[00:00:00] Amber Hinds: If you have a WordPress product, there's no reason to think beyond plugins, right? Not so fast. In today's world where website owners increasingly demand more from their sites and stretch, want to stretch the boundaries of what can be done within WordPress, you should think out the plugin, outside of the plugin and theme box too.

[00:00:23] Would your product benefit from a companion web or mobile app? Should your plugin not be a plugin at all, but be an app instead? Find out in this episode of WP Product Talk.

[00:00:39] Matt Cromwell: 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.

[00:01:03] Amber Hinds: Hi, I'm Amber from Equalize Digital.

[00:01:06] Matt Cromwell: And I'm Matt from Stellar WP.

[00:01:09] Amber Hinds: And today we are talking about apps, both web and mobile, and how to know if your WordPress product needs a companion app. Or as I said before, maybe it shouldn't be a plugin and should be an app instead.

[00:01:22] Matt Cromwell: And that's why today we've invited Colin Daniels, co founder and CEO of Grenade here to talk with us today.

[00:01:28] Colin, welcome.

[00:01:30] Colin Daniels: Hi, Amber and Matt. Thanks for having me on the show.

[00:01:33] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Uh, do you have a minute to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do?

[00:01:39] Colin Daniels: Yeah, sure. Um, So, um, my name is Colin as you know, and yeah, I've been in the WordPress space for a long time. Um, I started my first blog in around 2004 and that's when I first started using WordPress, so early days and kind of always remained in the ecosystem in one way or another, um, moved more into the business side, um, of media and publishing and managed to get WordPress in.

[00:02:07] Into those kind of, uh, industries, uh, where I worked. Um, so I've always really had a love for WordPress and as it evolved, uh, we started a digital agency, myself and my partner Robin, and, uh, we, uh, initially tried to do our own content management system and, uh, which is ironic for publishers, um, But most of our clients were requesting WordPress sites.

[00:02:32] So, you know, we never really got out of, out of WordPress and, um, yeah, over the years we, we did a lot of custom WordPress development, plugins, apps for, for, for customers, and, um, we tried a lot of things and, uh, Over time we managed to productize our business and drop the agency side, which I think is a common theme in the WordPress space.

[00:02:58] And, uh, yeah, here we are today. We've got two, uh, main products. One of them is Foo Events, which is a events and tickets managing, uh, product management. Plugin suite for, uh, WooCommerce specifically and FooSales, which is a points of sales system for WooCommerce as well.

[00:03:18] Amber Hinds: And that's, uh, I think we were talking a little bit before we started.

[00:03:21] That's a SAS, the point of sale system.

[00:03:24] Colin Daniels: Yes, that's correct. That's so, so two very different business models. A few events is, as I said, like a plugin suite with add ons, the traditional annual pricing, you know, pay for updates and support, um, GPL and, uh, food sales is, yeah, more SAS, um, monthly annual pricing and, um, yeah, you, you paying for the platforms.

[00:03:49] Yeah,

[00:03:51] Amber Hinds: we've had other conversations with guests debating the merits of creating SaaS, but I'm excited about this conversation because we haven't previously discussed what it means for a WordPress product owner to have a companion app. Um, so, you know, we always like to start by talking about. Why is this important or why should product owners be thinking about this?

[00:04:16] Um, yeah, I've thought a little bit about this and, you know, I think one of the things we talk about a lot nowadays is how can we be as accessible? Not accessibility accessible, but accessible, like easy to use and always with someone maybe in their pocket on the go on their mobile phone. Um, and so I think that there's a lot of really great use cases for having a mobile app.

[00:04:40] Um, like you were talking about your event manager app that allows people to check guests in while they're there, uh, by scanning a QR code or something like that. But I'm curious, Colin, maybe you could kick us off on this. Why is it so important and share some thoughts on why you think WordPress product owners might need to consider building an app as part of their product strategy or roadmap?

[00:05:04] Colin Daniels: Yeah, I think that's the million dollar question. And. Personally, I don't think we would have a business if we didn't do that. Um, so I think one of the first reasons would be just to extend, to be able to extend WordPress. I think, uh, WordPress is so powerful right behind the scenes, but there's so much more you can do with, with a native app.

[00:05:31] Um, so in our case, we, we have the check ins app for few events and we're able to connect with hardware, you know, we're able to connect with. Bluetooth barcode scanners and things like that. Um, with foo sales, we're able to do, um, card scanners, bark, uh, barcode scanners as well, and a whole bunch of extra functionality, things like offline mode, for example, it makes it a lot easier to do that, which are some of the features and functionality.

[00:06:00] Yes. It's getting a bit easier now with. With with web, uh, but there are still certain things that natively with, uh, apps, you can do that. You just can't do with with web. So that's one of the biggest reasons is just to be able to extend the power of WordPress. Um, the other thing is to. Differentiate yourselves.

[00:06:19] I think, you know, there's so many competitors. The barrier to entry is quite low with with plug in development. Um, as soon as you introduce an app, you creating some natural barriers to entry ways of differentiating yourself from from your competitors. Um, also think it opens up. Your business to alternative pricing and business models.

[00:06:42] So, you know, there's certain things you can do like metered pricing and, uh, per platform pricing or per device pricing. So it really creates some interesting business models, um, compared to just the normal annual, you know, uh, plugin license. So that's another really good reason, uh, for, for looking at it.

