[98] Website Teardowns! a Form Builder, Invoicing, and WordPress products
Hello, and welcome to Bootstrap Web. This is episode number 98. Brian, today is a great episode ahead of us where we get to talk about other people's businesses and point out their problems instead of our own. Yep. Very exciting.
Brian Casel:Enough enough rambling on about our own our own issues. We're gonna we're gonna bring our issues to other people. So
Jordan Gal:Yes. So we we've got we've got a a bunch of listeners that have sent in their sites and basically asked us to to do a teardown or or critique or whatever, just kinda give our thoughts. So what Brian and I have done is nothing. Meaning, purposefully nothing. We're gonna go in cold on these and kinda open these up.
Jordan Gal:We might have looked at them very briefly, but we haven't really we haven't really thought about it. So we're just gonna give our thoughts as we're looking at them and for me this is perfect timing. We are redoing the Carthook site right now. So I've been thinking a lot about marketing sites and the message of what should be there, what shouldn't and the sign up process and all this other stuff. So I think it's gonna be fun.
Jordan Gal:We we can point out other people's problems instead of admitting our own.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I guess before we dive into it, the only the only issue that I have with, you know, quote unquote website tear downs or or, you know, these, like, listener questions that you hear on a lot of podcasts. I love listening to them. I think I think they offer a lot of value, and we're gonna do them here, and we've done them before.
Brian Casel:But there there's always that issue that, like, the person answering the question or the person doing the teardown doesn't have the full story or doesn't know everything. And and I'm sure that there are things going on that that would probably negate some of the advice that that might come through. But, I mean, that that being said, you know, we're looking at this with with fresh eyes just like a first time visitor to your website would would look at it. And granted, we may or may not be in your target market and that that might play into it as well. But, you know, I think it's good to get that fresh perspective, know, someone who's coming at it cold.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. The the stuff that's inapplicable or way off the mark, you know, it should be dismissed. We get we get feedback like that all the time and I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know the e commerce market so what you're saying doesn't apply.
Jordan Gal:But it's always why not get some more feedback? Get a little press, get a link from bootstrweb.com, why not? I always think about the the companies that I know of that are like enterprise y and you look at their site and there's there's just nothing there and they're
Brian Casel:But they're doing like billions.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Making so much money so that's not where it's all really happening. Yeah. So why not? It's a good time.
Jordan Gal:Also, can we just call time out and give some love to our boy Chris Ranzio from Phoenix, Arizona who sent in an email today that brightened our day like like a flower in a field. So he he just gave us some some love over the podcast. So Chris, thank you very much. We really really appreciate that. Chris runs a consulting business and what's the name of his his SaaS?
Jordan Gal:Trainual. Yeah. Which looks a little bit like what you used to work on. What's it called? Help me out.
Jordan Gal:Processes?
Brian Casel:Oh, that was a sweet process. Yeah. I didn't look at his his site yet, but I did read his email. And Chris, you know, thank you for the kind words. We we get emails, you know, from from a bunch of you from time to time, which is always great to hear.
Brian Casel:You know? But he kinda shared his his story and what he's working on. He's he's doing long term travel, both Jordan and I have. He's launching a productized service. And and so, you know, he reached out and and I'm actually gonna be interviewing him for the upcoming Productize podcast.
Brian Casel:So, you know, things like this, it's always good to just do a cold email outreach to podcasts that you listen to or just people that you that you admire and you've never met before. I mean, who knows? You know, you can it's you're just striking up a relationship. And, yeah, these people are everybody's very busy. You're busy.
Brian Casel:Every everybody is. But even if you don't have a a point or an intent of of emailing someone and and you just relate to them on some level, it's important to kind of reach out and and do that. I mean, I personally don't do that enough and but every time I have done it, it's it's always pays off. So it's Yep. It's great.
Jordan Gal:Totally agree. Anyway, thanks, Chris. So alright. Where where are we? Let's do it.
Jordan Gal:Let's get started.
Brian Casel:Let's do it. Alright. So the first one is called FormKeep, and this one comes from Ben Orenstein. And I I have actually seen this one before. I'm a little bit familiar with with the product.
