Zack Katz 00:01-00:24 Every product decision starts with a simple question Who is this for? Enterprises, agencies, end users, governments, education? These all have very different needs, and knowing your audience can make or break your roadmap, your pricing, and your growth curve. What's the difference between them? Stay tuned to find out. Intro 00:26-00:48 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. Zack Katz 00:53-00:56 Hi everybody, I'm Zack Katz with GravityKit. Katie Keith 00:57-00:59 And I'm Katie Keith from Barn2. Zack Katz 00:59-01:10 And today we have Robert Abela with us to discuss building products for enterprises, agencies, and end users. Robert, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Katie Keith 01:11-01:17 Yes, thank you so much for coming on. So can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do? Robert Abela 01:18-02:04 Sure. I am Robert Abela. I'm the CEO and founder of Melapress. I got involved in WordPress around 13 years ago when a company I was working for needed a blog basically. And it was a security company, so we started developing a security product for WordPress back then, which failed by the way. But yeah, back then it was security was not as it was today. And basically I got hooked. And I started developing my first plugin, which is WP Activity Log. And yeah, within a few years now, for the last five years, we became Mellapress basically. And we have a number of plugins. And I'm basically the founder, and we are now a team of seven people working together and developing a number of WordPress plugins, security and user management plugins. Zack Katz 02:04-02:40 Well, thanks again for coming on. And for those of you who are watching live on YouTube, we encourage you to please leave your comments, questions, feedback in the comments section, and we will highlight them as we do the show and we'll answer them live. So Robert, product owners, when faced with the question of who are you building things for? How do you approach even answering that question? How do you start off like even conceptualizing how to answer that question? Robert Abela 02:42-06:20 It's a very good complicated question. Like even if I look at our journey, things change slowly. For example, when we started I started with an activity log plugin simply because it was my own need. When I got interested in WordPress a few years ago, I started back then in security, as most of us are cleaning hacked websites and stuff like that. And I was surprised that considering WordPress is a multi-user solution, there was no sort of activity logging, basically. There is the web server logging, but WordPress and WordPress has the debug logs and stuff, but there is no actual activity logging. So I started developing what we call an MVP minimum viable product just to get an idea of logs, and I started using it for myself. In fact, even back then, the name was WP Security Audit Log. And the reason why I was coming from a security background, I work for security software companies, and that was what I knew. However, with time I realized that people using our plugins at first I just saw it like, okay, this is a security solution. But then I realized with time, based from the support questions we had and and even when it was just the free plugin, that people actually are using it for a million other things, very much I didn't notice like Some sort of just user activity logging just to track times, for example, when people log in or not. Or yeah, even if someone makes a mistake, if someone makes a mistake, you need to trace back through the logs and see what happened basically to solve your issue. And that slowly and that's why then we renamed the plugin to WP Activity Log. We dropped the security from there and renamed all the clock to activity log because it was a more commonly used serm. And yeah, so basically the the users back then helped us kind of like start shaping the plugin, basically. And so it's difficult to say upfront, I mean, unless you are in a particular industry and you have a solution, maybe because you are in a software company. and you saw something very specific. Then of course most probably you already know your your customer base or your user base. But in my case, we didn't. We just I just Yeah, like most probably who needs logs just security people kind of thing. So it it was even the way the logs were reported and stuff was very security oriented plugin. And with time, yes, slowly, slowly because even like if you look at the type of customers we have, like for example, we get a lot of feedback from people who have e commerce solutions. Because if you have a team working on your website, you need to keep a log of who who has processed some orders, who has edited some products and stuff. So yeah, so All of that helped us slowly start fine-tuning the plugin. And we're still not there yet as like it's I think it's a It's a process, it's a never-ending process because even now where of course we have a much better idea of who we are building for and what we are building. Yeah, things are the industry in general. The goalposts are always moving, you know, like even the way agencies work with customers, the way businesses do business. So, yeah, we have, of course, a much better idea where we want to head. but we are still everyday shaping the product. So yeah, unless you have a specific, specific target, like as we started with that with a blank slate, we constantly it's very important to listen to your users. And try to adjust that, basically. Adjust the product towards that. Zack Katz 06:21-06:46 That's interesting that you say that it's a moving target and that it's an ongoing process. You don't just define your customer and then you know done you're you don't have to look at it again your customers evolve with as well which is fascinating so how when you're first you first release a product And then you found out who your segments are. Is that what you recommend doing? Robert Abela 06:46-08:22 Or is that just how you ended up doing it? I don't know what I would recommend per se, but that's how it worked for us. And even nowadays, even the last few years, especially when we released the premium edition. the type of request we're getting. You start saying, oh, okay, like it's it's definitely because even like I started the plugin, I think 12 years ago, 12, 13 years ago. I knew about compliance back then, but I never thought of compliance and WordPress. Back then it was unheard of kind of thing in in the WordPress ecosystem. But of course, with time, the last few years, WordPress is becoming more is becoming used by more enterprise level customers. So now, of course, compliance is something the last few years that people have been asking about, oh, want you know, like want this type of logs, I want or the compliance requires us to do this. So yes, so it's like for me at least, it's always a learning curve. listening to the customers, but now of course that we know who the customers are, or roughly, we have a good idea of who they are, at least compared to before, just because I know that I can also keep myself up to date with those