[00:07:03] Um, I think the user experience personally. Once again, web is really slick, especially with react and, you know, the, the JavaScript libraries that exist, but I still think the user experience, a native app user experience is better for, for many use cases. And you also get more in depth, you can get more in depth, uh, You know, metrics, um, user tracking, that kind of thing, which, you know, it's just natively built into these, uh, into what you can natively build into the apps, uh, and of course, push, push, uh, notifications, uh, that all ties into that user experience too.

[00:07:42] So obviously it depends very much about what your plugin or your product is, you know, and just having an app for app sake is also not advisable, but I, I really do firmly believe that. For most plugin developers, uh, and builders having a free companion app or extending your business through a pro version of something, uh, you know, that will offer a lot of benefits.

[00:08:12] Amber Hinds: Yeah. I think the, the whole idea of being able to allow people to interact with your product offline is something I never even thought about until you said that just now, and, and now I'm just thinking, wow, that really is actually really useful. So what about you, Matt? Why do you think this is an important topic?

[00:08:33] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. Mostly because I do think WordPress product owners in general have to be thinking about all of the tools in the tool shed. Um, and yeah, plugins and themes. They're kind of the standbys that have been there for forever and ever. And, um, and, uh, they're, they are going to impact the, the, the website in one form or another, but, but the web is getting more complex, um, more robust, uh, a lot larger, um, than just simply a static ish website.

[00:09:02] Um, and so we always got to be thinking as much, uh, of how we could be useful, um, to all of the business goals that our customers have in different ways. And web apps are a good one. I think the first time that I really got exposed to a really interesting Application for web apps was, um, through I did a lot of websites in the past for churches and churches always wanted to have their like calendar of events and things, uh, available, um, in a really like a static, uh, HTML type, uh, format because, um, they often, they, they, they complained that they had, um, Um, that their wifi got overrun when they were during church services and whatnot, and they have too many people all trying to get on the wife at the same time.

[00:09:49] Um, and so, uh, having it there as an app available that would just load up or it would get, it would get preloaded whenever the person was on the wifi, it would get preloaded with the events ahead of time. Then they could. Come on to church and then, Oh, like the future events are actually there, even though I'm not on the wifi.

[00:10:07] Um, that kind of thing. I, I was like, well, that's super practical. Um, a really interesting application of something that I never would have thought of previously. So, um, that's, that's kind of how I think through the subject a little bit.

[00:10:23] Colin Daniels: Yeah. Uh, so that's an interesting one. Our, um, our check ins at for events, um, when we initially built it, we actually saw it, we, we, it was a pro version, so we charged for it.

[00:10:36] We started charging for it on the app stores. We thought this would be a great, uh, additional revenue stream to, to the plugin. Um, and it's, it did okay, but we realized that by making it free, it was so integral to the offering. Um, And the user experience, and we actually saw our sales, you know, skyrocket when we did that, because now we were making it accessible and available to more people.

[00:11:02] And it just extended the functionality of the plugin suite. And, you know, we're sitting at over, um, I believe 10 million chickens have been made through through our app and we just seeing like it took a long time to get to that first million and just like with most things in life when you're successful, it's the time is getting shorter and shorter to the next million.

[00:11:26] So we closing in already on 11 million and back. We, we thought a million was a lot and that just shows to your point, Matt, uh, people use it a lot for, for checking in. And the beauty of, of the app based model is that it can work offline and then sync once if the wifi goes down or there's no wifi, it can re sync all those check ins afterwards with your, um, your WordPress database.

[00:11:53] And it also means that it's, it's all cached and stuff like that. So it doesn't, um, you know, Have a high demand on your server too. Uh, so yeah, there's a lot of benefits, uh, through that.

[00:12:07] Amber Hinds: So we're, we're talking about, um, very B2C plugins, if you will, right? Like an events ticketing system, or, you know, we were chatting kind of pre show about maybe give, could have an app where if a nonprofit is out at a fair or something, they could be taking donations.

[00:12:29] Via the app, right? Instead of sending people to their website, but are there, is it as applicable for the backend WordPress products? Like, cause there are some really great. WordPress products that don't really have this sort of front end consumer facing component. And, and I don't know, is, is that the marker where we say, okay, now you need an app because you need to make it easier for consumers to integrate with the product that's on the WordPress website, or as an alternative to using the product on the WordPress website, or is there some way that we could have apps for these other tools as well?

[00:13:11] Colin Daniels: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And one that can only really be answered by the type of product and who the audience is, you know, um, as I said earlier, I don't think just creating an app for app sake is worth it. Um, one of the kind of challenges, I suppose, with, with the app processes, firstly, it's a lot more expensive, you know, the developer.

[00:13:35] Time wise, you know, you're looking at a higher end developer. It's not as quick and easy. Um, you also have to deal with the app stores. So, you know, that, that there's lots of stories I can tell you about that and how we've had many clashes with Apple over the years, particularly with our points of sales product, uh, Many, you know, having to write, uh, letters to them because they declined our updates or rejected the app initially because Apple won a piece of the pie and they were, they wanted the payments to all go through them, right?

[00:14:08] So, um, we've had many challenges there and, and they still, it's, things have gotten a lot easier and a lot better thanks to lawsuits and things like that. But, uh, It still can be tricky. It's not as easy as just updating a plugin, right? Um, you know, there's a process involved there and they are reviewers and things like that.