Brian Casel:So the the headline on the on the website says, it's like Wufoo, but for designers and developers. And from what I understand, what it what it does is it allows you to add functionality to any form that you've put in basic HTML and CSS. And and actually, this like, I personally would be a a maybe at one point in my career, I would have been a a target customer for this product. Because I'm a front end developer, designer. I'm not a back end designer programmer.
Brian Casel:Which means I know how to create a form and and place a form on a website and create the inputs and and the submit button and and make it look and and and put the the colors on it and then style it in a certain way. But I don't have the chops to make that form do anything, to make it functional. I I I don't have any ability to make that form right to a database or perform some action as a result. So that's that's where my skills as a as a non back end developer fall short. And this is what FormKeep this is the problem that FormKeep solves.
Brian Casel:This first example, I mean, I do happen to know a little bit more about the about the the product, but, I'm still fairly new to it and I haven't actually used it myself. But just kinda taking a look at the website, which I'm actually having a kind of a tough time loading on my browser for some reason. Oh, there it goes.
Jordan Gal:Mine loads fine. Don't I see a different headline. Maybe maybe Ben is doing some AB testing. The the headline I see is form endpoints for designers and developers. No iframes, JavaScript embeds or CSS overrides.
Brian Casel:Oh, interesting. Yeah. That is not what I'm looking at. So I I guess he's doing some AB testing. Nice.
Jordan Gal:Hold on. Let's see. I got my Optimizely. There you go. I have my little, like, WAPLYZR in in Chrome so I can see what he's using.
Jordan Gal:He's using Optimizely. Very nice, Ben.
Brian Casel:Can you repeat that that headline that you're seeing?
Jordan Gal:Sure. In the the the headline is form end endpoints for designers and developers, and then the sub headline is no iframes, JavaScript, embeds, or CSS overrides.
Brian Casel:And so just to compare that to the so let's say that's the a version. What I'm looking at is the b version and I'm seeing it's like Wufoo but for designers and developers. And then the sub headline is you know how to build a form, you just want somewhere to send your data. That's FormKeep.
Jordan Gal:I I like what you're seeing better.
Brian Casel:I almost like to crisscross them. Right? I I like your top headline better and and my sub headline better. And the reason for that is like, just the the headline that says, it's like Wufoo, but for designers develop and developers. I I mean, I guess I'm just not such a fan of of saying, like, hey, we're just like Wufoo.
Jordan Gal:Right. Like Uber for x.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because a part of it is, like, well, why don't I just go use Wufoo? You know?
Jordan Gal:Right. You're you're letting you're letting someone else's brand dominate your your messaging.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it just makes me think like, okay. So you're just another Wufu. You kinda do things. Maybe one or two things are slightly different, but essentially, you're Wufu.
Brian Casel:I I'd wanna get that thought out of my brain as soon as possible because what I do know about the product is it's not that. It's what I what I like better about your headline is you're speaking directly to a front end web developer who has some technical knowledge. Like, what did it say? Like, no iframes or or what?
Jordan Gal:No iframes, JavaScript, embeds, or CSS overrides.
Brian Casel:So immediately, you're speaking the language of your target customer.
Jordan Gal:Right. It doesn't speak to me, which means it's speaking the language of the target market. My my only take on it is where's the benefit? Right? It doesn't talk specifically about the benefit all the way upfront.
Jordan Gal:It does talk about the pain that says no iframes, javascript, embeds or CSS overrides, things that I don't know or care about but I imagine the target market looks at and says, oh, that's what I have to deal with all the time. I don't have to deal with those. That's that's a good thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and actually, I think the benefit comes through in the sec in the sub headline that I'm seeing, which says, you know how to build a form. You just want somewhere to send your data. That's FormKeep. So I mean, that's exactly me.
Brian Casel:I know how to build a form, but I don't know how to write to a database or do do something with it. Interesting. Alright. Alright. Sense.
Brian Casel:Let's see. Scrolling down. It's it's a pretty slick slick design and it's got some animations going on. It's pretty cool.
Pippin Williamson:Yeah. Beautiful site.
Jordan Gal:Take ownership of your markup and style. PhoneKeep generates a URL to use as your forms endpoint. Just plug it in, just encode and deploy. That easy. Okay.
