[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Everyone welcome and I am wondering today if you have ever had an experience where you walked into a WordPress admin and questioned whether it was even the WordPress admin at all, or you have installed a brand new product and it just made you feel good when you installed it. Um, those two experiences are kind of like the polar opposites of the spectrum of things that we want to talk about today with you.

[00:00:36] So here we go.

[00:00:41] This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners, by WordPress product owners. And now, enjoy the show.

[00:01:10] Amber Hinds: Hey everybody.

[00:01:13] Everyone, this is WP product doc. My name is Matt Cromwell from Stellar WP.

[00:01:18] Amber Hinds: And I'm Amber Hines from Equalize Digital.

[00:01:21] And today we're talking about building better product experiences in WordPress.

[00:01:26] Amber Hinds: And that is why we have invited Mike today. Mike is the founder of 4iStudio, the creator of the innovative Ollie theme for WordPress, which is Pushing boundaries on user experience in WordPress and we're excited to have you here, Mike.

[00:01:43] Welcome.

[00:01:44] Mike McAlister: Thanks so much. I love this show. I'm happy to be here finally. Thanks.

[00:01:48] Amber Hinds: Great. Well, we would love to have you give a little introduction to yourself and what you're working on.

[00:01:53] Mike McAlister: Cool. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Um, if folks don't know me, I've been around WordPress for a long time. Since around 2008, 2009, something like that.

[00:02:03] It's so long ago. I can't remember. Um, but yeah, I've been around a long time. Um, I used to build websites with it for, as a freelancer and then got into the product space and had a lot of success with my first theme business, um, which was array themes and, uh, ran that for quite a while. Had a lot of success was on, uh, wordpress.

[00:02:23] com and theme forest and. Basically everywhere. You can sell themes back then. And then around the time that the block theme or the block editor arrived, I started working on blocks and things like that. And I built the atomic blocks plug in, which was people really loved. And then shortly after that, that was all acquired by WP engine.

[00:02:41] So I joined them and was a principal engineer over there for a while. And then most recently. I've started working on and launched, uh, with my partner, Patrick Posner, the Ollie block theme and Ollie Pro, which is like a paid add on, a paid design library that sits on top of the Ollie block theme. So that's where I'm at.

[00:03:00] And I'm just kind of all things WordPress education and design and development, and just trying to be a voice for the future of WordPress right now.

[00:03:13] Matt Cromwell: We're glad to have you here, Mike. And glad to talk about this today. If you are here watching live, then there's a little chat area over on the side where we are at as well.

[00:03:22] And we'd love for you to just say, hi, introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, where, where you are watching from most importantly, ask Mike some really hard questions because we will highlight your hard questions on the screen, make him uncomfortable. Uh, and, uh, it was answered for you. Um, use the chat.

[00:03:40] Um, but, uh, first things first, like every week that we do this, we like to talk about why the subject is important in any way at all. So who cares about product experiences? Why should we make it nice at all? Um, personally, like, uh, over the years I have seen a wide variety of products. I've. Built a wide variety of products that have looked a various degree of, of, um, of ugly or difficult or challenging.

[00:04:11] Um, but, um, even like the way in which we have evolved, uh, let's say the give WP plugin, um, the, the UI there has evolved a ton over the years. Um, and, um, I could say really, really clearly that as it evolved, uh, over that customers were able to. Answer their questions about how to use the product, uh, more easily.

[00:04:35] Um, and that to me is always the thing that drives why product, uh, experiences have to improve. Um, I, what I, cause I typically go from a customer experience perspective with most of this stuff. Um, I really want that when somebody drops into any of our products, that they feel like they know what they're doing, that they don't have to ask a lot of questions, that they don't have to click on a link to go to my website to read a document about settings in order to figure out, uh, which setting they have to enable or disable.

[00:05:07] Um, I want it to feel intuitive and that they're able to get to it. To success as quickly as possible. And the only way that happens is by having a great UI that explains itself really well. Um, and, uh, I mean, I think if you do that really, really, really well, you're already like a lot of the way towards success, um, no matter what kind of product that you have, um, that's personally my take in a nutshell, but Mike, you are here because we'd love to hear about your take, what's your take?

[00:05:36] Why is this subject so important for WordPress product owners?

[00:05:41] Mike McAlister: Yeah, that's, I mean, You've basically said it in a nutshell. You've said it perfectly almost because that is what it's about. It's not just that your product looks good and kind of speaks a certain level of quality, um, the, you know, that level, but also that it's, it is as self explanatory as it can be, um, within the confines of what we're talking about here is WordPress, which is kind of its own closed System.

[00:06:08] Um, but, you know, WordPress is particularly difficult because it is this, this monolithic thing that is, um, you know, you have all these constraints inside there, but at the same time, people can extend it in any way they want. They can make their own setting screens. They can make custom interfaces. They can change the whole editor.

[00:06:27] They can do this. They could do that. And so user expectations inside there are kind of like all over the place too. Right. So it's kind of a, it's a moving target and knowing what is a good experience inside WordPress and what is not is, it's not, it's not so clear. So, um, yeah, I would say what you said is, is, is perfect.

[00:06:47] And, and the best you can do inside WordPress. And I think particularly where we're at now in my world of block themes and full site editing. So I'm dealing with a lot of user. Questions and frustration around the UX for that. Um, You know, we have a huge task ahead of us right now in that it's, we're not just, you know, creating products for it, but we're also having to simultaneously create education, uh, along with these things.