[00:14:28] So, uh, you don't want to be going down that road unless it's really worth your while. Um, and, uh, yeah. And then, you know, just supporting multiple code bases potentially. And, uh, you know, the problem with devices having to support Hundreds of different Android devices, you know, all around the world. That's also something that can be quite a challenge too.

[00:14:49] So, uh, one way of getting around that potentially is what we do with Foo sales is we have a native web app, um, a native Android app and a native iOS app, and we actually find that, um, the. Use cases are a bit different for them. So, you know, the native web app, you could argue, well, why don't you just use the WooCommerce interface instead?

[00:15:16] You know, but we, we find that we make, in our opinion, we make it a lot more, the user experience a lot better and easier for people to use it. Um, one of the use cases is taking.

[00:15:28] Amber Hinds: You mean rather than the consumer?

[00:15:31] Colin Daniels: Correct. So one of the, the, the, um, examples would be for taking over the phone orders. A lot of companies still do that, right?

[00:15:39] They might not sell in person, uh, but they do maybe take over the phone orders and sell on their website, but they, they, appreciate a nice interface. Um, so they use our kind of web version or web app, um, to do that, take over the phone orders and they find it a lot easier to use than doing it, uh, in WooCommerce.

[00:16:01] Um, and then of course there's the extra features, you know, it can, it connects to a card readers and things like that. Um, uh, works offline, you know, has all of that. Bolton. So there's, there's a number of extra features that almost extend on, on, on WooCommerce WordPress, uh, interface there. So, um, yeah, you know, I think it very much depends, but even just a nice front end web app could be applicable for many of, of these companies where they don't really see how a mobile app would, would benefit them, but certainly they could be thinking more well, standalone web app.

[00:16:38] Amber Hinds: Yeah. I think that was something I was sort of wondering. is, you know, how one would decide, do I build a web app or a mobile app? And do I start with iOS or Android, right? Um, obviously there's a huge difference in code knowledge between all three of those things. So potentially that could be your deciding factor.

[00:17:00] Like what skills do you have in house or who do you know that you could contract out to, to build the thing, but then how are you going to maintain it? Right. Um, but I'm wondering if there's other differences between going web or mobile or iOS or Android, um, in that deciding factor for a product owner of where you start when you're building an app.

[00:17:23] Colin Daniels: Yeah, that's a, it's a very good question. And I mean, we see even between our, our companion app on the fur of inside and for sales, we, we see very different metrics in terms of, uh, Android, iOS. You know, we, we, uh, we seem to find that Android is very big in the, the handset market. So, you know, if you primarily building kind of a mobile handset app, you, you can't discount Android.

[00:17:51] Uh, however, on the Foo, on the FooSales side where, you know, it's more tablet based, Android has a much, much, Smaller market share there. So we find like the iOS version of FooSales is way more popular than the Android version, whereas, uh, on the handset side, it's the other way around. So I think a lot of it has to just.

[00:18:14] Do with, uh, a general understanding of, of the market. Um, but interestingly, what we in the process of doing now is, uh, we built, we rebuilding our companion app, um, on react native. And, uh, that's very exciting because that. Essentially allows us to have one, a single code base and be able to natively push it to Android, iOS, and, and web.

[00:18:41] So that's the kind of, uh, route that we going. And depending on how that goes, we, we thinking about doing that for FooSales too. That will be a much bigger job because it is essentially rebuilding it. But once it's done and you've got a single code base to manage, you know, the speed of development, then it becomes rapid development and you don't have to think too much then about what the right platform is.

[00:19:06] Matt Cromwell: It's really fascinating. I, it's, it is in many ways, uh, a ripe area for innovation and whatnot. Um, For sure. Another interaction I've had often, um, is, uh, uh, I'll put this down here. Um, folks who actually have been doing this for a long time, um, our app presser, uh, app presser has been, uh, in that business of creating, uh, apps, uh, either mobile apps or web apps, um, for their clients for a really long time.

[00:19:37] Um, one of their co founders, Brian is some, uh, is someone who I, um, Every time I see him at a WordCamp, I, I ask him like, what crazy cool thing are you doing lately? Cause, um, and he always just whips out his phone and he's got something to show me, uh, of something amazing that he's been working on. It often has to do a lot with, with really large data sets is what I noticed.

[00:19:59] Um, That a client might have something that has a really large data set and they want to be able to see it on the go more or less. Um, and, uh, and so they have the app that can, um, that can sync up with data at a certain time, maybe once a day or once a week, um, and then it's available a lot more easily that they can, um, navigate sometimes he has these ones that are, that are a huge, like product catalogs as well.

[00:20:26] Um, But, uh, what I've always been interested in is, is how fast, um, you can interact with all of this data or all of this, um, uh, all of this data. Content essentially, uh, in, in these interfaces, uh, regardless of the, the connection that's going on there. Um, I think, uh, thinking out of the box in those types of ways, uh, is, is, is really useful and helpful as well.

[00:20:53] Um, uh, yeah. I don't know, but it's, it's making me think like we, we did chat a little bit. Like, of course I'm in the payment space and honestly, like, um, I, I don't know with certainty, but I actually believe that like it, like we can't actually do like Stripe payments, we can't do that offline in any way. We really need to be able to interact with Stripe, uh, live because they're doing some fraud checks and we're not going to store, um, anything, uh, sensitive on, uh, A device in that way at all.