Jordan Gal:So it's convincing me that this is not gonna take a lot of work to get it done. That's good. My tendency is always to talk about the pain in more detail at first and then talk about your solution.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:And so there's a bit of that and then it jumps into browse and search submissions. So that better be a genuine pain point or the feature that people like the most. Right? If you're gonna give it that prime of real estate, first you're gonna explain what it does, and then the first real benefit you're talking about is this browse and search. That that's good as long as that's something that people really love, you know, your paying customers are really really into that.
Brian Casel:I think you're right on there. I think it I think it I'd be a little bit afraid that this headline or this section of the page, you know, because it's got this animation showing what looks to be like their interface for managing submit form submissions. It it it's almost like you guys probably worked really hard on creating this pretty slick interface. So you felt the the need to highlight it pretty prominently in the middle of the homepage. And I don't know that that that, like you said, speaks specifically to a pain point, you know, other than, hey, it's a really slick and nice looking app to deal with every day.
Jordan Gal:Right. I also wanna see an example. I think the the the trend these days is show instead of tell. What I've been looking at actually is ConvertKit site, is not nearly as slick as this website, but it just shows everything. Just giant screenshots, demo video, just take a look at the back end of this app, exactly what you would get if you signed up.
Jordan Gal:It's like, here's all the information you need in order to make your buying decision.
Brian Casel:I'm curious with the AB testing, like, what are you seeing on the pricing section? Like, are we seeing the same thing?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. On the pricing section, the first thing is that there's no pricing link in in the top navigation. Yep. And I think that's so common and so normalized these days that it should be there. Like, why why make me think what's the pricing?
Jordan Gal:You know everyone's gonna look for the pricing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, what we're seeing in the top nav is, four links. The first three are, you know, light gray, kind of less prominent. It says FAQ, help, sign in, and then a big highlighted blue box button that says create your form. So I like that that they're emphasizing the call to action to get them to create an account.
Brian Casel:Yep. But yeah. Like you said, I'd I I think there should be a pricing. Everyone's gonna look for the pricing at first anyway. Yes.
Jordan Gal:And and we're we're looking at our analytics data right now and and that's what we're finding also. We used to have and well, we currently do, we haven't deployed yet. Our marketing site on the first page, you can go to the pricing page if you hit on the navigation, but our call to action is to create a free account. Right? To start your free trial.
Jordan Gal:So and so what we did is we looked at the path. How many people actually go and create an account without looking at the pricing page? And we saw that it was sufficiently low that, okay, our CTA shouldn't be to create an account, it should be to see plans and price because everyone finds the pricing link anyway, goes there, and then creates an account. So why try to be clever? So it would be interesting to look at this site's data to see I mean, I don't even know if they can see it because there's no link for for pricing, but I I would still consider the the flow to include pricing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so I'm I'm looking at the pricing section, is near the bottom of the page. Yep. Like, I I feel like something's missing here, but I maybe the page didn't load all all the way or or whatever, but like what are you seeing there?
Jordan Gal:I'm seeing pay per form, which which to me is the wrong context. It should be pricing. Like this is how much this thing costs.
Brian Casel:But then are are you only seeing one plan?
Jordan Gal:I am only seeing one plan.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:So it is we want you to be happy with FormKeep before subscribing. So forms start in a free sandbox, which is cool, so that you can get things up before you pay, which I like. Like, give the wow, give the benefit upfront, and then when it's time to pay, that's when it's time to deploy, that's when you should pay. But what I'm seeing is pay per form as the headline of that section instead of pricing, which I think is the wrong kind of orientation and then the only plan that I see is commercial. Right?
Jordan Gal:And that's $19 per form per month, which I don't really know what to say about that because I'm not the target market. So I don't know if that's the way people think, if it's per form or if it's a certain number of forms or per site or per client. I'm I'm not sure. Pricing is so hard in
Brian Casel:general. I I don't know. I mean, this one's really tough and and I think the last time that I that I looked at the site, which was, you know, a couple of weeks ago, and I was actually talking to to Ben about this, I think he's been experimenting with different pricing models. So I think what we're looking at is is some some sort of iteration. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, what we're seeing now is just the one plan. It it and it's labeled commercial. So just having one plan and it has a label on it makes me think that there must have been a second and third plan and and it's
Jordan Gal:just Which not which is cool. But if you if you remove it, then then go the whole way. They just call it $19 per form. Sign up.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, you you look at, like, Buffer, which basically has one plan, and it's, like, called the awesome plan, and that's it. Look. I'm all for charge more and find the right target customers that are or or, you know, the aspiring pricing as as Rob Walling, you know, has talked about. I'm wondering about this price point, $19 per form per month.
