Moving and Not Moving With the Crowd

To Heck with Black Friday, I’m Raising My Prices!

This week in Post Status Slack, Lesley Sim, the founder of Newsletter Glue, dropped this announcement: “While everybody is offering discounts for Black Friday, we’re planning to significantly raise prices. We’ll be narrowing our target audience and focusing mainly on medium-large publishers and online businesses; working with them more closely and providing a high level of customization and support.” What motivated Lesley’s decision? Where does she expect it to take her company? How can plugin owners find enterprise customers and agency partners? Find out on Post Status Draft. LISTEN→

Can We Get to “Yes” on Better UX?

This week in an article shared in Post Status Slack, Eric Karkovack suggested some ways to improve the WordPress user experience, especially for DIY users setting up a website for the first time. Some of the things Eric wants to see happen, like a standard interface for plugins and a curated view of the plugin ecosystem, are also commonly expressed by designers, developers, and people in other roles at WordPress agencies serving enterprise clients. Can we get everyone to “yes” on a better UX? Tell us what you think. LISTEN→

A curated plugin ecosystem you say? How?

I’ve elaborated on some of the ideas discussed on the podcasts this week with Eric and Lesley that can help both plugin businesses, WordPress agencies, and WordPress users in general. It mostly comes down to:

• Don’t Play Favorites — Recognize Excellence. What if there was a quality score based on neutral data from WP.org. It might create incentives that make “gaming” the system a win for everyone.
• Open Up “Open Secrets” — Spread Standards and Expert Knowledge. What if it was incredibly easy for developers (or anyone) to find and learn best practices and standards? It might create ladders up that are a win for everyone. READ→  

Quick Links

• There’s a rich ongoing conversation in Post Status Slack about PayPal. The prevailing opinion is very negative, but as usual, it depends. SLACK→
• Over at HeroPress, it’s Katie Keith of Barn2 Plugins telling her story: A Community that Transcends Labels→