[00:07:15] And in my opinion, right now, no product, no new product for this new modern era of WordPress will succeed without an educational element to it. It is not upon all of us as product makers, um, even people like Amber and her world, it is on all of us to take on this Part of this burden of education, just like we have always over the years, but, um, there's a lot more to teach.

[00:07:39] There's a lot more to, to kind of get out there. So, um, yeah, I think the, the product education part of it is a super important part of the user experience right now as well.

[00:07:48] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely.

[00:07:49] Amber Hinds: We've, we've seen a ton of that with our product, especially. Because it's a, it is intended to maybe help people learn something, but it's on a topic most people, even very skilled developers don't know a lot of detail of.

[00:08:07] And, and I think you're right. Like having that education component as part of your user experience is really important. And a lot of developers of plugins are really good at making products. Especially in the beginning, I think a lot of us kind of solve our own itch, right? But thinking about how you can create that user experience that, you know, welcomes people in, like you were saying, Matt, makes it really easy.

[00:08:35] And, and I think really, if you're thinking bottom line, like, why is this important? It's a stickiness. Factor two, if people don't know how to use your thing, they're not going to keep using it. And, and so as product owners, I think we really have to think deeply about what the user experience is in the product because we ultimately use and buy our product.

[00:09:00] And, and that's probably one of the most fundamental things.

[00:09:05] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. I think part of this though, a little bit begs the question, that I think we should address for sure, is what is it that actually makes a good product experience? Especially in a WordPress environment. Uh, how do we actually know when something is, um, a bad experience in WordPress?

[00:09:24] How do we know when it's a good experience in WordPress? I, I hinted to it in the, in the beginning about how, You can definitely walk into a product and be like, where, where am I now? Like, am I even in my admin at all? What happened? They kick me somewhere else or, or you come in and

[00:09:39] Amber Hinds: debate about onboarding wizards.

[00:09:41] Right. Yeah.

[00:09:42] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. They take over the whole screen and you're like, where am I? I don't know where I am. Um, so, uh, Mike, I'd love to hear your take a little bit. Like how, how do you figure out where is that line? Do we want it to look exactly like WordPress? Are we just using the WordPress UI? Cause the WordPress UI isn't particularly nice a lot of times in the admin area.

[00:10:02] Um, and, or how, how much should we, uh, uh, customize it?

[00:10:10] Mike McAlister: An unanswerable question almost because of how the dynamics of WordPress, but I will say that, um, you know, in terms of with, uh, we'll talk more about Ollie, but, you know, we built a site wizard with that, which, um, gained some traction, but we made the decision very early on that. We were going to build it in the same style of where WordPress was going because, and this I think gets into what like makes a good experience in WordPress is that there's already enough for users to learn and figure out inside of WordPress.

[00:10:45] If you're throwing at them with every plugin or theme that they install a new experience on top of that. A new interface, new paradigm setting screens that look like this and this, like this, it becomes just a hodgepodge and it's so hard to follow. And it does feel like a fragmented experience. And so even if, and when WordPress gets their new admin design, and it's more cohesive and it's feeling good, even if on that core level, it's better.

[00:11:14] And then plugins are still doing all of their own crazy stuff. It's still, we can't, we cannot bring it into like this harmonious experience, uh, with doing that. So with, with Ollie, uh, we decided very early on, we're going to make this, um, our kind of theme dashboard screen look exactly like the site editor, which is not extent, it's not extendable right now.

[00:11:36] So we had to just, Build it from scratch to make it look exactly like it because we want that experience of the site editor and our experience to kind of merge and feel like, Oh, I know this screen, even though it's an Ollie screen. I know this experience. I know on the sidebar, the things I can click, it's going to navigate.

[00:11:55] And I know to get out of it, I click the little WordPress icon and I'm out back into the, to the, the dashboard. So. I think that's a huge benefit in creating a harmonious experience and kind of meeting user expectations and kind of giving them those little breadcrumbs that they're familiar with. Um, and I do hope that with, um, we've seen some, some screenshots of the new admin redesign.

[00:12:18] Um, and sort of a standardization around settings, pages and things like that, um, that we can all buy into and hopefully the best products out there do, because that sets a good example, because then we do start to get this harmonious thing that feels right. It feels, um, cohesive. It feels like. Things are playing together, um, plugins are working together like they should.

[00:12:42] And, um, I don't know, I think that overall that wins us in the long term. We can, we can take this thing another 10, 20 years if we can get this thing really clicking together. Let's hope.

[00:12:54] Amber Hinds: I, I agree that they're probably, if we're talking about this, what's good, what's bad, um, it probably is really good to have something that cohesively fits in WordPress.

[00:13:06] And I think the, the hardest challenge there is knowing what, how far ahead to look, um, and it, it could change. And, and so there's this degree of as a WordPress product owner, particularly if you're getting, you know, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, million users that you probably have to have at least an eye on WordPress Slack.

[00:13:34] Like that's. You, you have to be paying attention. You can't just wait until they're like, Oh, Hey, we have a, you know, a beta, right? Like you got, you need to be thinking much further ahead on what's happening. Um, and following sort of news across various teams to make sure that your product's going to align with that.