Brian Casel:And the only reason I'm wondering about it is if you're a front end developer, yes, you may not have the the technical chops to send your data to a database, and that's why you would use FormKeep. But you're probably working on some sort of team. If you're a front end developer, there's there's gonna be another back end developer on the team, and they can they can hook it up to I don't know. I mean, I guess it's it's tough. It's like, are are you selling to agencies or are you selling to solo freelance web designers?
Brian Casel:You know, like, I've been using Gravity Forms on on WordPress, and and I have a developer license for that. I've I've had it for years. And I think I pay something like $200 a year or or $2.50 a year, something like that. And and that gives you, like, unlimited forms. And and maybe that's you're give you know, giving away too much for too little, but I think there's some middle ground there where I I I would try to tier it, you know, $19.19 bucks a month, you get, like, three three to five forms.
Brian Casel:$50 a month, you're getting 25 forms, you know. And and and make the tiers, you know, match them up to to certain avatars or or, you know, people in your in your audience. So like solo solo freelancer, just need to use it on on a couple of sites, you know, there it's like 19 a month. Studio with, you know, 50 sites, it's, you know, $50 a month. Agency with, you know, hundreds of sites, it's it's more.
Brian Casel:Yep. Something like that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The pricing itself is difficult to give, you know, that much commentary on because it it really depends on the customers and who the current customers are, who the aspirational customers are. Yeah. But just on on the flow, yeah, there's no call to action at the bottom of that. Right?
Jordan Gal:There isn't like it's $19 a month. Click here to get started. So I think this this section is the the single biggest, issue on the site. Right? That's where I would focus and clarify and and then if you look at the create your form, right?
Jordan Gal:That's the call to action. I'm not sure about that. So you're creating an account, right? Not really creating a form.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I just If
Jordan Gal:you were gonna go with the create a form, then like
Brian Casel:It should take you to the form builder.
Jordan Gal:Right. Give it to the form builder and then say to deploy, create an account and put in your credit card info or and I know I know that's tricky technically. The information on the site is one thing, I would go with showing more, show the back end, show an example, show click to a demo, show more so the person can make a decision. And then on the pricing, think about clarifying the pricing and then linking that directly to the the next action, the call to action, creating an account, creating a form, deploying or whatever that next flow is.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So should we move on to the next one? Yeah. This one is called simpleinvoices.io, and it comes from Laurent Perrier. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Brian Casel:So thank you, Laurent, for for sending this in on on Twitter. Simple Invoices. That's what it is. They're doing invoices and and pay so the headline that we're seeing here is online invoicing and payments for freelancers. Alright.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:This just stresses me out.
Brian Casel:Why does it stress you out?
Jordan Gal:Because this is so crowded. It's so crowded that I think you either have to have one of two things. Amazing marketing that it doesn't matter that it's crowded, just have either amazing marketing or a giant budget. You just don't care. You just push this thing through to get enough attention or you need a niche.
Jordan Gal:Right? You you you need an niche.
Brian Casel:And freelancers is not
Jordan Gal:Freelancers is not
Brian Casel:That that's not an niche. That's you know.
Jordan Gal:In international, I don't know. Anything, like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like contractors, designers.
Jordan Gal:So I think that's but but let's put that aside a touch even though I think that's the the umbrella issue.
Brian Casel:I I think you're right. I think the umbrella issue there is, okay. Like, the first thought that I would have if I'm a freelancer or anyone who who and I'm looking I'm looking for an invoicing solution. The first thought in my mind is if somebody kinda mentioned simple invoices, hey. Oh, check this out, or I saw it on Twitter or whatever, my first question is gonna be like, alright.
Brian Casel:Well, how is this different from FreshBooks? Or how is this different from the the big players in this space?
