a good few years and good few kinds making mistakes and um she we we made the site it was absolutely beautiful and then she went down to her local shipper to ship her first product and the shipping of the first product was more expensive than the product actually cost wo because it was Earth and wear and it was a beautiful piece of pottery but it just weighed a ton it was so heavy and after she had packed it up and put the bubble wrap on it and and and done everything beautiful to it and it was just it was heartbreaking it was absolutely heartbreaking so that's again is probably one of the first things I go through with clients have you looked at the shipping costs can you is this shipping cost something that your customer will bear will they actually be able to Bear the shipping cost and I'll give you um there's a little a little tip around shipping you need to get your shipping absolutely worked out correctly I will see people operating within the same sectors and in in irand we do quite a lot of Builders Builders Merchants websites so they're selling building materials wood cement um rebar metal all this kind of stuff for building and we will see that the the merchants who have shipping worked out absolutely correctly do far better than those who are just throwing a blanket shipping rate down because customers are really really Savvy they know when they're being charged too much for shipping and it's probably the single biggest turnoff in the checkout so I would in a checkout that's money that you had in hand and it's gone absolutely so it's like in a High Street store somebody walked up to the walked up to the cash desk took their credit card out handed it to you and just before you swiped it or or Zapped it they took it away again and put it back in their wallet and walked straight out the door it's that frustrating so there are you know you should get out your Excel get your customers to get out their Excel spreadsheet and do and work out what the shipping is and work it out really really accurately because if you work it out really really accurately then your customer knows I've been charged the right right price for shipping and you can then do things like you know what we charge them a premium Now for next day delivery and now you're and we would see this that customers that are eligible for free delivery will 50% of the time opt for next day delivery and pay for it and that is my little nugget I will leave you guys with for your that you can bring to your store owner don't play that Ace card early in the game play a little bit later but it is it absolutely Works customers who see free shipping will absolutely opt for NE will pay a premium for next day shipping and I've seen it over and over again and that's a good way of bringing the cost of your free shipping down to the business where now if 50% of those customers are going to opt for a premium rate shipping now you almost have your free shipping covered off that's amazing it's a great great nugget thank you so much Sean for joining in the conversation today and the insights I've learned a lot um and I know the people who are tuning in have also taken away incredible value so thank you for joining us and for those who have tuned in thank you for um participating if you have any other questions or anything please reach out at any point in time yall have a great rest of your day [Music] where, More ways to monetize with Woo, YouTube, 01ka7gr6rec8wwmdxgcxn5m7jd.