[00:21:26] Uh, so we do have to have that live connection there. Um, but I do know that, um, that, that there are kind of like, um, ways in which people do payments, um, uh, but it's never live credit card payments. Uh, that, how, how are you tackling that? Like at live events and things like that, Colin, um, how, how do you go about doing those types of things?

[00:21:48] Colin Daniels: Um, Yeah. So I don't know the, the exact technical details of, of how we do that, but I do know that we are able to, uh, we able to create the orders. Uh, and I think what happens is that as soon as there's an active connection, again, it syncs and yeah, we, we, the payments then get completed. So yeah.

[00:22:13] Amber Hinds: Temporary storage on the device.

[00:22:15] Yes. The credit card details or something that gets probably a tokenized

[00:22:22] Matt Cromwell: version of something like that. Yeah, yeah, it would be nice if one of our devs who works on the payment side was here. But, uh, yeah, I understand. Um, it is a fascinating aspect, uh, because I've been at a lot of different, um, nonprofit, um, fundraising events, um, at, and they love to do these at People's homes that are up in the hills and, um, and there's like, just no good connections there.

[00:22:53] It's just not reliable. So, um, and, or people are always trying to make sure that there's some sort of like backup plan. Like if the internet is not good, what are we going to do instead? In those cases, they're like asking people for checks, which is terrible. Or they're asking them for the email and phone number so we can follow up and ask you to give later.

[00:23:13] Um, which is also terrible because like only like 50 percent of those people are actually going to end up donating later. Um, so that becomes problematic. Um, so I, I can see that as really useful for sure. Um,

[00:23:25] Colin Daniels: yeah, I mean, that's a huge use case of food sales actually is, um, markets and things like that, that often tend to be maybe in fields and, you know, these rural areas and festivals.

[00:23:38] That's a big one, you know, um, and then also just conferences. I mean, you know, conference wifi is a spotty at best. Right. And, uh, you know, so for, uh, selling tickets, uh, for example, and making the payments, like we find that that's a really big, uh, use case of it too. So, um, Yeah, I totally, what you say is true.

[00:24:02] Amber Hinds: So I think it would be kind of fun for a minute before we transition into story time to do a little bit of brainstorming for people who are watching and are thinking, okay, I might want to have an app, but how would this apply to me? Or what are some gaps maybe in the market where we're like, there really should be an app for this.

[00:24:19] And I thought about this a little bit before. And one of the things that came to mind is like, if you had an LMS plugin, You could build some sort of app that makes the learning happen like source of data, maybe even gamifies it if you think about like Duolingo or something like that, right? To get people in there actually using the course a lot more.

[00:24:41] Um, I think the, I'll say it. The WordPress app sucks. So if somebody wants to build a better WordPress app, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would use that. Uh, and then the other thing I thought was if we're thinking like WordPress plugins, like there is definitely a hole here for creating a more social blogging experience or something that would like, we're just talking about how do we get Gen Z and like young people into blogging instead of social media.

[00:25:12] So I feel like maybe there's an app opportunity there, but. What do you, what do you guys think? Are there any holes in the market or any ideas you want to throw out there for a a listener who needs a new product idea?

[00:25:25] Matt Cromwell: It's a good one. It's a really interesting one too. Like in some way it's, in my mind, it's kind of pairing with, um, this might sound left field, pairing a little bit with the Fediverse.

[00:25:36] We keep talking about how we want to help, yeah, to help WordPress get in there. And be able to be a lot more open networking oriented, like almost like a social media platform that's distributed. Um, and, uh, there might be some interesting play there in terms of like being, or the idea of micro blogging. A lot of folks have talking, have talked again about micro blogging.

[00:26:01] Uh, if we could have some sort of app that enabled people to micro blog to their website a lot more quickly like they do on Twitter, you know, instead of going to your, instead of going to your Twitter app, your X app, uh, or your Instagram or whatnot, you just open up your WordPress app and, uh, and it gets posted to your WordPress website where you own that content, and then it gets distributed to these other platforms.

[00:26:24] Um, and, uh, more dynamic way. I know folks have talked about this a lot in a lot of different ways, but maybe, maybe the technology wasn't ever really fully, um, You know, there, but, uh,

[00:26:36] Amber Hinds: I don't know. That's where my brain goes. We need somebody to revive Google Reader.

[00:26:40] Matt Cromwell: I think that's the problem with all the social

[00:26:41] Amber Hinds: blogging.

[00:26:43] There's not as many, there are some still, but there aren't as many good RSS. Apps anymore to curate RSS feeds and bring them to you and then make it easy to comment on them and tag them and reshare them and that kind of thing, right?

[00:26:57] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, yeah, I'm using feedly for that now and it seems to be like one of the only ones that really does it.

[00:27:04] Um, and it, it is really good overall, but, um. There's, you're right. RSS is so important, especially for podcasts. Like I can't distribute what we do without an RSS feed. Um, and, uh, that that's really important aspect for sure.

[00:27:21] Amber Hinds: Do you have any ideas calling for apps that you feel like the WordPress market needs or that a specific type of plugin is ripe for having an app?

[00:27:30] Matt Cromwell: Or apps you're already planning to build? You're like, what's the next big release going to happen, Colin?

[00:27:37] Amber Hinds: You're going to have a third app.

[00:27:39] Colin Daniels: We've got, we've got such a long roadmap for, for both products that we like every time we get a new idea, we're like, uh, no, just stay focused because, uh, yeah, particularly on the, the food sale side.

