 My name is Jeremy. I'm a software developer, full-stuck developer, and I've been working with WordPress for the last four, five years, and it's been a great experience so far. Today we are talking about WooCommerce, and who's ever worked with WooCommerce here? How many? Let me see by a show of hands. Ah, great. We have quite a number here. And someone tell me, what do you visualize when, or rather when someone is telling you, or rather when someone is asking you, what is WooCommerce without even reading this? Someone tell me, with the people that you've interacted with it, tell me, what do you think about WooCommerce? Ah, great stuff. Real time. That's the one I was looking for, actually. Real time. So you're able to see your transactions in real time. That's the good thing about WooCommerce. So someone tell me, what is WooCommerce? You're not even reading this. I don't want us to even get into this today. Perfect. So WooCommerce is basically a plugin that was built into WordPress so that you can be able to manage and build beautiful e-commerce stores, manage them, and be able to see your transactions in real time. And basically, when we're thinking about WooCommerce, we want to be able to come up with a system where we can, you know, hardware put it. We want to come up with a system where we're able to transact with, we want to build beautiful shops. I mean, someone give me, with the people who've worked with WooCommerce, tell me some of the stores that you've built by yourselves or that you've run. Good stuff. And how is that going? How is that going so far? How many years? Six years. Good stuff. So yeah, so basically that's what WooCommerce enables us to do. We're able to build beautiful e-commerce sites that are pleasing to our customers and come up with, you know, we come up with a way that we can be able to, you know, just come up with structure or kind of sorts. We can be able to manage our transactions. So yeah, so some of the factors that go into, you know, building an e-commerce store, we have to have a proper budget. I mean, we don't want to come up with a store that our customers won't come and won't visit eventually because why would you be building a store on the internet? I mean, you can just set up shop outside here at British Council and, you know, sell, right? But you want to come up with a store. So you, when you're coming up with an e-commerce store, you should basically put into context that what's at stake financially? If all factors are kept constant, what's basically like, say, I have 100,000 shillings, I want to build an e-commerce store. So should I contact a developer? Should I contact who? Should I build it myself? Should I learn? ETC, ETC. So the next thing you want to come up with a platform that is easy for your clients to use. Yeah, it should be simple to use. And basically, even a nursery school kid, I mean, all our, I mean, fathers, yeah, we have most of our people coming. Our kids are basically even buying stuff online here. True. Maybe by mistake, though. They can find themselves, you know, just like, like funny enough, my small sister, she's about four years. Yeah. The other day, she purchased something on my Amazon Prime. And I was wondering, okay, this, this transaction, anyway, that's a story for another day. So the third thing that you should put into context is the payment methods. The e-commerce platform that you choose should have enough payment methods. So that's when your, when your customers are transacting, they have a variety of options to choose from. And this includes the likes of PayPal, the likes of Stripe, although it's not available in Kenya, the likes of M-Pesa, the likes of Visa, MasterCard, etc, etc. Yeah. And the e-commerce platform, you should, you should, should also be able to incorporate a lot of interactions, integrations, sorry. The number of services and the, and the third party tools that you can integrate to grow your business should be encompassed in your choice of an e-commerce platform. And finally, the scalability. We want speed, we want, we want smooth, a smooth store, so that basically when our clients are coming to build e-commerce stores, or rather come to visit our e-commerce stores, they, you don't want hitches when they're coming to buy stuff. I mean, who's ever transacted with a store that you, you, you, you even, and you end up being even frustrated by even, even visiting that website. Who's ever actually tried that and mentioned that store. It's okay. No red tape here. So anyone who's ever transacted with a store that actually has annoyed them in terms of even payment, because you're like, why should I use this store? And it, it's so slow, it has, it has, uh, deducted money from my credit or debit card or even my M-Pesa. And at the end of the day, you're not even getting the service. Yeah. At the end of the day, whatever e-commerce platform that you choose to build your website should, uh, encompass this and more. And you know, you want to be able to bring back your customers. Yeah. And in my, in my view, uh, after using a couple of other e-commerce platforms to build, uh, my e-commerce stores, trust me, uh, WooCommerce has served me, uh, been building websites with, uh, e-commerce stores for the last three years. And it's been a really awesome experience. So, um, so then why, why, why WooCommerce? Why? Why? Anyone? Give me a rough idea. Why? The guys who've developed the e-commerce, why, why, why choose? I mean, there's Shopify. You can pay $29 a month for all its work. Most, most of the e-commerce platforms that are out there, especially like, um, I don't, is it Jumia or something? Sorry. If you work for Jumia, uh, I think it's eight working days if I'm not wrong. Yeah. That's what, that's why most of the products take long to get you because their payment does not, uh, come until eight days later and they have to deliver, uh, the manifest to the, to the shop owner so that you can have your products. Yeah. Uh, another point. So why WooCommerce? Why? So one of the reasons why I would use WooCommerce and why I