Jordan Gal:Right. From what I'm already using. Like, why should I switch to
Brian Casel:Chances are you're switching to it. You're not, you know and and, like, if you're a brand new freelancer, the brand new freelancers who just quit their job and they need their very first invoicing solution, they're probably gonna go to the to the biggest name possible because that's the first name that's gonna come up on a Google search.
Jordan Gal:Right. And then some percentage of those people are not going to be satisfied with that offering because it's for the general audience, and then they're gonna look for a more niche solution and that's that's what that's what I would be in in this market. It's a good looking site. I love the invoice demo, so you can see exactly what the demo looks like because that's, you know, that's the first thing that people think about and worry about. That's good.
Brian Casel:I'm looking for that, like, killer feature that differentiates it and makes it worth worth my time and and and gets this thought out of my head, like, it's just another invoicing tool. I guess one one thing on that could be that it also lets you collect the payments. Although, I know that all the tools do do let you collect payments now, but I like that they're they're promoting it's not very prominent, but it says, you can use Stripe. You can connect it to your Stripe account. But again, I I think that's still pretty common with with all the tools out there.
Jordan Gal:And and they store the credit card, which is good. And they do recurring billing, which is good. They allow you to export multiple currencies. So one of these features is the thing that people care about most, and that should go up top. That's gotta be, you know, online invoicing and payments for freelancers that do recurring billing or Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Something Yep. Get paid super fast.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally.
Jordan Gal:Right. Get set up in five minutes. Watch this demo on to go from creating an account to sending an invoice in less than two minutes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There there I'm seeing another sub headline here. It says like export your data, your invoices, payments, and clients. It says it will make your accountant happy. You've got to make that more prominent like, you know, account accountants friendly or or easy for tax time or you know, because like exporting data, like, why do I care about exporting data?
Brian Casel:Oh. Oh, okay. Taxes. Oh, okay. So and multiple currents currencies and languages, you know, what's the niche that really cares about that?
Brian Casel:Right? In my experience freelancing, I've had clients that are overseas. I have clients now that are overseas in audience ops, but I still invoice them with with the USD. I mean, I just use Stripe. But what's the big pain that that this is solving here?
Brian Casel:You know, I'm I'm trying to understand that. And and maybe there is some segment of the audience who really, really cares about that. And that's that's who you should research and figure out, okay, why is that so important? And if it is so important, then then highlight it. But I'm I'm just wondering what, you know, is that a differentiator?
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. Yep. Something has to be different. Something.
Jordan Gal:In in this crowded of a market, even if it's not actually differentiated, the messaging should be differentiated. Whether it's the fastest way to start collecting, the easiest way to do recurring billing, the best way for foreign freelancers to work with American companies. If you're not gonna differentiate that much, then at least the messaging. And the site is a little broken for me on Chrome where the top image extends the width of the page.
Brian Casel:Yep. So that's that's I I think that's on purpose. I think they wanted the computer to kinda come off the side of the page.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But the the the rest of the site doesn't have the horizontal extended. So just
Brian Casel:Oh, okay. Got it. Like, just one more issue here. I'm looking at the pricing. I mean, what are you thinking there?
Jordan Gal:God bless you, baby. $10 a month, you know. I feel you. I'm I'm I'm trying to think like, you know, our average revenue per user is north of a $100. And I'm like, how do I get that like tripled and quadrupled and up, You know, because it's so hard to to build MRR at only a $100 a month.
Jordan Gal:So at at $10 a month, you know, you need you need a lot of traffic, you need a lot of eyeballs, you need you need a lot a lot of customers.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, $10 a month. So we're not we're we're not seeing multiple tiers here. We're just seeing the one plan that costs $10 a month. You have the option of paying month monthly or or annually for a $100 a year.
Brian Casel:I mean
Jordan Gal:Which is simple and clear, and and that's that's good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I get the simplification of it, and, you know, you give people fewer choices than they're they're gonna sign up. And maybe this is maybe in such a crowded market, you you have to compete on price. That that could be that could be playing into this as well. But I mean, I'm seeing $10 a month, unlimited invoices, unlimited clients, unlimited payments.
Brian Casel:That's that's a lot of stuff for not a lot of money. And just doing the math on that, you gotta have a thousand customers to hit 10 k MRR.