[00:27:54] I mean, you know. Uh, points of sale systems, a huge undertaking and, uh, we didn't realize, you know, uh, we've obviously just evolved into this, but there are just so many features and things like we, we hoping to do more integrations with other third party plugins and stuff, uh, popular ones in the future.

[00:28:12] That's where we really see, you know, a lot of opportunity. Um, I think though, back to your question, Amber, like just from a personal, uh, perspective, it would be great to just have a better, uh, metrics app for WooCommerce. Like that's something we really struggle with, uh, is, you know, obviously there's a lot of third party services and stuff, but just to, you know, good, good sales.

[00:28:37] Sales metrics, subscription metrics, all that type of stuff. Like that's more comparable to say Shopify, uh, that would really also be very helpful because you know, it's not too, too good at the moment. So, um, I, I think, you know, just using APIs there, there would be a really, you know, a good developer out there and a good, uh, front end, uh, front end guy could really do something quite amazing.

[00:29:05] Amber Hinds: Yeah, really? I think any of those, like, any, any plugin that has dashboards with reports. That is a prime thing. So WooCommerce, we talked about give Edd, uh, affiliate WP, like anything like that, potentially having an app that extends the reports or makes them visible. On the go or without having to log into your website on mobile, right?

[00:29:35] Exactly.

[00:29:36] Colin Daniels: Exactly. That's such a good use case. That's such a good use case of, of a good app, you know, and whether you're a store owner or a developer product owner, like just having that information on hand, but displayed in a really nice, accessible way, you know, not just stats and things that you have to dig down, uh, Deep into just having nice dashboards.

[00:29:59] Uh, it's, it's such a great use case, I think. And depending on what it is, people would, would pay for it.

[00:30:08] Amber Hinds: Oh, you know who I just realized really needs one WP Fusion. Think of what they could build with all of the things that they connect to. They could build the new like Looker Studio or Tableau or whatever that collates all of the data from all the different things, but for WordPress people.

[00:30:28] So, I think that's my new request to the internet.

[00:30:32] Matt Cromwell: Free advice, Jack. I hope you're listening. Yep, I hope

[00:30:35] Amber Hinds: so. Well, okay, so let's, let's do a little story time. I know you've told us a ton about, you know, the background of your products and those sorts of things, but I'm curious if you could walk us through, um, How you built your Android iOS apps.

[00:30:49] Like, did you do them in house? Did you contract it out? Is there any lessons from that process? Um, you know, any experience you have. And then of course, you know, Matt and I can share some experiences we've had with thinking about apps

[00:31:04] Colin Daniels: and

[00:31:04] Amber Hinds: that kind of stuff.

[00:31:05] Colin Daniels: So, We were, we were really lucky in the sense that, um, we already had experience building apps quite early on through our agency.

[00:31:15] We, we had a lot of requests, so we had the in house skills, some, you know, brilliant people in house and, um, that had given us quite a, a kickstart and Was one of the reasons why, when we were looking at productizing our business, you know, we knew that apps would be a crucial kind of, uh, would play a crucial role in that, uh, because of our, our skills and experience.

[00:31:38] And just because of the advantages that I mentioned earlier, where we could see, you know, it would be a great way to extend and differentiate, uh, WordPress. Um, so. We started off with the FurVents check ins app, um, and I believe that was around 2016, 2015, 2016, and it was very basic, um, but it served, it served its purpose, you know, which was being able to list tickets and, and check people in.

[00:32:09] And, um, As I mentioned, the idea was to have like a pro version that, that people would pay for and where they could white label it and do all of that. But we, within a few months, we decided to just make it all free because we realized actually we would get more sales, plugin sales by doing that. So, um, yeah, so it kind of evolved.

[00:32:31] And then we, we did also the iOS version and, uh, saw a lot of Just a lot of demand for it. Um, um, one of the kind of, I suppose I've mentioned it before, but the big challenge there is just, uh, that it is more expensive and time consuming initially, you know, because obviously you, the development skills are very different and there's different challenges that they might run into.

[00:32:56] So just. Making yourself aware of that. If you, if you don't have the in house skills for it, you're probably going to need to hire a freelancer, um, or an agency for that matter. Um, so, but they're going to charge you a lot more than they probably would. If they were doing, you know, a website or a plugin, uh, you know, a custom plugin or something for you.

[00:33:17] So it's very important that you identify the features and the specs and do as much. Work up front as possible before actually engaging with with a developer, um, or an agency. So that's one bit of advice. I would, I would give with us. It was a bit easier because it's in house and we can make mistakes, expensive mistakes and, you know, fix them.

[00:33:41] Um, but if you don't have access, that would be one bit of advice. I would give, um, also not to Bloat, bloat the app, um, and add too many unnecessary features. There's, there's also, you know, a tendency to want to do that. But once again, if you think about the reasons you're doing it is for user experience, you want to, one of the reasons is to have a, offer a better user experience.

[00:34:05] And also because as I mentioned, it's expensive development wise, you really want to make sure that. You keep the features as, you know, targeted as possible and, um, and, and keep your app as lean, lean and mean as possible. And that, that ties into kind of the third bit of advice, which is to really understand your.

[00:34:27] Target audience and what your strategy is for doing the app. And without that, everything kind of falls apart because you don't really know who your user is going to be. You don't really know what kind of user experience they want, and you don't kind of know what features they're expecting. So. We, uh, we listened to our customers a lot.