[00:13:51] Cause it's hard to design. I do think, you know, one of the issues that. Some plugin developers have said is the reason why they've created different screens or admin experiences is that core does look really dated. And yes, we're now talking about an admin redesign, but we're talking plugins that years ago were like, this needs to look more modern.

[00:14:15] And so I think that is a challenge. And so something that we've talked about because we very much initially relied on let's just make it look like core WordPress. But it doesn't look very great. We've made a little mini iteration to separate out a little bit better. But one thing we've talked about is at some point, there are some plugins that are used by so many websites.

[00:14:37] So a good example and one we've talked about is Yoast, for example, is used on so many websites. And so we're like, that almost becomes a point that if you're like, you could also match your design, like how people navigate through the settings pages with the little secondary menu on the left to that, because enough other people have used that plugin that now your product will sort of match.

[00:15:02] Right, that and so it starts to build a consistent interface. So I think that's another sort of thing, which is you can take lead from other products as long as they have a big enough distribution, potentially not satisfied with core or you don't know where core is going.

[00:15:17] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's interesting. That's an interesting idea.

[00:15:20] Not as not to say. say necessarily that the Yoast, um, is necessarily a great product experience. It's, I'm not saying it one way or the other, but I could see what you're saying in terms of like, because there could be a different consistency.

[00:15:35] Amber Hinds: Other than Yoast. I randomly picked that one. Cause there's a lot, I'd say like, if it's got more than a million installs, it's probably worth looking at how they're handling setting screens.

[00:15:44] On any of those plugins, right? And because then you start to say, if we're looking at good experience being consistent, then it could be that that could be a right solution because it creates consistency.

[00:15:57] Matt Cromwell: I will say real quick, um, that one thing that I got kind of caught on is, uh, I have this, um, small blog series on my personal site that I call, uh, shiny new plugins, where I review the newest free plugins on.

[00:16:12] org. I haven't done it in a little while. I need to pick it up again. Uh, but there was, uh, one, uh, one article where I reviewed and I said, you know, there's a lot of. new plugins out there that are like drastically changing their whole settings UI completely different from WordPress. And I was like, don't do that if you don't have to.

[00:16:30] And I highlighted one that was really, really, really gaudy, like really loud, really gaudy. That plugin author emailed me afterwards. And he was like, Oh, Hey, by the way. It is really gaudy because we're in the Philippines and I think it was the Philippines or Taiwan, I forget right now. Um, and, um, and our, our people really expect loud colors.

[00:16:54] They want loud colors. They want big elements on the page. Um, and he was, he's like, I did it on purpose because that's what my audience wants. Um, and I was a little bit. Taken aback by my prejudices, I will just say. Um, but then I also was like, I get you. I hear you. That's your audience, but you're on. org and it's all in English and it's a global audience now.

[00:17:18] Um, so, and if you're only going to target that one niche of, of the globe, which is plenty, plenty of people, um, then I can see that. Um, but if you're planning on a. World stage, uh, you have to think a little bit different than that.

[00:17:35] Mike McAlister: Yeah, I, I, I get, you know, and Amber made a great point. Like there's a reason that, uh, people have chosen to go their own way for, to create better setting screens is cause like, yeah, if you were just to do the WordPress core one, it looks like it's from 1996, you just have a set like in, but you just have checks boxes and some inputs and.

[00:17:54] That's it. And like that is just simply not acceptable this year or 10 years ago, even to be perfectly honest. I think it actually highlights that maybe possibly have waited a little too long to address that. And, um, I think hopefully that's a good lesson going forward. It's like, And there's, there's a whole reason of like, there's a whole ethos about staying simple and extensible and not being opinionated in design.

[00:18:22] And I think that has worked for WordPress for a long time, but I do think we are staring at a different reality now and a different future and a lot more competition. And the level, the caliber of the competition is significantly higher than you could possibly imagine it was 10 years ago. So I do think we have to like, look at that and, and recognize that.

[00:18:44] No, we, we probably need to move a little faster going forward and be a little bit more opinionated so that we can give better experiences out of the box. Because, you know, there's, there's a lot of conversation about WordPress is growth. Where are we plateauing? We dip, we rise, our block themes getting adoption, you know, it's kind of slow.

[00:19:05] And so I think to kind of offset that and to kind of. Help guide everyone, point everyone to say like, no, we are investing and we are going forward and we are going to be, um, one of the best experiences out there, I think would be a good sign and something that people could really latch on to as an exciting thing.

[00:19:23] So, yeah, hopefully we, we, we start to see some movement like that because the current ad still today, if you were to try to make a settings page as the core one, it still looks a hundred years old. So, you know, what are we going to do with that?

[00:19:35] Amber Hinds: Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting the point of like getting products to lead WordPress adoption, um, because if you think about, if you think about it there, WordPress itself, WordPress, not automatic, not WordPress.

[00:19:53] com doesn't really do Advertising, right? Like a lot of the marketing for WordPress comes from products. Like I'm a nonprofit that needs a calendar on a website or I need to get donations or I need X, Y, Z things. Like I want to sell stuff and I start Googling like e commerce software. Right. And then I maybe get Shopify and I get WooCommerce.

