Welcome to the latest episode of the Ecommerce Podcast with your host, Matt Edmundson. In this episode, Matt is joined by Darren Hickey from Fellowship Agency to explore the world of WooCommerce. Darren shares his extensive experience in building standout WordPress and WooCommerce sites, offering valuable insights and tips for enhancing your ecommerce platform. Whether you're a seasoned WooCommerce user or considering a switch from platforms like Shopify, this episode is packed with expert advice to help you make informed decisions. Tune in to discover the benefits of WooCommerce, the importance of mobile-first design, and the evolving trends in ecommerce.

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Timestamps:

- 0:05 - Introduction to the Ecommerce Podcast

- 2:45 - Darren Hickey's background and Fellowship Agency

- 5:01 - Why choose WooCommerce?

- 8:36 - WooCommerce vs. other platforms

- 14:05 - Replatforming considerations

- 25:37 - Importance of mobile-first design

- 34:09 - Darren's question for Matt

- 38:57 - How to connect with Darren Hickey

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3 Key Guest Takeaways:

1. WooCommerce Flexibility: Darren highlights WooCommerce's flexibility and cost-effectiveness, making it an ideal choice for businesses looking to customise their ecommerce experience beyond a simple product catalogue.

2. Mobile-First Design: Emphasising the shift towards mobile, Darren discusses the importance of prioritising mobile-first design to enhance user experience and improve conversion rates.

3. Digital Transformation: Darren's passion lies in helping businesses streamline processes through digital transformation, using WooCommerce to automate tasks and improve efficiency.

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If this episode of the eCommerce Podcast piqued your interest make sure to check out everything that gets done over here on the eCommerce Podcast, a space dedicated to eCommerce Wow!

Well, hello and welcome to the Ecommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmondson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver e commerce well. And to help us do just that, I'm chatting with my very special guest, Darren Hickey from Fellowship Agency about all things WooCommerce. Yes, we are going to get into WooCommerce a little bit. What Darren's doing, what the agency's up to and some of the tricks, tips and insights that you can use to make your e commerce website better. And of course, if you're not on WooCommerce, listen up anyway because there's going to be some high value truths coming your way, I have no doubt. Now a warm welcome to you. If you are new to the show, it's great to have you here. Like I said at the start, we just talk about e commerce. I actually run my own e commerce businesses as well, which is a phenomenal thing. So like you, I'm in the trenches every day trying to figure out how to make it work better. And so we go and talk to people like Darren, experts to come and bring us their insight and understanding. So mate, let me tell you, I have learned so much doing this podcast. It's really, really helped our ecommerce business and I hope it's going to help yours as well. So make sure you like and subscribe to the show if you haven't done so already. And of course if you are a regular to the show, you're an absolute legend. Thank you for coming back time and time again. And the fact we get so many subscribers now to the show means we can get some great, great guests on the show including Darren here. And actually I was also thinking about Neil Hoynes as well, who's the guy from Google we had on the show a few months ago. I was re watching some of the stuff earlier on, just again making some notes and some of the tips and stuff that he, he was sharing. But we wouldn't get guests like that on the show if it wasn't for you guys. So thank you for joining us. Thank you for subscribing, thanks for being part of the journey. Now let's talk about today's guest. Darren is the mastermind behind Fellowship, an award winning web design agency that's been building standout WordPress, multisite and WooCommerce sites for over 20 years, which let's face it, in digital terms is a very, very long time. With a knack for turning digital dreams into reality, he has helped everyone from scrappy startups to global giants supercharged their growth. Now, whether you're a cmo, a marketing manager, an IT whiz, Darren's your go to guy for making your website work harder and smarter. Darren, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you on. Been looking forward to this. How you doing?

Thanks very much, Matt. Yeah, I'm very well, thank you. And thanks for such a. Well, an impressive intro, really. I'm feeling pretty blown away by that, but it's a pleasure to be here.