Jordan Gal:So service a thousand customers is no joke. Anyway, look, the the the market for this is tricky. Right? The the pricing is really difficult on this. If I were running this business, what I would do is experiment with the messaging.
Jordan Gal:Even if you can't fulfill the promise, I would at least experiment to see where you should take the product next because it has to be differentiated at some point unless you have a marketing plan that doesn't care about that. Unless you're using affiliates or using webinars or paid advertising that it kinda doesn't doesn't matter as much.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So you wanna start us off on the on the next one while I plug in my charger here so I don't get cut off.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Sure. What's the next one? Do you wanna do Oh. Wpwppusher?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Let's do that.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So wppusher.com. This again is a pretty technical product, so I'm not gonna comment on that with my ignorance, but giant clear headline that says pain free deployment of WordPress themes and plugins directly from GitHub. Okay. The the thing I like about this is it's definitely speaking to a very specific pain.
Jordan Gal:Right? Clearly, if you're a developer and you work with WordPress, there must be something happening between your work in GitHub and then you have to go through this pain point of actually deploying themes and plugins. So the fact that this cuts that out, right, that's what this is speaking to directly. So I don't experience that pain myself, but I love that the headline is kind of directly putting its finger exactly on what what the pain point is. Sub headline, take the pain out of WordPress development, deploy directly from GitHub or Bitbucket and never again copy files over FTP.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So I guess in my mind, that better be a really pain point.
Brian Casel:I guess I have a little bit more technical background than you do, especially, like, I come from a little bit of a WordPress background. That being said, I'm I'm still not technical enough to fully understand this product or or ever use it myself. Just because I'm you know, I I I do use GitHub a little bit in in our plugin development for for audience ops, but it's my developer who's using it, not me. I'm I'm just the one putting in the issues, and he and he's dealing with the issues. But what I do like about it just off the off the bat is I I like the overall branding, the name of the business, WP Pusher.
Brian Casel:So I I do know enough that pushing to GitHub or, you know, deploying code, the term is push. So right there, it's it's pretty relevant. Like, WP Pusher, if you're a developer, that's that's probably what you're thinking about before you even know anything about the product. So we're we're in alignment there. I think that's looking good.
Brian Casel:Pain free deployment of WordPress themes and plugins directly from GitHub. I I think I think that the headline is good in that it directly calls out who you are that I'm speaking to. I'm speaking to WordPress developers. And it and it does tell tell you kinda, like, basically what it does and it encapsulates that in the head in the headline. It says pain free deployment.
Brian Casel:Like, what is painful about that? And and I guess it doesn't get into the how, but as you scroll down the page so I I mean, I don't have a a big problem with this. I I think it's actually pretty good, but I I a little ambiguous, but but at the same time, I think headlines should be ambiguous. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But I I think it it does a good job of getting into a little later. So so there's the headline, then there's the sub headline, and then there are these two like animated GIFs, which I think are good because it again, it's showing what does WP Pusher look like on the back end of WordPress, how do you do it, how does it work, and and they're showing it directly. So I think that's
Brian Casel:that's Okay. So I might have a little bit of an issue with these animated GIFs. Mhmm. First of all, it's hard to see when the when the beginning and when the end of the of of the loop is on on these GIFs.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Videos are better.
Brian Casel:Videos are better. Videos would be better, but also, like, I I'm still I still don't know what I'm looking at. And and I'm a WordPress guy. I I understand that we're looking at the WordPress dashboard, and you and it it looks to, like to me like you're showing activating a theme in in WordPress. But that doesn't explain to me how a specific problem is being solved.
Brian Casel:So I I I would probably replace these animated GIFs with just a simple static, like, step one, do this. Step two, do this. Step three, it's rainbows and unicorns. You just solved this really painful problem. You know?
Brian Casel:Maybe that's like I don't know the ins and outs of it. Maybe, like, step one, you're in GitHub and you and you push an update. Step two, it magically appears on your website. And step three, happy developer, happy client. Like, you know and and then, like, something that's it it seems like part of it is, you're cutting out FTP from the picture.