[00:20:18] Right. Like, and, and so that I think the products bring people to WordPress. And so I think you're right, Mike, like having that good experience as people on board through a product. I mean, Elementor is the same way. Those people all use WordPress. I think half of them probably don't even know they use WordPress, right?

[00:20:37] But you go. To the Elementor website, you buy it, you get onboarded into this thing and get set up and if you have a good experience there, it's going to bring people and make people stick with WordPress, make it grow. I mean, we, NASA told us that part of why they chose WordPress was because of our products being available and there weren't other CMSs that had an accessibility solution for them.

[00:21:03] And so I think like as product owners thinking about not just, can you bring Your product, but you could bring people to the whole ecosystem is a really interesting thought.

[00:21:15] Matt Cromwell: Amazing. Yeah. There is a question here, a little bit niche, but it's definitely about product experience. I wanted to highlight super quick.

[00:21:22] Uh, I don't think he's speaking to any one of us, but directly, um,

[00:21:27] Amber Hinds: or I was wondering if this was related to Ollie.

[00:21:30] Matt Cromwell: Related to Oli, Mike.

[00:21:31] Amber Hinds: Will you make the pro plugin play with ACF and the blocks or will you have to use some external plugin to get them to play nice with ACF and other custom post types?

[00:21:38] Mike McAlister: He, they might be talking about Oli and I actually got a similar question on a, on a podcast I did the other day, um, with, uh, With Jamie from poodle press, but I think this is a good question.

[00:21:51] Is this kind of niche? So I'll just, I'll just high level it, but I don't think we're going to make any kind of specific integrations for like ACF in particular, especially 1 of the things that we're trying to align with with Ali. Like I said, and Ali pro is like, we're trying to be a native. WordPress solution product, we're not trying to really dip in to say, Oh, we're making WooCommerce stuff or we're in the ACF business, particularly with ACF.

[00:22:17] What's interesting is like, now we have custom fields, the API that's coming there and having, being able to, um, register custom post types natively with the UI also in the works. Um, I would much rather wait for that and then be able to build and ship things to work natively with that. So I'm not saying ACF isn't popular or powerful or anything like that, but I think the kind of direction that I'm looking to go and to take this experience is to keep it super native and therefore super like cohesive and seamless and, um, all inclusive and something that like you turn on WordPress, it's all there for you.

[00:22:56] You don't have to go. Doing these other things. So, um, that's kind of where I would land on that. Yeah. Is

[00:23:01] Amber Hinds: that because you, you don't like, like, we've all had that experience where we've installed a theme and the first thing it says is, okay, you need all these, like, eight other plugins, here's the required ones, and here's the two recommended ones, should we install them all now, otherwise this theme literally won't work.

[00:23:21] And you think that's not a good user experience. Is that, is that your approach on that?

[00:23:27] Mike McAlister: A hundred percent, because then you just become this like, you become this tiny entity with all of this stuff around it. And then you're responsible for keeping up with all those products. And then, you know, with my, with my old theme business, we did a WooCommerce theme or one or two themes.

[00:23:43] And then.

[00:23:43] Amber Hinds: And every time they had a new template update, you had to go release a theme update.

[00:23:47] Mike McAlister: And then like people are coming at you with support questions. And even though you tell them to go ask the WooCommerce question, they still come back to you and then you end up answering it because it's just easier for you to answer it and get it over with.

[00:23:58] And, um, then you just become kind of a pipeline for, for other people's support and things like that. So I'm, you know, And I also think like if there are themes made specifically for WooCommerce, you should just use that anyway. Those people spend their time optimizing for that. They help cover all the edge cases and everything like that.

[00:24:19] Um, so I think that's just the way to go that, but Amber, you're absolutely right. Is that like, Once your product is now attached to all these other products and the experiences and those other products might be bad or not great or whatever. And that reflects on you. And then, so it's, I don't know, it's a tough thing.

[00:24:36] The, the, the pluggable world of WordPress is kind of, you know, a gift and a curse sometimes. So, um, it's a great point though.

[00:24:44] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. It's fun to have a plugin folks talk with theme folks and about the pain points that WordPress has and, uh, our tendency to kind of point at each other sometimes, um, or, or just both be like, yeah, this just sucks.

[00:25:03] Um, I think the one thing I've, What I do like about this question too, is that, is kind of like the plug inception concept that can happen sometimes where it's like, well, now I need a plugin to fix my plugin, or I need a plugin to like adapt this other plugin, or now I want to have a custom post type, and this theme doesn't support post types very well, and so now I have to have a page builder in order to build out a post type, and you start to like it.

[00:25:28] I have to think through too many steps just to come to success in one form or another. Um, and that, I think that's, that's a little bit of the line that you're trying to, when you say we're trying to have this be as native to WordPress as possible. I think if every plugin and every, uh, theme, um, thought more like that, then ideally in an ideal world.

[00:25:49] They would play a lot better with each other. Uh, they would register their taxonomies correctly. And then the other folks who are checking for taxonomies would pick them up automatically because it's just a taxonomy. It's not some weird thing, you know? Um, but, uh, so often these types of weird cOlliesions happen because folks do get a little bit too creative in the way that they're trying to implement stuff.

[00:26:13] Amber Hinds: But we, you know, it's worth highlighting for a moment here that WordPress core has this. Same problem too, like a really great example of this is the outline in the post editor where it tells you the headings that are on a page, it only recognizes core headings, so any other builder, any other block library, or even just like a custom block that is being inserted into that page that has a heading on it will not show in the outline.