Well, it's good to have you and I'm glad you like the intro. It's starting to become now the stuff of legends. I was saying this to Sadaf earlier on that she takes the bios that you know, when you come on as a guest this show, you send us a bio. She takes that bio and I think she works a little sadaf magic probably with the help of some AI system somewhere and rewrites the bios and. Which is quite funny now because we've had guests come on the show who listen to the show. They're like regulars of the show and I recorded one, I can't remember who it was with. It was only last week as well. My brain has just gone all buzzy. But I was recording an episode and one of the guests said, I'm really looking forward to hearing what Sarah's written for my bio. So it's becoming the stuff of legends, which is a beautiful thing. Now you are a fellow British, which is. It's always nice talk to a fellow Brit. Whereabouts in the world are you?

So we're based very close to Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.

Okay. Down south.

Down south, yeah. Southeast, yes.

Very good. And you vote. We read in the bio there that you've been doing fellowship agency for 20 years, is that right?

22 years as a limited company and then about another 10 years prior to that. So pretty boring career in terms of. Really only focused on design and websites for about 30 ish years and e commerce for about 25 of that.

So yeah, quite well, you and me both. But I think I launched. Let's try that again. I launched my very first E commerce website back in 2002. So I started doing web design in 98. No, 97. About 97 it was. And then I thought I need to try and figure out how to do this ecom thing. So we did our first ECOM site in 2002.

So that's very similar to my personal. Yeah, absolutely.

Changed a lot, eh? Changed a lot.

Absolutely. Yeah.

In so many ways. In so many ways. So you guys are specialists with WooCommerce.

Yep.

Why did you go down that road? Why that platform?

Great question. I mean, back in the early days, late 90s, early 2000s, I was really just sort of focusing on the design aspect. That's my background, Web design.

Yeah.

And we used to outsource builds to other, to other agencies. But when I made the decision to build an in house team of developers so that we could design and build e commerce sites in house, we actually built sites based on three different platforms including WooCommerce and Magento. I think it's fair to say we had a, we had our fingers burnt pretty badly with Magento when it changed from version 1.8 to 2, I think it was. And that was a pretty tough year for, not just for me, but a lot of the dev team were like, we're done with Magento. Can we just, you know, we love WooCommerce. Can we focus on what we love? And that combined really with just a growing demand for businesses coming to us that absolutely wanted WordPress and WooCommerce. So it was, it was quite a simple decision to make to really focus just on WooCommerce. And that's what we've done for about the last 10 years now.

Yeah, that's fair play. I mean, WooCommerce, I don't know if it still is. I don't know if Shopify has overtaken it, but at one point it was like the most used E commerce platform, wasn't it? Because it was part of WordPress.

I can remember that it was something like 24%. You know, it powered 24% of ecommerce sites. Something around that. I think you're right. With Shopify, I think that's grown enormously and overtaken WooCommerce as the kind of, you know, top spot. And I think Magento's had a tough journey with its, you know, the journey that, that's gotten.

Well, for obvious reasons, absolutely.

But we just decided when, you know, when we saw the growth of Shopify, you know, should we dabble and learn Shopify? But I'm really relieved to have made a decision over the last few, few years just to focus on, you know, WordPress and WooCommerce. And like you say, it's still, it's still up there, it's still really powerful. Popular rather and powerful. And yeah, we love it. So that's, that's what we focus on.

Yeah. And actually I imagine, Darren, it's, in some respects it's probably a lot more niche than Shopify Yeah. And so less competitive I suppose from an agency point of view because every man and their dog became, it seemed to me like every man and their dog became a Shopify agency. And so you're kind of like, okay, yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting. I think what the route Shopify are going now, you know, since the, since the big, the big event where they, where they went public. And I think I remember when Shopify started and I thought this is great. This is a bit of an upstart or a bit of, you know, it's something different, trying to be cool, kitsch. And I think in some respects, and no disrespect Shopify, because I think it's a really great platform still. But I think it's becoming the thing that it was preaching against when it started out in, in the early, early days. A thing which made it a lot more interesting than it is right now. Yeah, good point. And so I'm intrigued to see obviously where Shopify goes. But like I said, you say Woocommerce has been there in the background. So if someone is thinking about, well let's say, so let's take someone who is starting a business, right, they're going to start an online business. The default I think for most people is Shopify. I think you've got platforms like Shopline now who are throwing some money it seems into the whole arena and they're, they're becoming more and more popular. Why would I think about Woocommerce instead of say these other platforms?