industries. So hopefully Sometimes I'm maybe a step ahead of the customer and release something before they ask for it, you know? So but but I think it really depends on the industry and product. I think there might be some people who might know their customer from before. In my case, it wasn't the case. It's been kind of like a whole organic growing problem or solution, whatever. It depends how you look at it. Zack Katz 08:22-08:31 Katie, how did it work for you at Barn 2? Like, how did you do you know who you're building for? And do you know how did that come about? Katie Keith 08:31-11:58 Honestly, it's a similar process to Robert. I love that story of not necessarily knowing or planning who your customers are. The key is to understand it when you have customers. Analyze them, learn that, and then tailor accordingly. And I suppose we've kind of been the same. So we launched our plugins based on evidence they would be useful. We didn't particularly profile who they would be useful for. Probably we should have done. The more professional company probably would start by profiling that customer as a starting point. But we have two have done it reactively. So most of our plugins are WooCommerce focused, which kind of makes it easier. We know they are online stores. But even that, what's an online store? Because you've got three groups essentially. You've got the person who has the website, the merchant who owns the online store. Maybe they built the site themselves. but it's just as likely or more likely that actually they hired a maybe a freelance developer or a larger agency. So then who is our customer? And we only found that out by analysing it, which is partly anecdotal based on who we've supported. And at one point, we also downloaded the email addresses of a load of our customers and analyzed the types of email address to get a clue. as to who they are. So agen design agencies particularly often have something like creative or whatever, or studio or something. in their domain name, so that is a clue. But it really, it's anecdotal as much as anything. And so I know that about half of our customers are agencies or developers and the other half are end users. And so I think, well, they're equal priority. But they're not equal priority because when you analyze further, you discover and I'm sure it would be the same in all WordPress businesses That if you look at the revenue from each group of users, you are getting a lot more revenue from the developers and agencies because they are using your products on multiple sites. which is great. That's what you want. So our highest priority is needing, therefore, to be the people building our plugins on multiple sites They're going to be repeat users, which is much better than just buying a hundred dollar plug in for one site and maybe renewing every year. But then how do you tailor your website? It's quite complex. So if you if we targeted our website at agencies, then I think we would alienate people who are building a website DIY for themselves. So even though our priority is the people using our plugins multiple times we approach it, our website is entirely aimed at the website owner. We will improve your sales, your conversions. That may be a mistake, but it's a conscious decision that we've made because I believe that if you're building a site from a client, you're trying to think through their eyes. You're trying to think about the benefit to the user. So, if you say it improves your conversions, that's not going to alienate the agency particularly because they want to improve their clients' conversions and provide a good service. So that so we're actually intentionally not aiming at our target market. What about you, Zack? Zack Katz 11:59-12:45 Well I agree with everything that you both have said. And we've come at things in a similar manner where we have identified who uses the product and how why they find it useful after we've released it, which is Definitely the inverse of how people often do it. Though a modern example of a company that should know better is Apple releasing Apple Watch. And not realizing that it was primarily for health purposes until three years down the road where they really said, okay, this people are using it for health tracking stuff. And then they really focused on that. So it's not just we who make this mistake, if it is a mistake at all. I don't think it's a mistake. Robert Abela 12:45-13:29 I think it really depends. Because like if you look There's a difference. I know some people who started a business with them, like, okay, we want to start an actual business. So this is what we're going to do, and this is how it will work. For me, for example, I think what made a difference, I never, as much as I wanted a business, the plugin started as a hobby, not a business. Like, oh, let's just I'm using it myself, let's just put it out there. you know so just like okay it's something I need I'm developing it for myself but once I am developing it might as well give it to the community to use it as well and then of course it evolved into a An actual premium plugin. But it was never, I never had the plan. Okay, so within the next two years, I'm going to do this, three years. You know, I never had that. It also depends on the personality of the person as well, I think, on the character. Zack Katz 13:29-13:56 But the question becomes, do you build a fundamentally different product because the default is the end user, rather than identifying that your target customer is enterprise, or government, or education? who have very different needs and very different setups. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because how much, for example, Robert, have you built for the enterprise and for governments? Robert Abela 13:57-15:59 Very good question. In fact, to add a bit more on what Katie mentioned, because Katie mentioned they were analyzing who is using the product and who are they selling for. Is it the same for us? there's a difference between who we sell for. And then if you analyze all the websites where our licenses are activated, you might see a bit of a discrepancy there, of course, especially, for example, like when we sell to an agency the agency is using it to keep a log on their client's website. So then we see the client who's using it, not the agency, although the main user is the agency. I think it it's about trying to find the right balance. I don't I mean, there's if you look at us, there's a lot of overlapping. And like even especially if you start looking into enterprise, we started building, especially the last few years more Enterprise. And what I mean by that, like simply because the questions were being asked during the precess or people who are like testing the plugin. we're seeing you get a lot more of the governments and the bigger businesses, the hospitals. Whole basic is, which I mentioned earlier are now being pushed a lot because of regulations of compliance. So of course, while before, maybe you could do with a website, especially bigger governments and agencies which have this type of agencies and businesses which have like hundreds or thousands of