[00:26:42] So I do, I like, I know we're saying like everything should just respect and like, Try to do it in a standard way. But if we can't even do something that seems so basic like that in core, like I don't know if it's as easy as it might be.

[00:26:59] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, no, it's true. I, um, I think there again, it's one of those spectrum types of things.

[00:27:04] Um, I've seen, you know, the, the way in which, honestly, very, very early Divi days, Divi in the very beginning, like it had, it did nothing like what WordPress did. And I think on purpose and it made it impossible to ever get off of Divi. Um, for just as an example, they've, they're radically different today.

[00:27:26] And that, and they actually are a really amazing team. They do a lot of great work. Um, but you know, it wasn't that much different back in the day from like, um, what was that one? The visual builder one in, uh, in Vado. Yeah. Visual composer too. Like you just, you just find this one niche of the WordPress community.

[00:27:45] Code and you just exploit it so extremely, um, yeah, yeah. That it becomes untenable for anybody to interact with it in any way.

[00:27:55] Amber Hinds: All right. Now though, from a literal devil's advocate standpoint, I don't know if Divi would say it's a problem that people can't leave Divi.

[00:28:04] Matt Cromwell: I mean, as a

[00:28:05] Amber Hinds: product owner, it's a perspective.

[00:28:07] Matt Cromwell: It's a perspective you can have.

[00:28:12] Amber Hinds: It's a feature, not a bug.

[00:28:14] Matt Cromwell: It was really interesting. We, uh, anybody watching, like we had Matt Mullenweg on the show a couple of weeks ago and he brought up the data liberation project. Um, and one, one thing that's really interesting about that is like. The, the, the big headline about data liberation is like getting folks off of Squarespace, off of Wix.

[00:28:33] But if you go and you look at the actual project, there are WordPress products on there as well. There are WordPress themes that have custom blocks that are part of the data liberation project. How do you get off of Elementor and get onto a hundred percent Gutenberg website? Um, and so that it's one of those things that's like.

[00:28:52] You know, is it actually really beneficial for any of us WordPress product folks to think I want to have customer lock in is that actually really good for the ecosystem? Uh, is it good for your own business? Like me personally, I'm going to say no, you know, um, it's no, yeah. I mean, uh, do you flirt with that line at all, Mike, or have you had to think through it in any way?

[00:29:19] Mike McAlister: Never once because I just didn't like. You know, as I'm kind of a simple business owner and that, like, I'm here to facilitate and provide you with a product. I'm not interested in growing a business so big that I have to do things like that or keeping customers like that. If somebody is not happy with the product, instant refund.

[00:29:40] High five. See you later. Hope you come back one day. Um, no, I'm just not interested in growing a business like that. And, um, the complications that it brings you as a business owner in the end and being seen in the community as somebody who's locking people up, um, like that. So no, I'm, I'm, I've never learned it.

[00:29:58] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Same, same, good company here. Um, let's transition into story time and Mike, I'm going to set you up a little bit. Um, uh, so we want to talk about personal experiences with building great product experiences. And, um, the, the one that kind of really puts you on the stage was the. The Ollie, um, onboarding experience, which got a little bit of drama, uh, around it in terms of like, uh, it wasn't accepted on the theme, uh, directory because essentially the onboarding experience was plugin territory.

[00:30:31] Uh, you can't, and they were saying you can't ship a theme, which is essentially a plugin. Um, I wanted to hear from you a little bit, and of course you should say whatever you want to say, but like, uh, it's your story time, not mine, but I would love for you to just tell us a little bit of like. From a product experience perspective, what motivated you to build that onboarding experience?

[00:30:53] Why did you feel like it was necessary for Ollie to have that kind of onboarding experience?

[00:30:59] Mike McAlister: Yeah, thanks, um, for that setup. So yeah, if those who don't know, Ollie is a WordPress block theme. This is a new kind of WordPress theme. Where everything is built with content blocks. So you can customize everything in the WordPress editor.

[00:31:13] You can change the colors, the typography, all that stuff. Build new templates, customize templates. It all happens in WordPress. And so, you know, I started building the Ollie theme. And. You know, one thing that became very clear very early on was that even though block themes had been out for a year, almost two years, by that point, people just were not building them.

[00:31:37] They were not creating them. They were not using them. Really. Adoption is still to this day, pretty slow. And then the people who were using them were like, What the hell is going on in this thing? I can't figure it out. The there's a site editor. There's a block editor. There's like different screens. I'm editing my menu and a box that looks like this for some reason.

[00:31:59] And there's things in the sidebar. And so, um, where do I change my logo? What about my brand colors? So, you know, I, for the longest time have seen the power of the site editor, the block editor as a designer and developer. I've long wanted all of these things in WordPress. And so now we have them. So I've been excited about this stuff for years.

[00:32:21] Um, so with building Ali, it was like, yeah, I can build a theme. I've built hundreds of themes, um, and multiple theme businesses. That's not that exciting. Okay. What else can we do to solve some of these problems? And with Ollie, it was, the idea was okay. Uh, onboarding is not coming to WordPress anytime soon.