would, uh, really encourage you guys to use WooCommerce is that it's a system you can really trust, to be very honest. Uh, it's built on WordPress. WordPress, uh, powers almost, that number should actually change. It's supposed to be 28 percent, 28 to 32 percent of the web currently. Yeah. I mean, we have almost three, three, not more than three million websites right now on, uh, built on WordPress more than, and it's regularly audited by, uh, Sucuri, the company, uh, that's entrusted with, uh, security. So basically when you're using WooCommerce, you're in good hands at the end of the day. And another thing is when it comes to content, you're able to seamlessly integrate. Like he said, uh, there's someone who talks about integrations. Yeah. There's someone who talks about integrations. So you're able to integrate your, uh, stuff on your, on your e-commerce store without having to, you know, uh, place this thing here, place this thing there, you know, you can, you can all put them in one place without having to, um, come up with a solution that's just everywhere. Yeah. Another, another reason why, uh, WooCommerce is, um, is beneficial to all of us is that WooCommerce is, is kept clean so that basically you can be able to add the options as you want. It's also made to work along your favorite WordPress plugins. Yeah. Um, so basically you can keep the features that you already love. I mean, many people want, uh, I, I, who's in the WordPress community group, the WhatsApp group, you, I, and I've had so many people asking about, uh, there's, um, what's this thing called? There's, there's a builder, the, the couple of builders, but there's one builder that keeps on popping up, uh, about the WP bakery builder. And guess what? You can actually use WP bakery within your WooCommerce store. In fact, actually you will actually build with it. So you see, you can still have your plugins, uh, and you also, you're also going to still have your, uh, WooCommerce website all in one. Yeah. Another reason why is that you can sell literally anything without having to be judged. That, um, you can sell physically, you can sell digital downloads, subscriptions, content, and even appointments. I mean, like everybody here has purchased a WordPress ticket. Yeah. I want a ticket. That's a WooCommerce. That's WooCommerce. Done. So, uh, you can sell literally anything. You're not limited to, uh, just, you know, I just want to sell shoes. No. And, and that's, uh, that's gonna be it. Yeah. I want to sell shoes and that's basically it. You can sell literally anything with WooCommerce. And then another thing is that, uh, there are no limits. There are no limits. It's completely open source and you can modify as much as you want. I mean, who's in Shopify here? Sorry if you're a Shopify fan, but this is a WordPress, strictly WordPress, uh, conference. So who's use Shopify here? You use Shopify. Have you noticed how it has so many limitations? Yeah. You, you, you basically work with what you're given. And here's WooCommerce telling you like, I'm here. Modify me the way you want. Clean and simple. Yeah. Yeah. So again, developers, this thing, uh, is built on WordPress. So basically you can work with, um, this stuff that is here for you. Uh, you can work, uh, you, the CLI, uh, you can use it to manage your stores. You can use every single thing that you've been developing with, without having to worry about a single thing. Like he, uh, I don't know if you're a developer, Hassan. I don't know if you're a developer or not. You are developer. And you've realized also, sorry, I just want to specify on Shopify because personally, uh, before I got into WooCommerce, I was convinced that Shopify, because I wanted to get into this dropshipping business once, and I was told Shopify, Shopify, Shopify is the, is the best option. And given that I've been a developer for the last six or so years, I wanted to have a platform where I can be able to modify whatever I have. And then here comes Shopify. You can't do you agree? Yes. So you can modify with everything that you can modify literally. And then the good thing with, for developers that's it, that is, it's a fully open source and it's managed on GitHub. So you'll notice even tomorrow, I've, I know you've had me talk about the, uh, the contributors day that's happening tomorrow. We have WooCommerce with Maoko. And you'll notice that WooCommerce is something that, I mean, WordPress is not perfect. It has a blogging platform and look, now we have a CMS and we can actually make it even better with all the, I mean, like everybody has an idea in this room, right? We're, we're, we're going to 60. I mean, we're going to 60 people in this room right now. I mean, if we, if we come and say that 60 people are actually going to work on WooCommerce right now, do you, you're not telling me that we're going to have something new within WooCommerce right now? True. Yeah. So you can literally come up with a system where it's, it's basically something you can actually contribute to and collaborate. Basically, you're in charge of the future of WooCommerce with WooCommerce. It's yours. It's not, it's not theirs. It's yours to work with. Yeah. And then some of the tools that you already know, the adjuks, the endpoints, webhooks, you have everything in your hands basically. So I don't, I don't really find a reason why you would actually prefer another store and here, here you are. You have a system where you can actually work with all that you have. Yeah. And then the good thing is that it also comes with the REST API. So yeah, so you can literally use the REST API to manage anything from products to orders to shipment to literally everything. Yeah. I find that with WooCommerce, you can actually have this idea in your head today and you'll actually, you know, can I put it as a thinking pen if I'm allowed to? It gives you this thinking pen kind of idea that today I want a shop that looks like this. You can actually develop a theme that actually fits your description in a way that you can still be able to transact with it. So it