Sure, good question. I think there's a few reasons. First one I'll start with. To me, this is kind of the biggest one really is if someone's thinking of starting an E commerce store and they want an out and out 100% store, that's all they do. Product catalog, selling online. You can really understand why they would look at Shopify maybe first. But there's a lot of businesses that I think that sell online that just want a bit more than just a product catalog and selling products through the cart. Now if they want things like a blog, crucial for SEO, for traffic and so on. You know, let's be honest, WordPress is pretty good for blog.

It's figured it out, I think.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, if you're one of those businesses that also needs some other non product pages, things like case studies about pages, page on Meet the Team, all of that sort of pretty typical stuff that you see on websites. The combination of WordPress and WooCommerce I think is really powerful and that's why we love it because a lot of our clients want those extra pages that don't just showcase their products and it's a really good sort of combination for that. But I think the second thing I'd add to it is actually just the, the flexibility and the cost effectiveness I think in terms of building a WooCommerce site and maintaining IT development. In our experience we've found that our clients get a really good return on their investment because we don't spend too much of their sort of investment on the day to day maintenance, but we try and improve the site continually. There's so many good plugins for WooCommerce. You can add new features quickly, subscriptions, promotions, there's great integrations that we can do cost effectively. So I think it's a good platform for testing out new features with a new store, developing new features and doing that in a very cost effective way where you don't really need. We've got a team of seven developers but actually I think if you've got a really good capable single WordPress WooCommerce developer using those cost effective plugins, you can very quickly try things out on your store and see if it works and then if you want to adapt it. One of the things we love about many of the WooCommerce plugins, we can still customize those and tailor them to suit the client's needs. So I think it's a very good platform for that. And I'm not saying that Magento and Shopify and other stores can't do that because I know they can. But in our experience with Magento, we found that to be very expensive and very time consuming, particularly element point of view to build those new features. So I think WooCommerce is fantastic for that and for us it's really the future proofness of WooCommerce. We've got clients that have been on their WooCommerce site now for well over 10 years and they haven't had to start again and change platform. We've been able to grow and adapt the site to suit their needs as their business grows and so on. So I think all round I think it's a fantastic option for anyone looking to sell online.

Yeah, that's super powerful. I think it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, if I think about, and if I'm being totally honest with you Darren, the last time I used WordPress was probably, I'm guessing about seven or eight years ago when I Used to blog and then, you know, like everybody, I was kind of. I actually moved over to podcasts. It became a lot easier to podcast and blog.

But.

I remember at the time the WordPress site being relatively straightforward to set up for somebody who didn't actually know how to set up sites. WordPress is one of those things where there's the easy kind of just turn it on and it works. And then you can make it as complicated as you'd like by digging into the weeds. Right. And you can get access to all the code and stuff, which obviously you can't do with Shopify. So it appeals, I think, on a wide spectrum, doesn't it?

Absolutely, yeah.

I wonder if you're, if I'm starting out, do I need any coding knowledge or understanding to set up a WooCommerce site? Would that be helpful? Because I know with Shopify it's just literally, you know, it's their host of platform. It's straightforward.

Absolutely.

But do I need that with WooCommerce?

It's a great question. I mean, it helps. It definitely helps. I mean, there's some brilliant off the shelf WordPress themes now that you can use with very limited or next to no web development experience, admittedly compared to Shopify. You know, with WooCommerce, it's obviously, it's open source. Host the site yourselves. You know, we host nearly all the sites for our clients. Some of the clients host it themselves. But that is a, you know, is a different factor with WordPress and WooCommerce. So, you know, you'll be responsible for your own hosting. But there's so many good hosting companies now that with a click of a button, can spin up a WordPress site and you can install a theme like storefront, the WooCommerce out of the box theme. And there's so many great resources now online that can help you to get your store up and running without needing to be a web developer. So I think I'd say that you don't need those skills to get your store up and running initially. But obviously if you then want to add new features, install some plugins and customize your site to a certain degree, then you might then need to call on the help of a, you know, a WordPress WooCommerce developer or an agency to help you do that. But I think it's still quick to get, you know, off and running with. Really?