websites couldn't do without a log because they have the web server lock. Now they need logs. So of course slowly, slowly, we are kind of like tuning the and developing the product more towards that crowd. The trick is, of course, trying to keep a balance between you're building more for the enterprise, of course, but you shouldn't ignore the rest. And that becomes also a problem, as Katie mentioned, even the website, the message on the website. In fact, we are working more towards that as well. Because if you look even when we run campaigns, there's a difference in the language and benefits we mention on a landing page for agencies. and the landing page for governments, for example. Robert Abela 15:59-16:00 Or because even the most simple. Robert Abela 16:01-17:46 If you talk about agencies, you want to tell them, oh, this is what your client is doing, so this is why use our plugin. If you tell them about compliance, especially like some ISO compliance or HIPAA, like We don't care. But if you are dealing with the government agencies, then that's a different story. Want to talk not what their client is doing, want to tell them about the compliance requirements that they have to meet and stuff like that. So It's difficult, but yeah, you need to find that balance. But we clearly our products are being a bit more tailored towards the bigger businesses, even the fact that we have I get asked about this a lot, individual products. For example, you have some products. When you look at security, you have everything under one umbrella. You have like two factor authentication, activity log, some sort of model where like one plugin that does does it all. We have a specific Activity Log plugin, which is on its own, a one scope plugin. We have a two-factor authentication plug-in and the login security plugin and there's a reason why they are separate because typically especially when you talk to the bigger businesses when they have like hundreds or maybe thousands of websites. They have their own custom firewalls, their own CM solutions where they can allow the logs, for example. So they just need your logging solution. They don't want a firewall on each website and stuff. Like that. So, yeah, as a rule of thumb, yes, we are definitely building more enterprise-ish kind of thing, but we, of course, we still know that. the agencies and sometimes even like the norm norm the small users still use this this plugin. So you but definitely did And also if you look at the sales numbers, you need to balance it, like which one is generating most revenue. You don't just go after revenue, but of course, this is what keeps the business alive. So you need to make cautious decisions where which sector you want to target the most. Katie Keith 17:48-18:53 You know, with the enterprise thing, it's interesting. We haven't done a lot of enterprise work, but one of our plugins, Document Library Pro, surprisingly attracts governments and larger organizations, which we didn't anticipate or plan. It's just the nature of what it does. It provides a kind of searchable, downloadable resource database and a lot of government organizations and universities and things like that need to provide large numbers of documents for people to download in some kind of library. So it attracts a different group of users compared to our WooCommerce product. And to be honest, they're annoying. They're not our favorite customers. They have like red tape and processes and procurement teams and purchase orders and all the things that I escaped working from a large organization to create Barn to. and they're like saying, oh, you need to register as a supplier so that we could buy your hundred dollar plugin. And can you talk more about this? Zack Katz 18:53-18:57 Because I don't think people who are just starting out know about this. Katie Keith 18:58-19:02 Okay. Any of some of you don't have a background of working for government jobs. Zack Katz 19:03-19:16 I never had a jobby job. I just like went into development and thankfully it worked out. What is a purchase order and why do we have to deal with procurement software procurement providers? Katie Keith 19:17-21:28 Something to do with bureaucracy. I'm not a fan of all that stuff. I created my small company for a reason. So, yeah, in large organizations, they have things like buying teams. All suppliers often have to be formally approved, even for tiny purchases. Often there'll be something like a tender process where you apply to So, supply your software for their projects. Like, hang on, this is a hundred-dollar plug-in. It's not, it doesn't work like that. Just get a credit card. Oh, we don't have a credit card, we settle it on invoice. A purchase order number is something like they'll create the approval first in their financial system, and then that will tie into the payment which is later made. So we have to send them an invoice with a purchase order that number that they have provided. And it just does not fit with the scale of our business and the value of our product. But they want our product. And there's various approaches to that. So Freemius years ago published a really good article about selling to enterprise, where they suggested things like having enterprise plans. And I haven't allocated the time to do that yet because it's a bit of a project. So what we've done for now is just try and make it worth our while. This ties a bit into last week's episode, where we basically we don't want to go through all this hassle every year for the one hundred dollar renewal. So we forced them to buy a lifetime license. If you want us to fill in a form or send you a purchase order number or anything manual that you can't do on our website, you have to buy a lifetime license, which costs 3. 5 to four times the cost of our annual licenses. Most customers only last two and a half years. So that means we're getting more money out of them. straight away than they would probably otherwise have paid in their lifetime, especially since they were going to have to renew manually each year with a purchase order number or something. So that's our way to make it a bit worth it. But really, I just see that as a clash between their business model and ours, and yet they want to buy our software. Robert Abela 21:29-23:29 One thing we I agree 100% with Katie. That's unfortunately I luckily I worked with other software companies which were enterprise. Before my WordPress career, so I knew I was very suffering. But yes, you have to go to a lot of bureaucracy. For example, it's very normal. It's stupid sometimes. They send you an Excel sheet. which are lists of requirements, and basically they are copy and paste of your features that you have mentioned on the website. Like if you're on your website, you say our plugin does A, B, and C, then you have index logged, that's your plugin does A. B and C, like but it's it it unfortunately it's what it is. The way with it and also, by the way, have to deal with resellers, which are a bit different than affiliates. Resellers are basically people, especially government agencies. They work they they buy software, most of them, exclusively via