gives you this flexibility to be creative. Other than being creative, we all know of, is it storefront? Yeah. Storefront. Storefront has so many themes, child themes, yeah. It has so many child themes that we can use to be able to come up with beautiful stalls. I mean, there's that, there's also so many free and paid themes on the WordPress core, on the WordPress repository. And you know, you can also build yours. You can also buy if you want. They're also offshore sellers, but it's, there's so many that I can't even mention. And you know, you can always use all of them to be able to modify what you have. Again, I will still point out this fact that it is literally, you're not restricted to anything when it comes to WooCommerce. You can edit every single part of your website the way you want, how you want it. If you say I want the logo to be here, it will be there. That's literally the beauty about WooCommerce. And if you want it to basically stand out, you will have to be this creative guy who will be able to come up with a solution that at the end of the day, it's not only brings your happiness to you because I know there are some people here who are OCD, sorry. But you say like, okay, let me put this into context. You say I want the Instagram shop because like right now, you can actually integrate an Instagram shop to WooCommerce. Anyone who's ever tried that? Personally, I'm actually working on a shop right now that has direct links to Instagram, an Instagram shop. It's a cosmetic store for a client of mine. So yeah, you're basically not restricted to anything. And then the last thing on that point is that you can embed products, you can embed, you can add checkout pages, you can literally add anything the way you want it and how you want it. You can use short codes, you can use products to blog post. Someone in Mombasa was actually asking me, so I have a WooCommerce website but I can't integrate a blog to it. Sorry, no, I have a shop if I store, my apologies. I have a shop if I store but it's just boom, just a shop. WooCommerce does not give you this closed space that you're only going to build a shop within that website. You can build literally your whole website and include WooCommerce in it. You can create landing pages, go straight to checkout everything. So this and many more other features that come with WooCommerce that make it distinct that it has a modern and clean interface. Another thing that it has improved experience for store owners, you can integrate your content via WordPress. You can have pre-installed payment gateways. Maoko is next. He'll be speaking about WooCommerce and M-Pesa. Finally a solution has been found and I know so many people have been asking about it. So even tomorrow as you're coming in for contributors day, who's coming by the way? Who's going to be there tomorrow? Come on guys. I want to see everybody in this room tomorrow. Can I see everybody in this room tomorrow at Nairobi garage? Good stuff. So you'll get to learn more about the integration with WooCommerce and M-Pesa. And then again, you can also integrate PayPal. You can integrate literally anything in terms of payment gateways. Other things that come with WooCommerce, you have total control over the process of checkout. You can set default currency, yes, including the Kenyan shilling, event and zenyans if you're here. As much as I'd recommend you just use the donor. You can always use the geo-location support. You can add taxes. You can add how you want the cash to behave during addition, checkout. If you want people to just add, I mean, there's a feature in WooCommerce that's called variable products. In variable products, you can be able to allow the customer to select the number of products that they want. Like say, I want two chairs. You don't have to click twice to get two chairs. You can click that same order. And then during the checkout process, you say, I want two. So that's the one thing that comes with WooCommerce. And you can reduce page loading, manage products, add the product types that you want. I mean, if I was to literally sit in this room and actually explain what WooCommerce can do for you guys and why you really needed to develop your WooCommerce website, this is so much. So at the end of the day, what are we solving when it comes to WooCommerce? What are we aiming to solve? Given that we have this solution that's here for us, it literally comes and says, I have an answer to all your problems. Remember the problems that we talked about earlier about scalability and all that stuff? This is a solution that comes and says, here, I have a solution for you guys. So it's scalable. You can enjoy your online presence. Companies that run into scaling issues with the platform of choice powered by WordPress and with service developers behind the project, WooCommerce is able to scale as you rapidly enjoy the business. Allow me to put one fact here. And Hassan, you'll bear me witness. When it comes to using Shopify, Shopify will bill you what? Is it $400, $500 a year? Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you want to build a store that you'll be able to learn your mistakes within the process. And why should I pay $400 to $500 a year? And I want to change it maybe later in the year. This is the exclusive of the theme, by the way, that you're going to choose. $400, $500. And this is exclusive. And here's WooCommerce telling you, by the way, this whole thing is free. Just buy the theme, buy the server, buy the domain, go ahead, do your thing. It's customizable. Your store can operate literally anywhere in the world. You can put your shipping rates the way you want. And you can literally customize it the way you basically want. The only disadvantage is that you'll only learn. The learning curve might be a bit hard. But you see, the good thing is that there are so many resources out there that you can be able to use to learn. And really, if you're looking for an e-commerce solution that you want to have full control, then really, in my own sphere, WooCommerce is the best option for you.