Yeah, no, that's a fair point. And if you're, if you're thinking about re platforming. Right, so this is a question I get asked quite a lot. You know, I feel like I've outgrown my site. It's not really doing what I need it to do. I want to do this. I want to take it to this place. I want to get to the next level. I always love the phrase when people say I want to take it to the next level. Brilliant. What's the next level mean? I don't really know, but I want to go there. And it's kind of like, okay, and so if I'm on, say, Shopify and I'm looking at Shopify plus to, you know, and mortgaging my children to pay for it. But if I'm looking at things like Shopify plus or I could look at WooCommerce or maybe BigCommerce, what are some of the reasons why I might want to think about WooCommerce in this equation?

Absolutely. So some of it's probably similar to what I said earlier, but. And that scenario you've just mapped out there with someone that's got an E commerce site looking to re platform for whatever reason, that's something we experience a lot. But we often have people coming to us, some with Magento stores, some with Shopify. We've had people approach us with all kinds of. BigCommerce is another good example. And the first thing we'll do is we'll try and understand the reasons behind that, their pain points and what their future plans are. But for us, it's often the reason why woo is such a good choice is partly because of what I touched on earlier, where we will have businesses that often reach a point where they're trying to grow their business and they want to really. They've got a small marketing team, might be one person, might be two, three, four. Yeah, they're all overworked and they're so busy that they. We discover that they're doing a lot of manual, very manual processes that actually we can automate. If we built them a WooCommerce site, we can integrate the products with their, you know, product PIM or ERP system or whatever it might be. And there's so much we can do in terms of integration and improving efficiencies by bespoke development and bringing plugins in that can really free up a huge amount of their time and enable them to focus on really, you know, the things that will deliver a better sort of return for them so that they can grow the business. But I think WooCommerce is exceptional at that in terms of being that platform that for US is really powerful and really flexible and can grow with the business needs. That's why we love it. And that's. We've. We've yet to have a client that's left WooCommerce for another platform. Now, obviously that must happen. And I think that's probably because, you know, most of our clients are ambitious SMEs and fairly large businesses and Woocommerce is capable of growing with them.

Yeah.

If you're talking about your big multinationals, you know, huge businesses, then I can understand why they might consider Magento or another sort of bespoke.

Yeah, some enterprise.

Yeah, yeah, enterprise. But I think WooCommerce is just fantastic for any small store that's currently maybe on Shopify, but feel as though that they've now got some restrictions and they want to move to that next level, as you say, and they want to invest because it's a big investment. Right. Replatforming. They want to invest in the right platform that's going to work for the long term and grow with their business needs. And that's why we highly recommend Woo.

Yeah, and this is, I think, where WooCommerce starts to stand out, doesn't it? I think is the bespoke nature of what you can do with it. So you've got the basics there, which is sort of helpful. I know with Shopify you can add apps, but yeah, it's still. You're still constrained in many ways to that system. And certainly on the checkout you're constrained. Whereas if you want something that's a little bit different, if you want to start to create something that's a little bit bespoke, you've been trading for a little while, you've proven the concept, you've got some cash, you know, you. And you go, I just want to really do this in the checkout process, or I want to be able to cross pollinate this, that and the other, or absolutely whatever it is, all of a sudden it becomes possible. I'll give you an example how we didn't use Woocommerce when we had the beauty company. We had our own system, we wrote all our own code because that's just what we did back then. Would I do the same today? No, not on any kind of level, but that's what we did back then. And I remember we looked at Shopify and on our beauty website, the one thing that we wanted to do was when you ordered some products, we would give you samples. Now I'm Beauty in Beauty. Right. Free samples is a big Deal. Darren, you may not know this, I didn't know this until I got into beauty, but free samples are a big deal. They are a massive deal. You know, the samples that you get with your. Whenever you buy products from John Lewis or wherever. And so we were like, everybody's loving their samples, but in essence what was happening was you would get the order and we would just put whatever samples we had in the bag. Right. Just there it went. And so we were like, what would happen if in the checkout process we give you the ability to choose your own samples?

Sure. Yeah.

Right. Just. Well, let me tell you, that made a massive difference to the repeat purchase rate on our, on our business. Right. Just the ability to go, we'll choose your samples.

Yeah.