[00:34:46] I think most, most builders do, you know, um, we also bootstrapped. I don't think I mentioned that. So, you know, we haven't had the luxury of just being able to hire lots of developers and just, you know, take a spray and pray approach. It's been very strategic. Um, and we rely a lot on our customers. Um, to kind of give us feedback about how the products work and what they would like to see and it's a rate from there.

[00:35:13] And of course, yeah. So if you're keeping it lean and mean, you're getting good customer feedback. You've got a good relationship with either an in house developer, a freelancer, or an agency. Um, and you're able to iterate, you know, very quickly. And that's what we did, especially in the early days. We released.

[00:35:32] Versions very, very regularly, um, uh, to fix bikes, obviously, but also with new features and functionality. And, and that's one of the beauties with app development is that you can do that and people get the push notification, or they can just have auto app updates and they've already got the latest feature.

[00:35:50] So, yeah. Um, and then just, as I mentioned a bit earlier about the app stores, you know, uh, you might run into challenges with them. But, uh, it's, so it's also very important then to be very clear about what the app is offering and how it differs from say your website or your plugin and how it extends on that, because sometimes they, the reviewers in the early days, they would, they rejected our apps because they said, well, no, one's going to use this, you know, they had that power back in the day, Apple and like God on, you know, in the app store and they still have a bit of that.

[00:36:27] That's syndrome going on, but, uh, it helps when you've got a few apps in the store, they, they go a little bit easier on you, it seems, and, you know, we use it's not as

[00:36:37] Amber Hinds: easy as, uh, the

[00:36:40] Colin Daniels: plugin

[00:36:41] Amber Hinds: repo. You could just submit it and pass some basic security checks. You're in, they actually want to think people are going to use it.

[00:36:47] Colin Daniels: Yeah. I guess they don't want to spend it.

[00:36:48] Amber Hinds: Store all the code for all the millions of ideas people submit ,

[00:36:53] Colin Daniels: you know, especially Apple. Uh, it, it's changed. They have definitely changed a bit, but in the early days, um, and I'm, I'm still talking like in the late two thousands, uh, two 12, 2000 and, uh, two, 2015 upwards, you know, they, they would still, um.

[00:37:15] Ask you to justify what the purpose of the app is, who your user is going to be and kind of why they should accept you. And, um, and we had a lot of back and forth. So I remember even being on a phone call with one of their reviewers, uh, like at one point, like I had to actually have a phone call with them, uh, because they just didn't, didn't see the value.

[00:37:36] And it's quite amazing, especially coming from a web background, you know, where, you know, you, you Get your hosting and you get your WordPress installation and you, you good. It was, it was a very, it's a very different, uh, environment and they do still, you know, that is one of the risks you still are on these app stores.

[00:37:54] And it's never certain, even when you do an update that they're going to accept it. Um, and sometimes you got to do more work. Sometimes they have a problem with it. So. It is very much, it's a gate keep, gate kept environment. So I would say, you know, that's just something that you, you need to keep in mind that, um, often first time app app developers or first time apps, um, It can take up to like a week for them to review your app as well.

[00:38:26] So which can be a little bit anxiety inducing or if you've got a new release to fix a bug It can you know, sometimes take a little while like we we're quite fortunate now where it's Usually within 24 hours They've approved it and it's ready to go, but it's definitely having an appreciation for different workflows.

[00:38:47] And the fact that you, you have this whole approval process and Google, ironically, we're a very, very laissez faire in the beginning, whereas Apple weren't, but Google now starting to also clamp down a bit. And I think it's just because they have been some instances of dodgy apps, you know, just making their way onto the play stores and stuff like that.

[00:39:07] So. They both, they both do, uh, review the apps and they can reject them. Uh, even updates. Once you're on there, you're not guaranteed that your updates are going to be approved. So something else to keep in mind.

[00:39:21] Matt Cromwell: Really interesting. It, you know, on this show, we often talk about the value of wordpress. org as.

[00:39:28] Uh, a lead funnel, uh, for any freemium, uh, plugins, of course, um, and it is, um, you know, no matter what anybody ideologically wants it to be or whatever, it is a lead funnel for freemium products, uh, it is a marketplace of a type of a form, uh, just like, uh, the Play Store is for Google and, and the Apple one as well, um, uh, And I'm curious, um, if you have experienced, um, the app stores as, as a lead funnel, or if you have data about that, because that's a really important aspect that product owners should think about is that.

[00:40:07] If you see value in being on dot org, like what kind of value do you get from being on the app store or on the play store? So can you talk to that just a little bit?

[00:40:18] Colin Daniels: Absolutely. I think that's, that's a very crucial point that you're making is You've got another sales channel that you can tap into, you know, it's another big advantage.

[00:40:28] And obviously the, the apple app store and the Google play store feature very prominently in search listings. So,

[00:40:37] Matt Cromwell: you know,

[00:40:37] Colin Daniels: if you've got an established app there with good ratings, particularly, or just really good keywords in there, you also now going to have a whole nother sales channel. So particularly.

[00:40:48] We still do get a lot of, uh, referrals, uh, traffic that comes from, from the stores, um, the, both, both the installations on both, uh, Apple and Google, or, you know, we've got over 10, 000 active installations on there on each of them. And, uh, you know, the data that we get from there is also you getting different data than what you would be getting from like your plugin usage and that type of thing, you know, like very, very granular stuff because.

