Show Notes
This week on the WP-Tonic Podcast, host Jonathan Denwood interviewed Scott Bollinger of AppPresser. The two talked about Scott’s business, and the WordPress ecosystem.
Scott got the idea for AppPresser (https://apppresser.com/) when he went to WordCamp San Francisco and heard Matt Mullenweg talk about WordPress moving into the Aapp market. He thought of WordPress sites as mobile apps and set out to create a product that would allow you to create a mobile app from your WordPress website.
There were many technical hurdles to cover and he partnered with the team at Web Dev Studios (https://webdevstudios.com/)to build the actual product.
One of the big concerns was that they would build the app, and that Apple might reject it from the App Store. When it was accepted, they knew they had something to package and use.
Scott felt that they were fortunate with this product because the idea was different and quickly gathered interest. He said, “We didn’t have to do a a lot of marketing. When we launched, we had an audience.” He attributes this to articles written and buzz created because it was something different and something people saw as valuable.
From other product launches he as done, he finds that much buzz to be abnormal.
In the initial launch, they did not have trouble converting people to paid users. Again this is unusual. Frequently product sales are slow to build.
From the beginning they made a lot of sales.
They are moving to a SaaS product. They still have plugins but now have a cloud-based app builder which is much smoother than what they had. They can host push notifications, and provide a better user experience for their customers building apps.
Aside from discussing AppPresser, Jonathan and Scott talked about the WordPress ecosystem and a post Scott wrote after attending an eCommerce conference where WordPress wasn’t mentioned.
Scott explained that the conference was a marketing conference and that all of the eCommerce discussions covered selling on Amazon and Shopify. Although WooCommerce is the largest eCommerce platform on the Internet with more stores than Shopify, it may not appeal to a non-technical market.
He wrote Perspective on WordPress (http://scottbolinger.com/perspective-on-wordpress/) on his ScottBolinger.com blog to show that while we know that WordPress runs over 20% of the Internet, those of us in the WordPress community think that everyone knows and cares about WordPress. Actually, this isn’t the case.
He feels WordPress is best for agencies and developers building for clients. If you’re not technical, it can be incredibly difficult. Companies like Squarespace and Shopify are often popular with non-technical audiences because they are easier to use out-of-the-box.
Of course, he points out that the benefits of WordPress are the large ecosystem of plugins, the fact that it is Open Source, and can be customized to almost any requirement. It’s just that the general audience may not see that or understand its value.