Well, how do you do that in a way that's not cumbersome, in a way that's easy and doesn't create friction in the checkout? Well, that wasn't as straightforward and we would have. We wouldn't have been able to do that on the Shopify platform. Not in any kind of way.

Yeah.

So we had to do everything bespoke. And this is where I think platforms like WooCommerce then start to stand out. You're deviating from the norm. You're trying to create a better experience, aren't you, for your customer with that bespoke. And I'm not even talking about overdeveloped. This was a simple thing, choosing samples. Right. We're not rewriting the whole Internet here, but it ultimately made a big difference to our business. And I can see why you say, actually when it comes to re platforming, you definitely want to think about it. It's been around, it's very well established, the code's pretty stable, but the stuff you can do with it is quite extraordinary.

Absolutely. And I think most of the projects we've worked on and there's been obviously lots over the last 20 years, in most cases, the client does want something bespoke like that. And we haven't yet had a challenge thrown to us that we've not been able to build with WooCommerce. And most of our developers, you know, that's what gets the most excited is when a client says, well, the thing is, you know, I've got these products, but I really want to do something that I've never seen before. Can you guys do it? And you're right. I think the example you've given there, we do actually have one client that's in the beauty sector and that's a WooCommerce site. So I. I totally understand your point about the samples, but you're right, that's a really great thing to be able to offer a client.

So, yeah, it does give you something quite extraordinary when you can start to tailor it and so on and so forth. How does it again? Forgive me and my ignorance, Darren, because like I say, it's been a few years since I've been on the. I really need to go check it out again. But the world of technology is obviously changing at a massive pace, right? I mean, just crazy to the point where 20 years ago when we started, I was a really good coder, right? I was really good, even if I do say so myself. Fast forward 20 years, I know there's just no way on God's green earth I could. It's just not going to happen.

No.

I can look at code and sort of figure it out a little bit, but if you would ask me to write it, I was just. No way.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I have been massively overtaken. I'm a dinosaur. I appreciate. I am the guy that still likes DOS in the Windows era, Jeremy. It's that kind of precedence and I'm like, how has WooCommerce and WordPress came. Sort of kept up with that because it always felt to me like I had my WordPress site, I had a theme, but then very quickly that thing would be out of date because the web was moving forward and stuff in the theme wouldn't necessarily work and unless you understood the code, it wasn't easy to change. How do we keep the WooCommerce sites up to date?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean the first thing I'd say is I've got a team of seven developers, a bit like yourself. 25 years ago I learned HTML CSS, built very basic static websites. I quickly decided I can't be a really good web developer and a really good web designer, so chose the design option. So my team would, you know, crucial thing that they need to do is they keep their finger on the pulse and make sure they keep up, really up to date with latest web front end and back end technologies and so on, as you'd expect. And there's been a big change in the last sort of 10 years, particularly with WordPress moving from the classic editor, which a lot of people complained about. And then they brought out this Gutenberg thing which you probably heard about years ago. That's all settled down now. So WordPress has really progressed, progressed and moved on and I think it had to because there was all these new. I mean, you've seen them, right, these do it yourself website builders that require node code builders, webflow. There's lots of things that are out on the market now that people can use to build websites quickly and easily without any sort of coding experience. So I think WordPress has done well at improving and keeping up with some of those competitors. In terms of WooCommerce, I think from what I've seen with WooCommerce, particularly over the last couple of years, is they're really aware of Shopify's growth and I think WooCommerce, and now they haven't told us this because we're a Woo expert. So we have connections obviously at WooCommerce and they speak to us about a partnership program that we work with them on. But I think it's been a real rocket up the backside to them seeing what Shopify are doing. And I think WooCommerce and now, you know, well, Woo, as they call it now, are trying to do a similar thing to keep up. But in answer to your question, yeah, it's tricky, I think. So our developers need to just keep their eyes on latest developments and in terms of maintaining the sites, that's fairly straightforward for them because they've got the skills to do it. But for someone that starts a store that hasn't got those skills, they've got to learn a bit about plugin updates because absolutely, Without a doubt, WordPress, you've got to think about security. You know, it powers 43% of the Internet. So yeah, does get targeted. It's just like Windows PCs get targeted for hacking. Whereas all of us use Apple Macs and I've never had a Mac that's been hacked in sort of over 30 years. But in a similar way, if you've got a WooCommerce store, the one thing you can't neglect is keeping your site, the WordPress Core, the WooCommerce plugin, up to date and really being hot on security. So that, that's an important thing that I would stress to anybody. And if you don't have the skills to do that, that's where I think it's critical that you reach out to a developer or an agency that can help you with that, because, you know, that really is. Is the highest priority, I would say. So, yeah, it's. It's not easy if you haven't got those skills for that aspect. But I think you, you know, you really would then need to. To get that expert help.