resellers. And the way the resellers work, they get a commission and basically The agency goes to the reseller and says, We need this plugin. The reseller comes to us, we need this. And the reseller caters for all the payment and billing details and stuff. And then they just send the license through. And the way we worked around this because it's true, like I used to explain at the beginning, I was trying to not comply with that. Because as Kate said, listen, we're talking about one hundred dollars. I'm not going to go hours filling forms and stuff like that. But the way we worked around it, we said I tried to explain, like, this is why we have these prices. Now, if you want us to fill in X much, then there's a fee of $500, $600. Or the other option would be we allow this type of work to be done. However, only when you buy a license for 1000 WebSize Plus, which is of course a considerable amount compared to the hundred dollars. Then yes, we'll talk about it and there's a certain commitment. But otherwise, no, when it comes to enterprise, yes, there's a big lash to do a a big difference to the way we do business with WordPress, you know, like the quick hundred dollars click buy now versus how these governments and yes, these big enterprises work. It's a big problem, yes, unfortunately. Zack Katz 23:29-23:56 We have a comment from viewer Nick who asks, it's an interesting dynamic with agencies and builders providing higher revenue, lower acquisition costs, but end users being the product Marketing target, is it fair to say that you aim to build for users but sell to agencies? Or is it a matter of choosing a niche, i. e. , multiple right answers more important that you pick one intentionally? Robert Abela 24:00-24:47 I don't think I don't have an exact answer. I think which we try a bit of both because usually, like if you look at agencies, when you build for an agency Especially with our plugin, the activity log. They are using it, of course, to keep a log of what their customer is doing. So technically, the agency is still the user, but of course, their clients end up using the plugin as well. So it's just trying to find the right balance or having some sort. We've been experimenting a bit lately, especially about this, like some sort of different modes in the plugin. And when you have a wizard. And this startup and say, oh, like do you like advanced logs or no? Do you do this? Do you use their suggestion? And then, of course, you fine tune the plugin based on what user chooses in the wizard. Zack Katz 24:47-25:25 Well, and that's a great point, Robert, because And Katie brought this up earlier. We don't know who our customers are unless we ask them specifically. And that requires a lot of other Like onboarding processes, but like follow-up, even checkout processes to like what segment are you? Tell us who you are and why you're using the product. But that gets into other WP product talk episodes that we've already covered in terms of segmentation and stuff, which is a whole lot of stuff to do there. Katie, what do you think about For whom do we build? Katie Keith 25:26-26:31 Yeah, I like Nick's use of the word build because I've previously mainly been talking about the marketing and the positioning. But yeah, building is equally important or maybe more. So yeah, I think we're building for the person with the least experience, the lowest common denominator. That's the best way. So you provide a setup wizard that makes it the onboarding really simple, but you have a button to close it. So it should never get in the way of the experience for your power users. but nonetheless, you have to put that lowest common denominator user first. And even things like not making your wizard open on a bulk activation because that would annoy the power users. Having only options on your setting page, which a reasonable proportion of people would use, but having loads and loads of developer hooks and filters so that it can be customized and documenting them very clearly and everything. So yes, I'd say you build for the most easy to use scenario that anybody can pick up while not closing doors to the power uses. Zack Katz 26:32-26:50 Though for people who use enterprise software, I doubt they would say that everybody builds software that is easy to use when it's targeted toward the enterprise. How does enterprise software building differ from building for the end user? Like Robert, do you have experience with this? Robert Abela 26:52-29:01 I agree with Katie. You always try ca an enterprise usually have much more requirements, complex requirements, but you still try to built yeah to the less knowledgeable user because as K you don't want to fill a page just full of settings that no one's going to use. And there's a difference between even sometimes We do discuss this quite often with the developers. Like, should this be even a setting in the first place? Yes or no? Should you kind of try to predict what the use case for this is? And then, of course, it becomes. then the next question is, as Kay said, should this be an option or should this maybe just be a hook? Because if the developers if only the technical people are going to use it, it applies to a certain requirement, then why should it even be an option? I always try to look at the use the AT twenty rule. Like if 80% of the users are using this, it applies to them, then most words will be an option. But if only twenty percent are going to use it and knowing our products mostly are the technical people who need certain features, then it's fair to say it will be a hook because you know what hooks are, you have your own developers, so it's much easier to use that option rather than having just because of 20% adding an option, a setting in the plugin that will 99% confuse the rest of the users because user, even if you put options Even if they don't know what it is, they will try it most probably. And it might mislead, it might create a lot of support issues, it might mislead users, it might even break things. So it's much easier, or they might not understand why that setting is there, you know? So yeah, it's about trying to find the right balance. And that kind of like ties in because I didn't mention it in my previous answer. I think was it Chris? Yeah, he asked about also the marketing message. I think the market we're still working on it as well. The marketing message is like we're trying to build More generic website and then kind of like it funnels you through. Like, listen, if you're looking for a for this plugin for governments, then of course click here. But if you're an agency, click here. It's easy, of course, but Yeah, we're trying to execute. Zack Katz 29:02-29:17 What's the deal, Robert, with call for a quote? How do you so so many websites when you deal with Like enterprise software, software for governments, and even large, you know, custom plans, call for a quote. Do you have a call for a quote page? Robert Abela 29:17-29:18 Yes, we do. Zack Katz 29:18-29:20 And there's a reason. How does that work? Robert Abela 29:20-31:24 What do you do? It works. It works very well. And there are two reasons. First of