[00:41:18] All the events are tracked, you know, how people interact with your app. So we've, you know, taken away a lot from that. And then the reviews, you know, people are also, obviously they're researching your product and, um, reviews as we know are incredibly important and people take app reviews quite, quite seriously.

[00:41:38] So we've, we've done like. A big push on getting people to review our apps, you know, just kind of calls to action within the app, not, uh, not fake reviews or anything like that, but just really encouraging, uh, our users to submit app reviews, not just, you know, plugin reviews, because we know how important they are and how prominently they feature in the search results.

[00:41:59] So yeah, uh, totally. We, we, we get, we get a lot of free trial signups. So like FooSales has a, has a free trial. We've got a lot of free trial signups from people, you know, searching in the app store for points of sale system or, you know, WooCommerce or whatever the case may be. So there's a whole nother, um, ecosystem there that I think, uh, WordPress, uh, product developers can tap into, uh, not just focus on the.

[00:42:27] org, you know, which everyone's trying to gamify. So.

[00:42:32] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, interesting. Do you also like that? The customer experience part is always really important to me. Anecdotally, I've always noticed that, um, reviewers on the play store app store are a lot more thin skinned, um, than WordPress folks. I mean, we WordPress product owners.

[00:42:52] We complain all the time about reviews. One star reviews that seem so unfair, but it feels like With apps, it's, they're like a dime a dozen. They, yeah. They feel, they, they, they, they have a whole lot bigger sense of entitlement. Like if your app doesn't do exactly what they want immediately, they just uninstall, give you the middle finger and a one star review and move on without a second thought.

[00:43:14] Uh, have you experienced that as well? That, that the app users are a lot harder to please?

[00:43:20] Colin Daniels: It's funny. You should mention this. We just had our all hands meeting before this, and we were talking about that. Something we track over time. Um, and it's a bit frustrating because a lot of those reviews are old as well.

[00:43:34] You know, it's like, like the app might have crashed because there was some bug and immediately they leave their one star review and, you know, let the internet know and they never try the update. So, yeah, I totally agree with you. Um, But what, what is also very motivating is to see the trends for both, both our products heading upwards.

[00:43:55] So we know that like in the early days, you expect there to be angry people because of a bag or because of a feature that's not there. Uh, one of the things though, which is quite. Which we like about the app store review process is that you can comment, you know, you can actually respond to, to them and, um, the users can change their review.

[00:44:17] So we, we, um, we have quite a process around that. Like we monitor every single review. That, that is ever made on, on either of the apps and we respond as quickly as we can and try and if it is a technical problem, that's a frustrating thing. It might be a technical problem, but they're leaving an app review, right?

[00:44:36] We try and encourage them to rather get hold of our support so we can deal with that offline. It's not really a problem with the app itself necessarily could even be their hosting or something silly. Uh, but yeah, that's, But we always try and encourage those people when we do sort out their problem to, to go and like update their, their, their review.

[00:44:54] And, and we've had that quite a lot. So I kind of like that mechanism, the fact that you, as the app developer, you can respond and, and, uh, the, the reviewer can actually go and change their review. So that's what we try and do. It doesn't always work, of course. And, uh, um, yeah, Yeah, in general, reviews, reviewers are a lot more harsh on, on the app stores, you know, like you said, but, but that's like a, just something that you have to deal with.

[00:45:23] And fortunately, we, as I said, we starting to see all our, our reviews and our star ratings trending upwards. And that's what we like to see

[00:45:31] Matt Cromwell: for sure. Another big one that, you know, I, before the show, I was like, Hey, we'd like to do this as a discussion, not so much an interview, but like. It feels like we're going interview style a little bit more, um, but, um, another big, uh, difference, uh, for product owners between.

[00:45:49] org and a place like the play store or, or, um, or the app store, um, is, uh, data, um, Don't you have a lot more usage data and a lot closer, um, connection to your actual users, um, than with the WordPress, uh, freemium plugins.

[00:46:11] Colin Daniels: Yeah, totally. In fact, too much data. Like we were, we were also talking about that today, like to, You, you are just overloaded with data.

[00:46:21] So I think that that's another going back to the earlier question. I think I would love to

[00:46:26] Matt Cromwell: have that problem with my plug. Yeah.

[00:46:30] Colin Daniels: You're going back to like Amber's question earlier. Um, you know, that's, I think one of the huge. Benefits. And, uh, depending on what your use case is, why, you know, if you, if you're more of a backend kind of operation, like that could be another reason why you would want to have some kind of, uh, mobile app would be to acquire better data than you're currently getting through, you know, through the, uh, the.

[00:46:56] org repository or even through Google analytics, they're just things there that you, you get because there is such a close. Uh, collaboration between the operating system and the app itself. There's just so many more things that can be tracked. Um, and, uh, yeah, totally. Like that's definitely one of our, uh, the things we use, but to be fair, we don't use enough of it.

[00:47:17] Like that's probably where we, we, we should use more of the data.

[00:47:21] Amber Hinds: Yeah. You know, I think too, some of this goes a little bit to as a product owner, thinking about what your end game is, you know, are you planning to sell or hoping to sell at some point in time, because. Having, like it or not, having more data increases the value of your, um, of your company.

[00:47:44] If you know, hey, I can send an email out to my email list about a sale and some percentage will buy, well, the bigger that email list is. The more people will buy, right? And if you know, you can hit that trigger every so often, and that will just guarantee money, right? Um, I, the other thing that is sort of interesting here, I know we're all about open source and GPL and WordPress land, but apps don't have to be GPL.