[00:32:42] What can we do on the theme level that can give these people a headstart, not only solve some of the problems, like helping them set a logo or just pick a brand color. Change, you know, create a few base pages, like a homepage and about page, a blog page, and set those so they didn't have to go dig into their settings.

[00:33:01] So that weird homepage, blog setting that is somehow still a thing. Um, but also teaching them along the way what this stuff is and like how to interact with it. And, um, just giving them those breadcrumbs to, to get. To where they need to be with this, this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, my partner, Patrick and I, we, you know, um, started building this thing.

[00:33:26] Um, and we knew all along. It was like, this may, this probably won't fly on workforce. org, but it was also just, it just felt like we were at a time where it was like, no, I think it's worth trying because if everyone is telling me and the WP tavern is reporting that block names is just stale. No, one's using them.

[00:33:43] I was like, maybe we can just. Yeah. Invigorate this with an interesting experience. And so we spent a ton of time dialing this thing in and really using our pain points as WordPress experience developers and users over the years. Like we know the pain points we deal with them every day So we've dialed this thing in and tried to get rid of all of those things with just a few steps Just just streamlining and a few screens um Some of those steps and and kind of getting out there so we like I mentioned earlier, we designed it in the same style as the WordPress site editor this new view So it looked, it fit kind of, it was like very cohesive and, um, yeah, we were very happy with the early beta testing people were hyped on it.

[00:34:31] It was like, people were like, finally, thank you. This is great. And so we did have the confidence to submit it to wordpress. org in the theme. And we thought, let's just, let's just try it out. And so, as, as Matt mentioned, it did kind of become a. A contentious thing almost. And which is funny because I'm like the least drama of person on the internet, but you still get, you know, if you shake things up, you're going to get, you're going to get in a little bit of good trouble here and there.

[00:34:58] And I thought that's what it was worth fighting for is like, this might be good trouble. This might actually. At the very least it might start a conversation and maybe it means something else. So, and, and it did, we, we submitted it, we got some forceful pushback by a very small few, um, and their feedback is perfectly valid and sometimes the delivery was a little rough, but you know, we understood that like, this is not traditionally themed territory, some of this stuff, but at the same time, we're, are now doing things in WordPress core that are not traditional.

[00:35:31] Theme territory, storing content in the database and the way certain settings are stored now and things like that. It's like, well, styles. Yeah. It's like styles and content are now interlocked. Whereas before the ethos was like, you, Oh, you never do that. The appearance and content are always separate. And now we're just smashing them together in a blender and saying like, well, forget about that for now.

[00:35:51] We'll, we'll come back to that, that fight later. Um, so I thought, you know, this is a worthwhile conversation to have and an attempt to do this. Um, and it generated a ton of conversation. Matt Mullenweg chimed in, um, the executive director, uh, chimed in, um, and ultimately they were in favor of it. They wanted to let it go.

[00:36:17] They wanted to let it release on WordPress. org, which was, Awesome. Um, I thought this was really cool that the conversation even boiled up to them. This is nice. What we intended on, but this is how it got there. So, um, and you know, we had, I had, um, uh, some back and forth with Josefa in Slack and we kind of talked it out and they wanted to do it.

[00:36:38] Cause they thought it could be a good, kind of like what I said, that it could be a good example of an experimentation of what we can do with WordPress now. Here's what you can do if you tap into the JavaScript that Matt has been talking about for years. Here's what you can do with these new experiences if you spend the time and want to shape it for users.

[00:37:00] Ultimately though, the, the, the pushback we were hearing from a lot of other people and some people I highly respected, um, we ultimately decided not to ship it in there because while Matt was cool with it and Josefa was cool with it, it felt like We were going to be setting an example that people later could point to and say, this is why you don't do it.

[00:37:23] Or this is, this was wrong. And they, they got a pass and they didn't go, you know, they didn't do right by the community. And we just weren't interested in that. We don't want to be like, as much as I want them to experiment on dot org and relax the rules for experimentation and innovation. It didn't feel like in that moment, that was the way to do it.

[00:37:45] And we wanted to bear the, like the brunt of criticism about that going forward. So, you know, I feel like I was really, I was grateful. There was so much optimism and enthusiasm and I really appreciated everyone doing that. But I think we would have to do that. We need to first define at the WordPress. org level.

[00:38:06] What are we, what is the rules on experimentation so that we can set a precedent before throwing somebody in there as an experiment and saying like, good luck, hope it works out for you. Um, so anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll pause there and see if there's yeah,

[00:38:20] Amber Hinds: I think, I think this has an interesting connection to something.

[00:38:23] I sort of told you when we were doing our pre show conversation, I wanted to talk about, which is, um, the line to where we should put something in our own product. Because we think it belongs in a WordPress website, or we should actually just contribute that to core. So your conversation about being, you know, having an onboarding wizard for a theme as like, you know, this is probably needed now.

[00:38:49] People don't understand, and I think, you know, it is the best user experience for full site editing. I was someone who didn't know that. Took forever to figure out how do I even like add a page to my navigation menu? And I just kept being like, I've been using WordPress for 10 years and I don't know how to do this.

[00:39:02] How can this be this hard? Right. So I think, you know, but then, so then we have this question of maybe that should have actually been a contribution to core because we think everyone needs this. And, and I'm curious, um, What's your thoughts are, um, on, on that and why, you know, maybe you decided to build it in a theme verse saying, Hey, we need this onboarding wizard for every FSE theme.