Yeah, fantastic, Fantastic. So check it out, check Out Woocommerce. It's, it's, it's an interesting platform. Just walking away from Woocommerce slightly. Darren, if I may, what are some of the trends you're seeing at the moment in E commerce? Just as a general thing where you think, oh, that's interesting. I'm kind of curious to see where this goes.

Yeah, I mean to be honest. So I've got in my team now, I've got, I've got a couple of guys that are out essentially E commerce leads E commerce experts and it's actually quite nice as an agency only you'll know this Matt, where you know, for years and years you try and do everything and wear so many hats but now we've got to a team size where we can have a couple of real subject matter experts as we call them and I sort of hand over to them, you know, this is your area of expertise. Our web designer Greg, he leads really on you know, UX CRO, really hot CRO, 20 years experience in E commerce and to be honest, I let those guys lead a lot more than I did. So I've my involvement now in terms of the world of E commerce. I've taken a bit of a backseat because I've got people that surrounded me that now, you know, dedicated with that role. So those guys lead on it a lot more than I do. But from my side personally, the one thing that, and this probably doesn't answer your question particularly well, but the one thing that really is my passion with what we do with E commerce and Woocommerce is delivering efficiencies and helping businesses that are still doing process, have manual processes where they haven't really harnessed digital transformation. And that's my passion, is to help those businesses and see how we can build E commerce sites and other things in WordPress that can really accelerate their processes and make everything far more efficient so that we can sort of supercharge the growth of their business. But I mean the one thing that my guys in the last few years we've really focused on with many of our E commerce clients is just email marketing is a big part of that, which we don't actually do, but we have partners that do and also conversion rate optimization. And really just thinking about how so many of our clients that used to, historically when we looked at their Google Analytics data and historically lots of their orders and their traffic through their traffic to their site and orders through their checkout were coming from desktop where we've seen that shift, where it's changed dramatically to mobile. That's become a huge focus for us now where most of what we do is very much mobile first. And we will put so much effort into building a fantastic user friendly mobile e commerce experience that's really fast, really simple, so that we get that conversion rate up on mobile. I think for me, over the last three to five years that's been huge for us. Even really B2B sites that we five years ago were say 80% desktop, 20% mobile. We're seeing those now where mobile has taken over and so we've had to focus a lot on how can we deliver the best possible mobile experience. Because obviously people and their phones, they're just glued together all the time now, particularly the younger generation. So that's a big focus for us.

It's a really interesting point, isn't it? And it's kind of assumed now. And listening to you talk, I'm thinking I probably shouldn't make this assumption that actually people are thinking mobile first. I do know that whenever a designer sends me concepts, for example, for a project we're working on or a new site or something, he always sends me the desktop files.

Absolutely.

And it's interesting, isn't it? Because for a designer you're like, well, there's a lot of real estate space on a desktop, so you're like, oh, I've got a lot to play with. This is. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super easy. And you go, well, that looks lovely on the desktop, but actually how's that going to look on the mobile? And it, and it's, it is a case of it sort of trickles down, doesn't it? And I, and I don't see actually. So you're right, I shouldn't make this assumption that actually we should think about mobile first. I'm thinking about a new website. Have you ever played around with the tool framer? Framer.com I think it is.

I haven't, but I've heard about it.

You've heard about it? I've been hearing lots of different things about it and I'm like, well, let me, I'm just gonna have a little play on Framer. And it's, you know, how does it compare? Something like Squarespace, for example. And you go, well, actually it's really good. But you've got to have, you've got to have a little bit of understanding in terms of how websites work to get Framer to work well for you. I don't think it's, I don't think my mum could use Framer you know, it's that. Whereas I'm fairly sure she could probably use something like Squarespace.