Brian Casel:So, you know, something else to drive that home. Like, I I still personally use FTP probably too much. I'm sure developers are, like, cringing when they hear that. But, you know, like like some kind of graphic or or big image to call attention to, like, circle with a line through it, like FTP is gone from the from this scenario.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. What what I like for this scenario is showing the old process first to new. Have you have you seen something like that? It's kind of tricky to do in a graphic, but to show this is the old process. Go to GitHub, do this, then do this, then FTP, then come here, then come here, then come here, and then you get to the endpoint to your goal.
Jordan Gal:And then this is the new way to do it with WP Pusher, one, two, three, done. So I think and especially if you if you nail the old process, if you really show that you understand exactly how people are doing it currently, that I think gets the attention of the perfect target market like, oh my god, that's the exact thing that I deal with every day that I go from here and then here and then here and then here and to take that away. I think that's that's really powerful. Now, I do wanna say one thing that this site is doing really well that the other two didn't have at all, we didn't comment on is that they're getting leads. They have the drip, right, free w p git crash course, five day completely free email crash course.
Jordan Gal:So they're collecting emails for people who are somewhat interested but not ready to sign up right now. And the other two sites weren't doing that, and that's that's hugely important.
Brian Casel:I love it. Yep. And, and that is that is a great point. And it's not just the, hey, sign up for our newsletter, please. You know, it's
Jordan Gal:Some value.
Brian Casel:A free WP Git crash course. So you're you're teaching something. I think that's awesome. I just clicked over to the w to the WP Pusher blog, and I'm just kinda skimming through what we're looking at here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. No. This is pretty good, man. It talks about the pain of WordPress development and it does talk about that existing process. You wanna use version control.
Jordan Gal:You wanna do it on GitHub. Your intentions are good, but getting code from GitHub and onto your client's website is painful because all of them are on shared hosting with no Git and no SSH. Oh, you're you're on the
Brian Casel:home you're reading the homepage. Right?
Jordan Gal:I'm reading the homepage. So it really does talk about the pain, and then it talks about their solution, exactly how it works, and then talks about some FAQs, and then yeah. Very very interesting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I'm just gonna jump over to their blog for a second. I'm I'm reading that, and, know, having the the educational crash course is great, but I'm but looking at the blog posts themselves, I'm not seeing a whole lot of value there. I'm seeing, like, product updates, like, hey, WP Pusher two point o is out, when a WP Pusher license. These are, like, headlines of blog posts.
Brian Casel:This one could be value driven, like a warning about using Composer with WordPress. Not exactly sure what that's all about, but it but, you know, could be interesting. So it but overall, most of these posts are not exactly educational. So I I don't know that they're they're doing a whole lot to drive more people into that crash course and into their email list. And then I wonder what happens on the back end once someone gets like, if you're doing educational content, you're getting people into that sequence, then you can start to, you know, pitch them on, hey, try out WP Pusher.
Brian Casel:And and even, you know, activate subscribers by offering an exclusive coupon on on the back end something like that. Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:Right. Yeah. Seems like the the blog is not the the focal point of the market. Yeah. The the the pricing is a hot mess.
Jordan Gal:It's not it's not a mess, It's just a lot to choose from. Right? So it has a non commercial license, which is free to use, which I don't know why anyone would pay if that's maybe because that's like for your own use as opposed to yeah. That side of the WordPress community, I don't know all the all the intricacies. If
Brian Casel:your code is open source and hosted in a public repository, WP Pusher is a 100% free to use. I mean, yeah.
Jordan Gal:I That shouldn't
Brian Casel:be Supporting a open source, I I I get that, but this is still a product and it's still solving a problem. I mean Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Don't know if I
Pippin Williamson:if I'd have that.
Jordan Gal:If you wanna have it, God bless you, but that wouldn't be the first thing at the very top of the sign up area. And my only other question is personal for one site, good. Freelancer for five sites, also good. So there's agency, big agency and then at the very bottom there's enterprise. I don't know if I would have that many different options.
Jordan Gal:My question to the business owner would be how many people that are really paying $500 a month and up are just buying directly on the site? Excuse me, per year. How many are actually buying it without talking to you without anything? And if it's not that many, then I'd I'd get it off the site and I'd say anyone with more than, you know, five five sites, contact for pricing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I I think that this is somewhat standard in terms of selling WordPress plugins, having like the personal license, usually like one one or like, usually like one site. And then, the next step up would be like three to five sites. You know, if you just if it's one person, but they own a couple of sites, that could be good. And then the third tier is the agency, which is typically like unlimited sites or some high number of sites, like 20 or 25 sites.