[00:39:30] And so we're going to make it a core thing that automatically triggers. And then we don't have to worry about, Oh, well now this theme has one that looks like this. And this theme has one that looks like this and this theme, right. Which is that snowball of allowing one, right. Um, I have some thoughts about this too, but I'm curious for your initial, like, why, why didn't you.

[00:39:47] Contribute that to core.

[00:39:49] Mike McAlister: Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, um, I think that the, and there was a lot of people that asked the same question while this was all kicking up and the, the short answer is designing something and creating something and implementing it in your product is so much easier than trying to go through core.

[00:40:11] And

[00:40:12] Amber Hinds: which has many layers of gatekeepers.

[00:40:14] Mike McAlister: Yeah. Well, just the, yeah, the, the red tape and the bureaucracy for sure. But like also just the endless amount of edge case situations that you have to consider that by the end of it, this thing's been fizzled down to the most generic experience that is like. Almost unhelpful or unused, unuseful in a way by having an opinion and being able to say, no, I think this is how it should be.

[00:40:36] And based on all of our testing, I think we, we nailed certain parts of it that, that I would not have been allowed in WordPress core, even as a plugin, by the way. Um, so there are certain things that we did that was like, no, let's set the setting for them. Let them choose a thing and we'll set it on the underside and things like that, that I don't think you can do it with, with core plugins.

[00:40:57] But, um, So we did consider that, but you know, we were trying to also, we had been working on this theme for a while. It was time to get it out. I had a baby on the way, like the next three weeks later, I had a baby on the way and it was like, I just actually, as a new business owner, a baby on the way, I still freelancing on the side, a freelance design partner on the side.

[00:41:20] It's like, I actually can't. Sit and babysit this thing through to core. And then that's a full time job. And it's, it's like, it needs teams. You need teams on that to do it. So it just, it actually just wasn't realistic that we could take what we built and slide it into a core thing.

[00:41:37] Matt Cromwell: I mean honestly, at the end of the day, I'm, I hope that there are core committers out there or core team members out there who are listening in, because the truth is like, I'm, I think lots of folks are interested in there being some sort of at least onboarding framework in core. Um, and as soon as core folks are serious about it, they should come knocking on your door. Like that's how it should go, because the truth is, you know, why haven't we committed to core? Because there's no core submission like you can you can go and submit ideas and you can commit do a track ticket You can say here.

[00:42:18] Here's all the code do whatever you want with it The truth is to take that code and make it work in core like Mike said takes a team takes a long time and and And that's after you get all the consensus that people actually believe it should be in core, which that is sometimes the hardest process is to get all that consensus going first.

[00:42:39] Um, I, I, you know, I've often tried to put myself in the shoes of like, of like Mullinwagon Automatic if it, you know, if I, if, if give was like wildly successful and there was like a billion people who were using give for online donations. Um, Would I just be taking core submissions left and right all the time?

[00:43:01] Like, I don't think I would, you know? Um, I, I, I think it'd be like, I need to make sure that we keep the ship going straight here. Um, uh, there, there is a really great example of Pippin Williamson used to talk about all the time. He's like, there is a sense in which with easy digital downloads in particular, he was like, I get customers every once in a while who say, um, are, when are you going to add shipping into easy digital downloads?

[00:43:26] And he was like, Never, like you could, I could have a thousand customers say that they want shipping and easy digital downloads and I'm not going to add it cause that's not its purpose. Um, you still have the

[00:43:40] Amber Hinds: product.

[00:43:42] Matt Cromwell: It's an easy digital downloads product like that's what it's for. Um, you want it to be WooCommerce, go to WooCommerce. Um, you have to be able to have a North star and know where you're going. Um, you know,

[00:43:53] Mike McAlister: and I get that. And like for WordPress, I think it rings particularly true because everyone wants everything in WordPress. I would say the one thing that, you know, is really worth listening to is if you look at the, the interest that that one little onboarding wizard generated, it was being written about everywhere. It was, everyone had an opinion. Everyone liked it. A few people didn't like, small parts of it and, uh, no matter what you thought about it, everyone agreed almost like overwhelmingly that no, we need something like this in WordPress core, especially now where the user experience is more important than ever as we kind of head into the future.

[00:44:35] And I think that's important to understand is that when you have that many people telling you something, you have to really log that somewhere and get, get the ball rOllieng because there was, you know, after all that had died down, there was, uh, there was this initiative to get something like that in core and.

[00:44:54] It lasted maybe a week, two weeks, and that was the, that was the last time it was, it was mentioned. So

[00:45:01] Matt Cromwell: we'll hear about it again and give it six years. We'll hear about it.

[00:45:03] Mike McAlister: Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But

[00:45:06] Amber Hinds: I'm curious, did all that news and PR or whatever you want to call it. Did that convert into a lot of longstanding users and or customers for you, or was it just a short blip of attention that didn't actually convert into anything meaningful on the business side?

[00:45:25] Mike McAlister: Maybe, maybe a little bit, but nothing, you know, in WordPress. It's, it's prolific as WordPress is and powers on godly amounts of the internet. Our bubble is still pretty small when it comes to like, to, to news and things like, like tech tech world is not picking, you know, they're not picking up on our stories or anything like that.

[00:45:45] So if it's not on the tavern or a handful of the popular newsletters, it's like. Out of sight, out of mind.