Yeah, yeah.

So it definitely doesn't pass the mum test, but it's really interesting how it works, you know, and how Framer works and how that whole thing puts together. And one of the things they have done, which I think is really fascinating, is on the design screen, as you're designing the site, you in effect see both the desktop and the mobile built together.

Interesting. Right.

And I've just been playing around on it and I thought, well, this is actually really useful that I can instantly see both at the same time and function and work in both environments. And so don't get me wrong, I definitely don't think it's a good E commerce platform at all. But I think I'm just having a play and just seeing actually that one of the features I like is the fact they've gone, oh, no, no, no, no, we need to think a lot about mobile here, chaps. And I thought they'd done that very, very well. So it's definitely worth having a play on.

I will, I'll check it out. And that's a really good point. I mean, one of the reasons we love the whole mobile first concept is I think it forces you just to think more about that content hierarchy, because you're essentially looking at sort of single column with desktop. People have got big screens now, you've got all this real estate. I think if you start desktop first and you're trying to make something look great, focusing on how it looks, I think it's easy to just not consider that content hierarchy. And if you're designing a product page and you're thinking of a user sat there with their phone, thinking mobile first really makes you think about the sequence of your content and which elements on the page, you know, go in which order. And we now find that it's really, it's much easier if you, if you start doing mobile wireframes and you're designing mobile first to. Then to crack that and then say, okay, now how does this expand on, you know, tablet desktop is really. It's a really enjoyable experience because you've kind of solved the real fundamental challenge for mobile first, single column first off. So, yeah, it works well for us.

That's really, really powerful point. So if you're listening. Well, you are obviously listening to the show. If you're hearing my voice right now, that's a really stupid statement, Matt, but, you know, I think, dear listener, this is a really important point when it comes to thinking about your website and the changes that you want to make, especially what we call UX change, you know, like how the user interface works, how the journey works, the fly, what a customer's got to do, what they're going to see when they're on the website, that whole side of things. Just taking a piece of paper, I find is still the most powerful way to do this. Darren, I don't know if you still do the paper thing, but in essence I'm just drawing boxes. No design elements, just boxes on a piece of paper. And this is helping me categorize. And if you think of that piece of paper as the width of a mobile phone, in fact, just draw three columns on an A4 piece of paper and you'll be fine. Like you say, it forces you to think about the hierarchy. What is, what is so important it has to go right at the top in the first part of the screen, what's the next important thing? And it's probably not what you think it is, right? And I think it's such a powerful thing, such a powerful way to think about your website.

Definitely.

Because so often it's just left, isn't it? Default, always responsive site figure itself out.

Yeah, very true.

Love that. Love that. Darren, listen, we've got to the stage of the show where I'm going to ask you for a question, mate. So this is where I asked my guest for a question, which sounds a bit odd given that this is a podcast. It was my podcast and I should be asking the questions. I appreciate this, but I asked guests for a question which I'm going to answer on my social media. So, Darren, what's your question for me?

Wow. So, I mean, obviously the last couple of years everyone's talking about AI, not just, you know, agencies, clients, businesses, it's what's the impact of AI going to. Going to have on my business and so on. So you're, you're a real expert at E commerce, right? Matt, you are the E commerce man. So I'm going to throw this one at you and it's, it's more of a, you know, AI has been around for a while now, so it would have probably been better for me to ask this a year or two ago when ChatGPT first appeared and everyone went crazy and talked about it. But from your point of view, what impact do you think AI might have on the e commerce world? Sort of, you know, it's probably already having some in certain areas, but that's something that I'd find quite interesting. To hear is sort of what impact in the short term but also the long term.

