WonderSuite: Bluehost Simplifies WordPress  ## Metadata - Author: [[The WP Minute+]] - Full Title: WonderSuite: Bluehost Simplifies WordPress - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/cc8c8988-4f68-4642-9b62-2a7493b029a2 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **COVID Boosted Website Urgency** - Many people delayed building a website until COVID forced them online urgently. - Old leads resurfaced needing websites after the pandemic changed business priorities. Transcript: Speaker 1 Everyone thought, well, everybody has a website, right? Every business has a website, an order form, a contact form, and then COVID hit. And I hadn't been in the agency game for years. I ran an agency for a decade, but I had customers calling me that I talked to about building a website for them 15 years ago that they never pulled the trigger on. And then COVID hit door shut. People couldn't do anything. And they were like, oh my God, I need that website. You told me about 15 years ago. Yeah, man. Yeah, you do. You need to get onboard with the internet. It's crazy that folks are still building up websites today. It's a long way of getting to, you think there's still room there for the small business to start something and start selling things online. ([Time 0:03:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/02502329-9c83-4787-89de-16ba03e7cebc)) - **WonderCart Enhances WooCommerce** - WonderCart enhances WooCommerce by bundling multiple plugins into one for ecommerce efficiency. - It focuses on promotional features to boost conversion during sales events. Transcript: Speaker 2 No, absolutely. So Wonder Cart is built on top of WooCommerce. So it utilizes WooCommerce and WooCommerce functionality. And what Wonder Cart does is it pulls together multiple features from previously multiple plugins to help operating a store be more efficient. An operating merchant needs to run campaigns, liquidations, Black Friday sells, all of those kind of things. And that's what Wonder Cart helps with the promotions and increasing conversion rates, those kind of items. ([Time 0:05:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4421a18e-1987-41d6-9044-a491fd59484a)) - **Onboard Stores with Ecommerce Guide** - Wonder Start onboarding adapts if users plan to sell products by adding necessary ecommerce setup steps. - It guides users through shipping, taxes, and product organization to streamline store launch. Transcript: Speaker 2 Yeah, so when you're running through Wonder Start, which is the onboarding portion, if you imply that you want to sell something or if you actually purchased a store plan from Bluehost, We'll put you through an additional portion of onboarding to help get your products set up or you sell them digital products, physical products, you need shipping. Are you going to charge taxes? How many products? Because that might imply the organization your store needs. So we give them an extra couple steps in onboarding if they're building a store. And then we give them a lot more tools within WordPress. ([Time 0:06:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6feb7729-f0f8-4c9c-80a2-6fd5f7f20bb6)) - **Simplifying Payments Setup Timing** - Payments setup is surfaced when users are ready, with PayPal and soon Stripe options visible. - WonderSuite simplifies payment choices but users still complete external account setups. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 So inside of the Wonder Suite, we have some pages in the Bluehost plugin inside of WP Admin. They have some additional next steps. One of the things that's hard about WordPress is the right thing at the right time. Not if they need to be first. And so something like payments and shipping can happen a little bit later, building your site and creating your first product more important than connecting your payments. And so when the customer gets to that point, we surface a few options. We surface PayPal and very soon strike as payment options in our interface. And with that, our art integrations offer things like Venmo. Buy now, pay later, Google Pay, some of those other payment options through those two providers. And so we also surface that so the customer can make a better decision when they're trying to pick what to use. ([Time 0:08:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a92ef553-6b60-4279-9038-71ee8a0870a2)) - **Pro Tools for Client Site Management** - WordPress pros can manage all client sites easily via Bluehost's control panel site management tools. - Using WonderSuite tools helps build sites faster and improve ecommerce effectiveness for clients. Transcript: Speaker 2 So talking about the implementer or the pro sediment, we have new site management tools that we've been iterating on. And so they can manage multiple websites within their control panel. There's also some iterations to that to come. But once they get in there, they can manage all of these sites. And then they can utilize these things like Wonder Cart to make their customers' stores more performant. So they could use Wonder Start, Wonder Blocks to build a site more quickly. And then they can use something like Wonder Cart to make their site perform better. ([Time 0:10:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e672d05-86a5-4e8a-9d35-4fb16fe99aae)) - **AI Assists Novices with Guidance** - WonderHelp uses AI to provide step-by-step WordPress guidance on basic tasks to Novice users. - AI-generated content via WonderBlocks tailors site layouts to user business types without locking them in. Transcript: Speaker 1 Is it powered by chat GPT in the back end or something else? Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's a few things powered by AI and more to come, but I agree with your skepticism. I was a bit of a late, a late adopter myself getting familiar with it, but I will say that I'm optimistic about where it's going and what's possible. I think one thing that I think is, this is my opinion, one of the things I think that's a fatter, a trend is things being labeled as AI, AI, AI everywhere. I think in the future, we're going to just see things being enhanced by AI a little bit more behind the scenes. And so two of the features that have AI behind them are WonderHelp as well as WonderBlox. So when you go through onboarding, you identify yourself as business auto mechanic, showing them pictures of flowers or a clothing boutique, even if it's not Laura Mipsum and it's Content to one of those niches, they don't relate to it. And so using AI, we built relevant content to them using WonderBlox, and they're the whole library of patterns that are now relevant to them, that they can relate to. Now, once you insert those patterns, they're still 100% Gutenberg blocks. You click, you edit, you swap pictures, you update text. So that's what I mean when I say compatibility and inner awe. We're not