all, as Katie mentioned earlier, You should have like an enterprise plan, especially if you're coming and you want you want me to fill like 20 million forms and you have 20,000 websites. Also, if someone is buying a plugin for $99. Even if it's a business, because we deal most with businesses, usually people who purchase software, they have a limit like listen up to $2,000 or $1,000, don't ask, just buy. But if it's more than $1,000, you have to get an approval, some sort of approval. And usually, even the way I see it, like if I'm going to spend $100. It's not just little money, but still I wouldn't hesitate twice to buy something. I will try it, we'll see. But if it's something that costs $1,000, $2,000, $2,000, because You want something for, and you have a government agency, and you have 2000 websites. You need approval, and you need to test the software. It's good to see kind of like when we do that one, the idea is behind to get to speak to the prospect, to speak with them, to get, first of all, a better understanding of who they are and what they need. And secondly, I believe When you're doing business, it's always about relationship, having a relationship with that person. And I believe at least they can Put a face, a name, a voice. Oh, it's not like, especially it's not like some random company somewhere. Yes, we are a real company, we exist, there's me, there's a team. So you create that thing. And it's, I think. they you build a better you build better the the prospect can trust you a bit more because they know who you are. And it's not just one hundred dollars. We're talking about one thousand, two thousand or even more. And mostly that's the reason to try to get in touch with the customer And because if you like when you have five hundred, one thousand websites, most probably you have certain requirements, you have certain operations, certain ways how you do things. So it works both ways. We want you to trust us, but it also works for us because we want to learn about you guys, right? Zack Katz 31:25-32:04 And maybe we're just starting to get into creating government plans and Plans for larger organizations as well, enterprise level. And one of the things that you have to consider is, okay, do we have a service level agreement? Where we are guaranteeing that we will reply to you within a certain amount of time, and we will guarantee that bugs are fixed within a certain amount of time. how much do you take into account those types of SLAs, service level agreement requirements for governments? Or is this and like enterprise, is this a thing that you care about that you need to address? Robert Abela 32:05-33:32 Yes, I think so, and that's how you win the trust of the prospect and then the customer, hopefully. Otherwise, I think it also depends on the software, like, but if it is something that they depend on, for example, we have a 2FA plugin as well, W2FA. If there are problems, I mean, of course, you can always log in via a CSH and disable the plugin, but most people don't do these things on a daily basis. People are logging in and using this plugin. The last thing you want is for a bug in that software, and people cannot log in for a week or something. So People will look for these things for a silly and unique. It's unfortunately, especially with bigger enterprises, it's a bit of a chicken and deck situation. You want to provide them because many ask like 424/7 support. you want to provide them with that support, but maybe you still don't have the financial means to do it as a small business, basically. So like hopefully, if you start signing up more of These type of energies and have it more revenue, then of course you can start providing a better SLA and respecting it more. Of course, whenever we sign some sort of SLA or whatever, we try our best to stick to it. So far, we never had problems. But yes, it it does become a bit more demanding. And sometimes, yeah, you have to I wouldn't say bend your backwards, but yeah, you have to sometimes go out of your way to make sure Yeah, to save that that that customer that did. Zack Katz 33:33-33:40 Katie, do you have any service level agreements on any of the plans that you offer at Barn two excuse me, at Barn two? Katie Keith 33:41-33:45 Well, that kind of sounds very official, but on our pricing tables. Zack Katz 33:45-33:47 That's the point, I think. Yeah. Katie Keith 33:48-34:42 We do offer like guaranteed support and better time scales. So if you buy a m a site as a license that covers more sites, you don't just want to offer the number of sites, you want to find other differentiators such as saying priority support guaranteed response initially within four working hours or whatever, and it goes down the less they pay. So that's one way to do it. And there's other tips related to that as well, like even in as a subheading on your pricing tables, you could say perfect for agencies, perfect for developers, perfect if you're just starting out. So try to get people to identify psychologically with a level and so that the more expensive plans are aimed at the customers who have more money to spend and will be using it on more sites. Zack Katz 34:42-36:35 I was talking to a potential customer, actually an active customer who represents the state in which we live, in which I live, Massachusetts. It's a Massachusetts customer working for the government. And they said to me, and this is something that Chris Lemma has said for years, and so many people in the WordPress marketing space have said this for years. That at the enterprise level and even large agencies and education, that spending $100 on a plug-in is a harder sell than spending $10,000 on a plug-in. Because how do you know that your $100 plugin is reliable if they aren't charging what is what enterprise sees as a fair amount for the software that we provide? So how Like one of the things that we're looking at at GravityKit is creating a separate plan that is specifically targeted toward enterprise that has very Similar offerings, except a little bit better service require like agreement where we say we will respond within a certain amount of time instead of like we're going to, but like instead of saying, Yeah, we're going to, we will say specifically, yes, we will. And then also charging like 10, 20x the amount for the same exact plan, taking into account better service. and also a prioritization for customizations and bugs that they do find. So what we don't want to have is a situation where our pivot toward a little bit more enterprise and a little bit more larger organizations results in a dramatically different product for our end users who don't have the same requirements. But I also don't want to ignore that, that is a big growth opportunity for us Where, if we do build some additional features, we could address a much larger market. Robert Abela 36:37-36:38 No question there. Zack Katz 36:38-36:40 That's just like what we're going through. Yeah. Robert Abela 36:41-37:28 I agree 100%, by the way. Sometimes, even for me, like it's it's much harder to sell a hundred dollars than ten thousand simply because like even for me like