Brian Casel:What what he's doing here is four options. There's like almost like two there's Agency and then there's Big Agency. 20 site license or a 100 site license. I I mean, I think it's one too many options here. You you can do the the agency license can be 20 sites.
Brian Casel:I think WooThemes or WooCommerce does this where the extent like, the top extension is 25 sites, and you just have to buy a couple of them if you have a 100 sites, you know. So
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah. That's I I think it's just one one too many. So under big agency, I would just have enterprise and then call for pricing. And then let's see what happens when you hit buy now.
Jordan Gal:Right? Does it go directly to a a checkout page? Looks like they're using easy digital downloads, which Cardhook now has an integration for.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This all all the WordPress all the cool WordPress products use EDD. That's that's the We way to
Jordan Gal:just built an we just built an EDD integration for Cardhook. If you if you go and abandon a cart on easydigitaldownloads.com, you will get our emails.
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:I think
Brian Casel:their checkout page it's okay. But I've used easy digital downloads before. We're we're actually using it on on Audience Ops to sell our plugins. Part of the issue that I have with it is that it just by default, they add all these fields to your checkout. I'd like to cut out a lot of these fields, especially for a WordPress plugin.
Brian Casel:And the billing details, you know, do you have to collect the entire address? And I mean, maybe that is necessary, but, like, we don't we don't collect an an address. Like, we don't, you know email address, first name, and last name. I mean, I I guess you kinda need those, but I don't know. It just I'm I'm just seeing a long page of of fields, and I I wonder if we can
Jordan Gal:No no trust symbols, no credit card logos, no guarantees, no testimonials. I would definitely add to this page assuming once people get here, obviously, it's it's showtime. You want you want to give them as much as you can. There's no head there's no header, there's no logo. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It just it changes abruptly from the marketing site being this this good looking solid site, and then the checkout page I would I would definitely put put some work in on.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Just to give listeners, an idea, like the main site is this kind of dark blue background, mostly a dark site, which I think is fine, especially for, like, a developer audience. But then once you get to that checkout page, it's white background, just says checkout at the top. We don't see the WP Pusher logo any anymore, like you said. But I do like that it's that the navigation is stripped out, like we're we're limiting their options there.
Brian Casel:But they right at the very top, and I would probably move this, it says back to WP Pusher. No problem with having, like, maybe a link or two at the bottom. They they do have a couple of links at the bottom. Overall, it's pretty stripped down, but, you know, maybe just carry over, like, the background color at least to keep the keep the consistency and and just put a WP Pusher logo at the top to make to let people know, like, this isn't some shady other part of the Internet that you've just entered into, you know. That's that's about all I got on that one.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. Yeah. Me too. I I think it's I mean, it's it's solid and I hope they're doing a good business. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I like the way they're doing the problem definition plus their version of the solution. But always room for improvement.
Brian Casel:Yep. Do we have time for one more quick one?
Jordan Gal:Really. If you want my wife to kill me.
Brian Casel:Okay. Well, we're gonna do another we're gonna do another episode of this at at some point, you know, in the future. So definitely keep sending these in. Or if if you have, like, a specific question or whatever you you want us to talk about, that's cool too.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We wanna get to to Leadviews which is our our buddy's website, but let's do that next. And you know, I'm definitely open to criticism on the Cardhook site. I know right now it's lacking, but we're about to launch an updated version, so it'd be cool to kind of look at that with a cold fresh set of eyes when when we do the the next version of this.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Let's let's cut it off here
Jordan Gal:and Alright. Cool. That was fun. I hope it was helpful for the people that sent it in. Hope there's nothing personal taken if we were harsh in any way.
Jordan Gal:I just want you to make more money and more sales. Cool. And you can take a look at our sites. They're not perfect either. There's always hope for improvement.
Brian Casel:Absolutely.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Cool. Brian, good talking. Alright. Later, man.
Jordan Gal:Late.
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