building you into a corner at all. It's WordPress. The other one, WonderHelp, you can ask a question and then you can get answers back. Actionable steps. For a novice, there's questions that come in that seem just silly to you and I, like, how do I add a new user? That left navigation is super intimidating to a novice. And so we see questions like, how do I add a user? And then we give them six or seven steps and say, go here, click this, do that. And it meets their needs there. Now, we do have a process that's kind of auditing quality. On that, we're monitoring that closely because we don't want it just giving garbage advice. ([Time 0:11:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/637b319a-e297-4010-83a9-9e6d45f720a7)) - **Custom Child Themes in Onboarding** - Wonder Start creates a personalized child theme reflecting chosen colors and fonts for each business. - Default relevant pages like About and Contact are generated from templates tailored to the user’s business type. Transcript: Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yep. When you go through Wonder Start, you get the option of a few default pages based on what you selected in Wonder Start. One thing about Wonder Start, we don't ask a single question that doesn't alter your product experience. It's not for information or anything. It actually alters your experience, personalizes your experience. So as you go through that, you get to the defaults pages that are relevant to your business. You can create an about page, a contact page, a testimonial page and then insert a template like the whole page gets created from a template. And then one other thing that it does through all of Wonder Start is it actually generates a child theme, a block based child theme of the Wonder theme that has all of the colors and fonts And selections that you made baked into that child theme. ([Time 0:15:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5abb9815-8a03-460e-b3e4-22ac2aec0752)) - **FSE Progress and Competitive Edge** - Full site editing is evolving fast but still lacks some global style control compared to leading page builders. - WordPress's compatibility and ecosystem integration offers a key advantage over proprietary builders despite slower UI development. Transcript: Speaker 1 In other words, like making those big global style changes, sweeping template changes, like I don't feel like it's there yet, or maybe the UI isn't there yet in order to get somebody Down that path. The style book is kind of like, okay, I think it's called the style book. I just don't feel like it has that global sweeping power that you would get from an Elementor or a traditional page builder, let's say, your thoughts on how much more time we need to get To that point where it's you really feel confident as a web designer with this tool? Speaker 2 So I think if you think about, is it moving faster, slow? I think it's moving fast and slow, right? Something's moving extremely fast and something I wish we had a year ago. But if you look at where the content editor was when it first launched versus where it is today, it has come leaps and bounds forward. And I think one thing that we can agree on is that there's opportunity in blocks and that blocks are better for users versus explaining a short code to a small business owner, right? I mean, we both dealt with that in the past and it's not fun. The blocks, I think, are better. And I think we all see that. Now the editing interface, I think, is evolving and getting much better. And with every release, we see improvements. So I'm optimistic that it's going the right direction. I would also say that I do think that in today's state, it's very competitive. I wouldn't say it's far and ahead to leader, but I would say it's very competitive. And I think as the plug-in landscape also starts to evolve and better support it, I think that's where we'll see a lot of the advantages of that. Because even with a beaver builder or an element or some of those page builders, we get a little bit of that lock-in problem that I described earlier, where it's not compatible with the WordPress ecosystem. And I think that WordPress ecosystem is that the foundation of why WordPress is popular. ([Time 0:16:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/023355a4-e92e-4d81-b056-b17c1ba21eeb)) - **Balancing Guidance with Full Access** - WonderSuite aims to guide users quickly without restricting any capabilities available in WordPress. - Full site editing will reduce the need for backend settings by shifting configuration into the editor. Transcript: Speaker 2 So yes and no, I think Wonder Sweet and the Bluehost experience inside of WP admin. I think we're going to surface the launch pads that get you where you're going quicker, but we won't prevent you from doing anything that you can do in WordPress. And so that's they're the balance there. But I also think that WordPress and the volbing in a way that it's going to become less of a problem in the future. As we see with the site editor and the content editor full site editing, I think more things are going to actually start happening in the editor. Less configuration is going to happen on a settings page elsewhere. And if you remember a long time going to community, there was a lot of discussion about front end editing, right? ([Time 0:19:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/46c25489-b231-4e56-a758-8411e20a01c1)) - **WordPress Overwhelm in Startups** - Startup founders struggled to build full WordPress sites quickly due to overwhelm and other priorities. - Many defaulted to simpler site builders due to the technical challenge of WordPress back then. Transcript: Speaker 1 Anyway, the point is, is you'd have these people who are trying to just roll up their sleeves, start a business. It was a bakery. It was a yoga studio. And we'd have 20, 25 people in a cohort every winter, summer, right? Is how it went. So 50 businesses a year would come through. And I was the guy who taught the web class, right? So I would come in and year one, I was now you have, this is like 2017. So year one, I'd come in and I would be like WordPress, build your theme. And people are like, I am trying to figure out how to do an LLC. And by the end of this incubator, I have to have a whole WordPress site built. It's impossible. And then people are just defaulting to square spaces and wicks. And I think WordPress got a bad rap for how technically challenging it was. I think what I'm hearing is if we hide WordPress, it might not be good for the WordPress brand and oh, by the way, people might be like, no, give me that WordPress thing. In a couple of years, people will be like, yeah, give me that WordPress thing. I want it now. I didn't want it back in 2017, 2018. ([Time 0:20:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/356a7285-84e9-4d53-bf36-83f1f083286e))