[00:45:51] Amber Hinds: Well, and even, even that, like how many, what, a thousand people actually follow that stuff?

[00:45:56] Mike McAlister: Exactly. Exactly. So no, I think

[00:45:59] Matt Cromwell: we're growing WP Product Talk. We're getting the word out there.

[00:46:02] Mike McAlister: That's right. Yeah. It's, it's small WordPress. That's it. The thing is with WordPress is that there are generally smaller audiences, but they're more loyal audiences, I think, in that you don't need 50,000 WP Product Talk subscribers. That would be awesome. Um, but the ones that do follow are very likely watching it very regularly.

[00:46:24] And there are people who are plugged in to the goings on and WordPress. And, um, that's its own powerful thing too, but long story short, no, I don't think it actually added too much. Honestly, I think just releasing Ali with, um, The kind of, uh, the beautiful designs that it had built into it that people thought, like, probably weren't possible with the site editor and the block editor.

[00:46:49] And they were like, holy cow, these patterns. I can't believe you just built these with like native blocks. That was, I think, more impressive to people than anything was like, it was more of a statement of like, what's possible. And I thought that resonated.

[00:47:01] Well, we are getting to the end of our time and we'd like to wrap up each episode by talking about, uh, best advice.

[00:47:10] Um, so, uh, the idea is you're stuck at a word camp going different directions and you run into somebody who's like, Mike, you got to tell me what's your best advice to make great product experiences happen. You got like three sentences or, you know, three minutes, I guess. Um, uh, what's your, what's your best advice?

[00:47:29] Uh, for somebody like that brand new product owner who wants to build great product experiences.

[00:47:35] I would say, like, I've always said, if you want to build a great product, you have to understand the problem deeply. You need to be a victim of the bad experience that you're trying to solve. You need to suffer in the same ways that other people suffer for the product that you're trying to make Problem you're trying to solve because the same is true with like everything I build.

[00:47:57] I'm having success with Ollie because of the many years i've spent building themes and the many years i've spent building wordpress websites And so i'm able to see those pitfalls And listening to customers listening to users being a part of the community Understanding the conversations that are going on And the pain points.

[00:48:14] And therefore I can kind of make a, an opinionated and a good guess at what a good product might be for a specific audience in that space. So understand the problem. Um, and it'll make your life a whole lot easier. It'll remove the guesswork from creating a good product and it'll give you a great headstart.

[00:48:32] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Love it. Amber, what about you?

[00:48:36] Amber Hinds: So I think my best advice. On a user experiences, you have to do user testing. You have to bring in people who are not at your company, who have not been, you know, in all of the discussions about what this user experience is supposed to be. Just random people that represent your target demographic for your product and get them on zoom.

[00:49:03] And watch, don't tell them how to do it, but say something like, okay, if you were going to install this and set up a website, what would you do and just have them watch and narrate through and occasionally ask them questions. Uh, I think you can't, you cannot have good user experience without user testing.

[00:49:24] Matt Cromwell: Love it.

[00:49:25] Amber Hinds: What's your advice, Matt?

[00:49:27] Matt Cromwell: Ah, my advice, I actually give very similar advice almost every episode I feel, um, which is usually like dumb it down, keep it simple. Um, I really think when it comes to product experiences, the simpler it is, the better it is in the longterm. Definitely don't try to get fancy or tricky.

[00:49:45] Um, like even like a really simple marketing advice I give all the time is folks like to get all creative with their, with their buy now buttons. Let's get started or take off over here. Like they just say all these weird words and like, no, no, no. Like tell them "Buy Now", like just say, "Buy Now", like purchase, like, um, just say that word, uh, that's all, uh, keep it simple because, uh, folks don't want to have think, uh, in order to do the next thing that they want to do, they want to just understand.

[00:50:17] Um, and, um, that's easiest to do, uh, for a new product. Um, when you keep it really simple, um, uh, as soon as you introduce new crazy ideas or fancy UIs and things like that, you start making your folks think too much. So

[00:50:33] Mike McAlister: I love it. That's great.

[00:50:37] Matt Cromwell: Well, that is a wrap. That is all we have for today, Mike. Again, I'm so glad you were here to join us and talk about your experiences and your take on product experiences, and also for introducing this topic for us.

[00:50:49] Uh, thanks so much, Mike. Where can everybody find you online?

[00:50:53] Mike McAlister: You can find me on Twitter at Mike McAllister, Twitter slash X. Um, or you can go to OllieWP. com, uh, to check out Ollie and you can find links to, to get me there as well.

[00:51:04] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Excellent. Uh, tune in next week, folks, as we are going to have Patrick Rolland on the show.

[00:51:11] Uh, he's going to be talking about what to do about all the declining SEO results everybody's getting right now. Um, I'm excited to listen in on that one. Uh, Katie and Zach are going to be here next week. Uh, I'm looking forward to it.

[00:51:28] Oh, did we lose Amber? Uh,

[00:51:32] Amber Hinds: we're going to do special thanks to Post Status for being our green room. If you're enjoying these shows, please do us a favor, hit like, subscribe, share it with your friends, reference this show in your email newsletters. And most of all, we hope to see you next week.

[00:51:45] Matt Cromwell: Thanks everyone.

[00:51:46] Bye.