usually, especially If you're talking about bigger enterprises and it's something that they're going to rely on, yeah, like most enterprises are aware that, yeah, with $100 per year, you're not going to provide a certain level of support. you cannot provide certain level of support charges. So they do expect certain pricing. Although we also had some pushback sometimes as well. It really depends, but we had some pushback sometimes where we have this idea that WordPress plugins should always be cheap, so or low cost, where we had pushback like we sent quotes to big companies like in the Fortune 500 television. But it's just a plugin. Why does it cost so much? It's just a WordPress package. Zack Katz 37:29-37:40 How does it show that to the different levels of users who government or education won't blink versus the individuals or the agencies? Robert Abela 37:40-38:08 Yeah, exactly. And it's funny because even when we call certain prices for a certain number of websites, if I look at activity log, compared to other logging solutions like Spark whatever will still cost a fraction of these because many of these licenses. I will talk about tens of thousands of dollars or even hundred thousand plus of dollars. I've seen those in the past where I used to work pre WordPress, like people selling when it comes to the security field outside WordPress, software is extremely expensive. Zack Katz 38:08-38:13 Very. Very expensive. Yes. Look up Datadog if you have any questions about how much things cost. Robert Abela 38:14-38:22 Yeah. So, but some people still have this impression that, yeah, it's a WordPress plugin. Why are I paying them? It's just usually $99. No? No, it's not. Katie Keith 38:24-39:33 Which is kind of crazy because A plugin is just software. It could be anything. It could be a very, very large bespoke system, but it's a plugin. So it doesn't really mean anything. But yeah, that is the perception people have. But one thing for me is it's actually been on my to do list since August twenty twenty four to create an enterprise plan, just like Zack mentioned, and I haven't got round to it. But part of the reason as well as busyness is that I don't know if it's what I want in terms of the expectations of those enterprise users. We have moved away from services as a very conscious decision that we want to provide scalable products where we're providing the same product to many, many users and a limited amount of support that's not going to be ridiculous with loads of free customization requests and everything. And if you do offer an enterprise plan that includes certain things, which people would expect it to include for that amount of money, you might well be expected to do free customizations and so on. So it is worth considering. Is that something you even want under your business model? Zack Katz 39:33-40:15 Yeah, I think it is a question, and that's the same reason that we haven't done it, Katie, in the past. I don't want to be on the hook for this. It sounds daunting to be trying to sell to, I don't know, you know, WordPress is powering the NASA blog, like the proverbial NASA customer. I don't want to deal with space agencies when I'm like writing some code. But I do think that we've, because of that, left a huge gap in our offering. where we could be making we could have, let's say, twenty customers that are paying us $10,000 a year. That is a fundamental change to the bottom line of our business. Robert Abela 40:15-41:28 that i think is a big mistake to ignore yeah i think it's about you you shouldn't leave money on the table kind of thing is it like We never started developing these solutions for enterprises. But as more and more people were coming to ask us about these things and realized like maybe there is no other product it's just us. And you can see that you we had a few phone calls, for example, and they're willing to pay. It it's that you need to find out, of course, how much you're going to make. Is it worth doing? And if you if you really commit, because of course, especially at enterprise level. there is more yeah, there's a different level of commitment. But if you're happy, I think it's also we need to we are realizing like even WordPress itself regardless of any plugin. WordPress, yeah, like if you look at it 10, 13 years ago, it was hobby slash business website, but nowadays it's usually growing, especially even with headless WordPress. like more and more enterprises and bigger businesses are using. It's no longer I think I saw a post from Joost, the Volk, a few days ago. WordPress is no longer a blogging platform. It's it's it if you look at the whole ecosystem of plugins, it's way more than just a blogging platform. Zack Katz 41:29-42:06 It's become much more Yeah. And we've talked a lot about agencies, and I'm afraid that that might be because I've been driving those questions or about enterprise. But I want to talk a little more about agencies. We said, yeah, just sell to the end user and agencies will find it and it'll work out fine. But what about building? Are there certain considerations that a plug-in or theme A product owner should think about when building a product, focusing on agencies and making it easier for agencies to adopt and buy their products. Robert Abela 42:07-43:24 Yes, because usually agents as if if I look at our mostly WP activities or the plugin, it's used in a unique way because if you for example, if you look at two FA, it's just used The same on every website. You're an agents, you're not on your clients, it's the same. However, Activisor is a bit different. You have the plug-in, which is usually inserted on the clients. but then it needs to send data or reports or some sort of centralization to the agency. So of course, agencies in some cases might have some specific requirements when it comes to centralization of the that's why we have, for example And the plugin will have features where you export logs to CIM solutions, like PayPal Trade, Locally, Amazon CloudWatch. Those are things an agency, for example, is not going to log in every day on every website to check the logs. They have a centralized theme and they send all the logs of all their customers, clients to that place and then they have rules there and they check things there. So like those features are obviously specifically built for the agencies. And the normal user, unless again, talking about enterprise, own enterprise, the normal user, the average user. who has one, two, let's say up to five websites, they don't have these type of requirements. So yes, there are features where you consciously build because agencies or bigger businesses need them. Zack Katz 43:25-43:29 How about you, Katie? Does Barn2 do anything in that regard? Katie Keith 43:32-44:40 Not specifically, other than things like making sure it works on multi-site or something. like that. I was thinking a bit more about the marketing side of things. And it was when you were talking, Zack, I was wondering whether you would promote This enterprise plan because when I say it's on my to-do list, the plan was to it's not even a lot of work, I should just get on with it, was to just do it