[00:48:06] Right. Which means you could also potentially patent them. And that I think goes with huge valuation increases. If you have an idea that no one else is doing and you can patent it or patent some specific part of the code or algorithm or whatever that might be. Um, so I think like as a business owner, these are some of the things that in the moment we might just be like, Oh, it'd be kind of neat to have an app or whatever.

[00:48:33] But there are some very strategic reasons to potentially want to do that.

[00:48:38] Matt Cromwell: Yeah,

[00:48:41] Colin Daniels: that is so true. And, um, and, you know, like obviously with the, the mobile apps, you know, they all built and compiled and, you know, there's a lot of like proprietary code in there, the, the plugins, we've got helper plugins for like foo sales.

[00:48:55] Those are all GPL, you know, uh, but obviously the nuts and bolts is in the actual app and that's, that's a compiled file. So that does. Give us some, some power in a sense. And also, yeah, you creating that intellectual property that is, can be valuable if you are wanting to exit down the line.

[00:49:19] Amber Hinds: So we're about at time. I know we didn't do a ton of story time for you and me, Matt. I don't know if there's anything you want to add, or do you want to transition us over to best advice? Yeah, I think,

[00:49:28] Matt Cromwell: I think now's a great time to talk about best advice for the subject for sure. So Colin, the way we love to do this is, uh, imagine you're at a WordCamp and you run into somebody you always want to talk to.

[00:49:41] And, but you're both going to opposite directions. You got like three sentences to give them. They're like, Colin, I want to get into app development. What's your best advice? Um, what, how do you, uh, pass that, uh, nugget onto them at your WordCamp really quickly? What's your best advice?

[00:49:58] Colin Daniels: Learn React Native or hire someone that knows React Native.

[00:50:03] Uh, Start with a minimum viable product. It's a right.

[00:50:10] Matt Cromwell: Love it. That's interesting. Starting with the react native part. Of course, that makes tons of sense. You kind of like need that, uh, as, as core in order to build anything whatsoever. Um, and it's not a given in the WordPress, uh, development environment.

[00:50:25] Unfortunately, it's getting more and more so with, uh, with Gutenberg and everything, but, um, but still it, it continues to be a little bit of a struggle to find folks who really know how to write react as well as. Any of the common WordPress folks can write PHP. So, uh, that's a good one.

[00:50:43] Amber Hinds: So I'll say my best advice kind of maybe tails off of that, which is.

[00:50:48] If you don't know where to start, I would suggest starting with doing a web app before a mobile app, because, uh, we have done several of these. We don't have mobile app. They're not related to our product, but for clients, we've done this. And there are a lot of. Great things about building a JavaScript based app that pulls off of WordPress that can speed up your development process like, Hey, now you don't have to write rules about how to register users because that already exists, right?

[00:51:18] Or how to store certain data in the database that already exists. And so I feel like if you're trying to figure out how to do this, maybe starting with the web app is a good 1st step. That will get you there faster and then you could then go into one of the mobile platforms. That's my advice.

[00:51:34] Matt Cromwell: Good point.

[00:51:35] Amber Hinds: What about you, Matt?

[00:51:36] Matt Cromwell: I like it. I, you know, uh, as much as I love the subject and it's been a great conversation, I might be just a little bit contrarian. Uh, if I have like, Three sentences with somebody in between WordCamp. They're like, I want to go into, um, uh, web app, uh, business. My question would really be, do you really, do you actually want to, um, and, um, just because very often they don't have the experience, um, and they don't actually, they'll be spending a ton of time and effort into something that, that, that maybe they aren't really equipped to do.

[00:52:09] Um, so instead I would say, You absolutely should do that if your customers are knocking down your door for it, like maybe start with a whole bunch of customer research where they're like, we're, we love what we're doing with your plugin, but we really got to be able to use it out in the field in different ways.

[00:52:27] Um, you know, if, if they're really knocking down the door, Then I would say absolutely jump. But so before doing anything, start with listening really carefully to you. I mean, I'm sorry, that tends to be my, my best advice almost every episode. Uh, but that's, but, um, but you know, especially if you're building an app that you have a great plugin for a long time, you're going to build an app.

[00:52:50] You don't want it to just go out there and like, have like zero installs. If you have this built in base of people who already want it and need it, you're going to get adoption a lot more quickly. Um, but if even your own customers don't want it or need it, why are you doing it in the first place? So,

[00:53:08] Amber Hinds: well, that is wrap. I think this has been a really fun show and conversation. Colin, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you online?

[00:53:17] Colin Daniels: Um, can find me on Twitter at Youngblood. Um, On LinkedIn, of course. And then yeah, our sites are FooSales. com and FooEvents. com.

[00:53:29] Amber Hinds: That's awesome. Well, for everyone watching, thank you.

[00:53:33] Please tune in next week, Matt and I will be back again with guest Mike McAllister to discuss creating amazing experiences when onboarding new users to WordPress.

[00:53:44] Matt Cromwell: And like every week's special, thanks to Post Status for being our green room. If you are enjoying these episodes, then do us a favor and hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share it with your friends, reference the show in your newsletters.

[00:53:57] Most of all, we hope to see you next week. Thanks everybody.

[00:54:01] Amber Hinds: Bye.

[00:54:02] Matt Cromwell: Bye.