Very good. Well if you know what I think about EE Commerce and AI, check it out. I will answer that question on my social media feed. You can follow me at Edmondson on both Instagram and LinkedIn and we will be putting that answer up there shortly. But yeah, it's a fascinating question and topic. I, I feel like I'm just scratching the surface on it's interesting. I'm not answering the question now, I just refused it. But I am going to say this to you. I remember in our Mastermind group, the E commerce Mastermind group we have, I showed everybody how you could use ChatGPT to set up an E commerce business. Right? From everything to helping you choose the products, building the brand, the design and we just ran in about an hour and a half. I went from nothing to having a full on concept for an ecom brand including a name, some copy, some ideas, branding Jimmy and all that sort of stuff. And I remember doing that and this was Whenever it was 18 months ago now on ChatGPT. ChatGPT 4.0 had just come out. It was ChatGPT 4, not 4.04. It was ChatGPT 4 and Mid Journey which were just taking off and I remember then thinking have I just done what I. That's insane what you can do in an hour and a half. So yeah, and it was probably one of the most engaged sessions we'd ever done on the Mastermind because everyone's like.

Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?

It's just proper full on nuts. There's interesting because there's some debate now whether AI is actually everyone got very excited about AI but now AI seems to be like oh I don't know, I don't know if it's still going to be around in a few years because it's so expensive to keep going. It's not making any money. The energy use is unbelievable.

It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Ye the report I did a LinkedIn post, I think it was Google's sort of, you know, they're talking about their emissions from their servers. Data centers have gone up by a huge amount, mainly down to AI. So that's a scary aspect, isn't it?

It is a scary aspect. And the other point about AI which I find really fascinating is if you take it to its logical extremes. So you were talking earlier about one of the benefits of WooCommerce is I can do blogs, right, which is good from an SEO point of view, everybody's now using AI to write blog posts because everyone's a lazy little toe rag. That's fine. I have no issue that. Actually, I do have some issue with that, but let's not go there. So they use an AI to write the blog post. So in essence, if you take that to its logical conclusion, because the AI uses the Internet to propagate its own understanding, it's using its own content to propagate its own understanding. So the content is going to become more and more uniform and less and less interesting. Absolutely. And they've started to see that early signs of that already, which I find quite fascinating as well.

So we talked about that recently. I totally agree with you on that. So it would be. It'll be very interesting to see how it develops.

Yeah, wash his space. Come follow me on social media. We can talk about it some more. Darren, listen, it's been great, man. I've loved the conversation, loved hearing about WooCommerce. I'm definitely going to check out that platform some more than I have done recently. You've reignited my. My quest. Quest, is that right? Reignited my passion maybe for that whole platform. Brilliant. But if people want to reach out to you, if they want to find out more maybe about Fellowship Agency, maybe get you involved in a WooCommerce, maybe just have some questions about WooCommerce, or just want to reach out and say hello, what's the best way to do that?

Absolutely. So obviously check out our website, which is Fellowship Agency, and you can reach me through there, just through the inquiry form and you could check me out on the LinkedIn page. Quite easy to find on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to answer any questions. If some of them are highly technical, then I'll obviously bring in some of my developers to help. But yeah, that's the best way to reach me.

Fantastic. We will of course link to Fellowship agency and Darren's LinkedIn profile in the show Notes, which you can get along for free with a transcript on the website@ecommercepodcast.net Obviously, if you sign up to the newsletter, their notes will be in your inbox. And like I have been saying for the last few podcast episodes, because as much as I'd love you to sign up to the email list, you can also just scroll down to the podcast notes on your podcast app and follow the links there. That's also totally fine. But yeah, do reach out to Dan. I'm sure he'd love to connect and say, how's it But Darren, it's been great having you on the show, man, and I've really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation about Woocommerce and I'm intrigued. Again, like I say, it sort of reignited something, which is quite lovely. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your insights. Genuinely, really appreciate it.

Thank you. You're welcome. And thanks very much, Matt. Great to get around to doing this with you. Really enjoyed it.

Fantastic. It was very enjoyable. What a great conversation. Huge thanks again to Darren for joining me today. Now, be sure to follow the Ecommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, because we've got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And the bit that I know you're waiting for, in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Darren's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. We all love a little pep talk, don't we? Created awesome. Yes, you are. Now. The E Commerce podcast is produced by podjunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your face Favorite podcast app. The wonderful team that makes this show possible includes the talented and beautiful Sadaf Benon. Theme music was written by Josh Edmondson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website ecommercepodcast.net where you can sign up for said newsletter. Now. That's it from me. That's it from Darren. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.