internally so that when somebody contacts us saying can I send you a purchase order and you send me an invoice and all that? Then we say, yes. That means that you will need our enterprise plan, which costs 10 times the price of whatever we wording we would come up with. So we wouldn't be advertising it on our website. And then that made me think about how some WordPress product companies have tailored their websites to different user groups. One example that comes to mind is Lifter LMS, which has identified different types of organization that need a learning management system, such as education organizations. And oh, can you remember the others, Zack? There's about five Zack Katz 44:38-44:40 Key healthcare might be one of them. Katie Keith 44:41-44:59 Yeah, that sort of thing. So on their website, they've actually got sections aimed at those user groups, which I think is really great if you have that level of information. So there's different ways we could present that. Do either of you do anything more marketing wise on your website to position to different groups in different ways? Zack Katz 45:00-47:25 Yeah, we're we're about to relaunch our website, and that's going to be good. And one of the reasons it's going to be good is because we're going to use a plugin, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, called Personalize WP. And it is so that you can take what you know about your customer and adjust the content that's on the website So, if we know that a customer is an agency, then we will show them more content and hide the content that isn't relevant to them and show the content that is. You can do this already with WP Fusion as well, where a customer gets tagged in your CRM, and then you can customize the appearance of your website. We have landing pages for the different organization types like education and nonprofits. And I think we have We have a lot of different segments that we have landing pages for. What we don't currently do is when people go to those pages, when they self-select that those are there, like what they are. we don't customize the rest of the website around them. And I think that that's a big opportunity that's going to become more popular as AI becomes easier and more integrated with our website content itself. where I don't see why all of our content can't be rewritten based on the knowledge that we have about a specific user and their technical level and their role in the company. How, like, do they have purchasing power, or are they a software developer and they just want to learn about the hooks? I don't see why everything shouldn't be more dynamic. And I think that would help with enterprise. In terms of reasons to. add it to our pricing table and not hide it, Katie. I think one of those is a price anchor. You're supposed to have a big price that is visible to customers so that the smaller prices look more appealing, more affordable. But I do find that when I go to websites and they have a call for enterprise plan, that's a turnoff for me when it comes to buying a WordPress plugin. Because it makes me feel like it's not necessarily for me. So maybe we would have a different landing page for those types of users and have the call for the enterprise plan there. Robert Abela 47:25-48:27 Robert, what do you think? What we use for that, because I mentioned earlier that we have it we have it a bit differently. So we have the prices the prices for one to twenty five websites that are on the website. And then, like, if you want more websites, then you call, you submit a form so we can get in touch. And the reason being, it's not, of course, it's not always exact, but typically, if someone has more than 25 websites. This ties in, of course, with the price that we're talking, like you need to have a chat and make sure that we are an actual company and stuff. But yes, typically our typical customers. So someone doesn't hesitate to buy the $100 plugin. But if they're going to buy more if they have more websites, most probably they need a bigger license. They have a bigger set up bigger different requirements, then of course. But the plans are available on the website. So we we have the the enterprise plan, not the normal plan, and we show them, but it's up to twenty five websites. And then if you want more than those websites, then we we need to talk kind of thing. Yeah. Zack Katz 48:28-48:49 We have a question from a listener. Do you think it is a good idea to use add ons for agency specific features that regular users most likely won't use instead of including them in plugin core? Or would it complicate and affect the sales? So to have an add on or an extension specifically for the more advanced use cases. Robert Abela 48:49-49:27 It's we had add-ons in the early days, and we stopped them like nine years ago. And the simple reason is when we had add-ons We had, I remember for the first plugin, the picture log, we had like four or five add-ons when we created a bundle. Okay, so you can apply either individual add-ons or the bundle. Like right away within the first few months, 95% of the sales were debunded. And simply because it does complicate it's easier, it does complicate the sales process because sometimes you go I've seen some plugin with add-ons lately. It's like, okay, which add-on is this? It really becomes a bit overwhelming. And, like, listen, here's the point. Zack Katz 49:27-49:30 It's a lot of cognitive burden to what do I need instead of this. Robert Abela 49:31-50:03 Exactly. Yeah. In fact, many IT I've seen some plugins which sell still sell add-ons, but nowadays they have the option what they call subscription. So you pay the subscription and you can use all the add-ons. Or at least they have, okay, these you can use like fifty percent of the add ons, which are more targeted towards X type of users. But if you pay more, then you can use all the add ons. But yes, with add ons, it really complicates the sales process. And yeah, it's it's It's basically more friction to the user or to the client. It's true. Katie Keith 50:03-51:15 Yeah. If I was going, if I had the type of product that I believed would sell best with the add-ons model. then I think I would make the add ons more about the value to the user than the user group probably, which might coincide with agencies. An example of this that I think does it well is Easy Digital Download, where they very carefully created different tiers that are not really about the number of sites, they are about like, for example, if you want additional payment method or something that implies a bigger business. Gravity Forms is another really good example of this, where if you want something like taking payment through forms Well, that means you're monetizing your forms, doesn't it? By definition, that means you're making money from the plug-in, so you're likely to want to pay more. So all of those more business-related forms features are in the more expensive tiers. And that might attract agencies, but it could equally be a solo website owner that has an e-commerce type or semi e-commerce site that they want to Take those payments for, say, booking appointments or something like that. So I would do it based on the value more than anything else. Zack Katz 51:15-52:11 Yeah, and I do think that when you as somebody with a lot of add-ons and one of our add-ons, GravityView has like a bunch of extensions and layouts and Each one of those is a separate product in easy digital downloads, and then we have to we had to optimize our software licensing requests so that we weren't requesting for each one of the add-ons. We bundle those all into one big request, and then we get one big response. So, all of that would have been a lot easier if we had bundled everything into one product. You can always start with one big do-it-all product and split it out. I think it is a lot harder to go the other way, though, and to end products and combine them into the core. You would have to allow legacy customers to have access to the parent product. I don't know. It's I would probably go with including it all in one big product if I were starting over. Robert Abela 52:12-52:13 Definitely, yes. Zack Katz 52:14-52:28 So, Robert, we are at our time, and we wrap up every show with a quick roundtable question, which is What is the single best advice for WordPress product owners when they're thinking about who they are building for? Robert Abela 52:31-53:31 I might not be the best person because as I said, like I started with without any target. But yeah, like try to listen as much as you can. to your customers. Most people are surprised to this day because I still do support. I don't necessarily do support myself, but I do try to tickets in the morning and look at the queue simply because I don't want to live in my own bubble because it's easy to get disconnected to look at the oh, I'm doing marketing and stuff, but you forget what the customers are doing. So listening to the customers is very important, yet at the same time. you should be very careful and make informed decisions because not what everyone says is good. Because if you're trying to build a feature for everyone that asks for it, you end up with a it's a failure quite frankly so you need to choose wisely but yes listening to the customers uh basically will tell you roughly who your your segments uh which segments you you'll be targeting Zack Katz 53:30-53:34 Yeah, that's a good one. Katie, what's your best advice? Katie Keith 53:35-54:14 Mine is that once you have that information that Robert has said that you need about who are your customers then what you should do is think about your website and your positioning and your marketing copy from the perspective of each group. and try to find the happy medium that would appeal best to everybody without alienating everybody. So in my case, I feel that that is aiming at people that are building their own website, improve your conversions, like I said, even if the agency's improving their clients' conversions. So I think find the wording that won't alienate anybody. Zack Katz 54:15-55:04 And for me, as a developer, I like marketing all this stuff too. But in the end, I'm a nerd. I'm a developer. And I tend to build features that maybe nobody wants. So, having conversations with your customer, like Robert was saying, either through support or like if you haven't yet released your product. Have a pre-sales landing page where you can gather information about people who are interested in what you think your product does. And have a conversation with them and ask like why they want this functionality. Because the why might not align with what you're building. There might be a different answer to that. So have pre-release conversations before you release something that might not align perfectly with what is being built. Robert, it looks like you have something to say about that. Robert Abela 55:04-55:26 Yeah, last one, because you said the why is very important. In fact, the first time, some people ask us for a feature, and I get back to them. It's like. Tell me what you want to achieve first and then because sometimes they might be asking for something which does not exactly align with what they they actually require. Because there's a difference between what they what you're trying to do versus what they think they should be seeing in the software. Zack Katz 55:26-55:47 Yep. And customers do not know what your software does, and they just are looking to solve a button solve a problem so many times. Well, that's a wrap. That's all the time we have. Thank you so much, Robert, for joining us. It was a wonderful conversation. Where can people find you online? I'm Melapress. com. Robert Abela 55:47-55:59 I'm also active on LinkedIn and Twitter, mostly Facebook, Instagram, more like personal, but yeah, LinkedIn, definitely. I'm very active about work. And yeah, I'm seeing just some people asking questions: like, if I'm Maltese, yes, I am. Actually. Katie Keith 56:00-56:04 Do you want to end with the story of what where the name Mellipress came from? Robert Abela 56:05-57:17 Yes, definitely. So originally we were called WP White Security. simply because in security you have like the white hats and the black hats. The white hats are the good ones and of course WP. But the name was very long. And even though we still develop security products Many people, as soon as they see security in our name, they go, Oh, how do you compare to Sukuri? We don't do any firewalls. We actually comply with those products and we work together with them. So we needed a new name. And which right we I we even paid some agencies around with names and stuff. And I was talking to a colleague of mine, who's also Maltese, and we have this word in Malta Mella, which is I'm sure in every language, there are these words where, unless you're native, it's very difficult to understand because it can be used. It depends on the tone, but can mean a yes or a no, or like don't you even try, kind of thing. And that was asking me and I said, Yeah, matter of matter. I said, Well, it it really fits in because I already wanted to use just because I'm morty. I don't even motor, but just because I'm I want to use something from my language or something. And most words are complex to pronounce, and it is like the most one of the easiest, it's one of the most commonly used words, but it's also easy for foreigners to pronounce basically. Zack Katz 57:17-57:28 Yeah, and it has like the I don't know if it's the same root or not, but ameliorate to make things better. Like mele melepress like makes me think of ameliorate. Yeah. Okay, it's good. Robert Abela 57:28-57:36 Yeah. It's actually also in Italian, and some Italians ask me, because Mel actually Italian is Apple, so they can get some sort of oat to Apple company or something. Zack Katz 57:37-57:46 Well, that's not the same route then. Exactly. Well, thank you again, Robert, for joining us. Thanks, thanks for having me. Robert Abela 57:46-57:48 I really, really enjoy this. Zack Katz 57:49-58:02 And if you're enjoying it, if you're enjoying these shows, please do us a favor and hit like, subscribe, share it with your friends, reference this show in your newsletters, and don't forget to tune in again next week. Bye. Bye. Thanks, everyone. Thanks.