 Hello everyone. I would also like to welcome you in work of Athens and Worm welcome to the guys also that came from abroad all the friends I met in work comes around the world So I will use this because unfortunately this thing doesn't work. I will be close to the computer So I'm Mariana. I'm a product manager at Papaki and the core and I also help with the Meetup or WordPress meetup in Iraq. We all create So what I will try to talk about today is Also the title of my presentation why now is the time to focus on e-commerce And I will try to address these three parts these three points from a product perspective Have to be here Okay, so to begin with why e-commerce Actually from like commerce or Trading has taken place throughout to all human recorded history But from trading grains to actually ordering your favorite food and have it delivered to you by Uber a lot has changed There are industry leaders that are talking about how artificial intelligence and will disrupt every type of industry and focus in on e-commerce consumers already chat with boats when ordering weren't shopping online and Generally and the market experts are Estimating that shopping cars will disappear and that the products will be delivered to us in a predictive manner. For example You see an insta ad you click on a jacket You like and then a marketing automation tool Analyzes your actions and your profile assigns you as a target customer of this brand in the boom You have this jacket delivered to you Probably by a self-driving car For you to wear and try and decide later if you want to buy it But okay This is not gonna be one of those talks. We're not a TEDx or a web summit So it's not about a food touristic future of no Dead shopping cards, but what I will try to share with you today Is some actually plus realistic stats and figures and what is going on in Europe? And why actually it is the right time to focus on e-commerce? So in my opinion shopping cards will not disappear and Actually chatbots and artificial intelligence at least not for the next 10 years or so will not replace websites or stores they will just take a place in the omni channel behavior of the consumer when we say omni channel We mean that a consumer is jumping sorry if I'm talking to first He's jumping from channel to channel before he actually completes a purchase For example in Greece one third of consumers search online and then buy offline and this also Is the opposite? So basic boring stuff, sorry and The number of people that actually have never been online is decreasing Significantly over the years and the internet penetration is growing and we are lucky to be in Europe because the internet penetration is really high compared to the rest of the world, but what is important for us is that not inter penetration, but the direct effect that has in Internet usage so for example There are a million of new users intern users year over year it's growing explosively for us the professionals The important is Not only the number of people that you're online But the number of people who by developing the digital skills are entering our target audience as potential customers So according to communication science We should be interesting in the people that move from the basic operational Skills to the strategic these digital skills, which means the skills that people use to achieve personal or a business Goal online. We're lucky to be in Europe. I think so because Europe actually supports these things and with policies and programs they try to develop and increase the digital skills of European consumers and that actually will help us Eventually So back to e-commerce also e-commerce sales from business to retail sales are growing steadily year over year and it's not it's not expected to slow down and Also in Europe is going well and even in Greece Although we have all this economic situation. We are facing all these years It had a growth of 80% 8% of 80 from 2015 to 2016. So e-commerce is going well and Who sells online? So small and medium enterprises 99% of all businesses in Europe and in Greece are small enterprises Especially in Greece Microfins we have the highest proportion of microfin which is Businesses with less than five people and also Greeks are twice as likely to be self-employed So smaller medium enterprise dominate the e-commerce side of like of the seller and But what do this SM is doing online already? So most of them they already have a website and They but Not all of them sell online yet the it's growing But it's like 80% of them just selling online for us That means there is an opportunity which is still untapped and there's a lot a lot of room To still sell our services Again, we have the support of the European Union. I'm not going to Go through the small details and policies, but with this business act They are really supporting They're pushing small businesses to grow in terms. They're helping them in terms of competitiveness Entrepreneurship they're fine. They're helping to finance them. So the those small brands I will get will grow We're they're getting better and better and For example did a review of the program because not all programs work and they saw that in many countries These small brands Recovered and actually they go to the results. They had before the crisis Not in Greece But we are getting there another important thing is that Even country code Domain registries are focusing on small brands. Everyone seems to focus on small brands So I was in Brussels in early October in a panel discussion about the future of the main names and the new TLDs It was very interesting seeing if even this big organization is that is the organization that sell this offer? Doger dot ES dot and L. We call them country code domain names focusing on small brands that are not yet online So The key takeaways of this talk was that actually these small brands don't really care about domain names It was really funny because it was a conference about the main names But they care about their online presence and the second part is that us as provider Like domain names that's papaki We should target those offline brands if we want to continue growing But we cannot do that. I mean we cannot go door-to-door and start selling. I don't know website or domain The discussion was like that we should target you Developers agencies designers that actually have a direct access to these customers in order to support you Talk to actually access them because we don't have access. So at the end of the day The result was that okay this big organization will try to craft Comarketing agreements. I don't know if is everyone familiar with that But in simple words, they will assign money budget They will give money to us to support you To educate and to access these small businesses so back to e-commerce Is it how many of you are buying from outside Greece? I mean outside your own borders products or Okay Many here, but actually it's only 18% of the European citizens Congratulations guys And who about companies how many does anyone has like a company selling products of roads like an e-commerce store? Okay you first story because only 8% of common is actually sell abroad and This is what is the next big thing that everybody's talking about is about cross border. So small brands in Greece Maybe they are really excited when they Explore the possibility of e-commerce selling products online Through it in store, but industry experts are already talking about the cross border Explosion and the growth actually it has a 25% maybe doesn't mean anything to you, but it's a huge number in the industry of growth and it's gonna reach like 1 trillion by 2020 Which is a very huge number and everybody's talking about it. So in an e-commerce store We are interested like when somebody wants to sell Shipping is one of the big things that we focus on like the small brand focuses on So we see DHL actually publishing research reports about how small brands can benefit from cross-border and They actually highlight the main concern the main concern of the person that buys online is delivery time and delivery cost and Okay, they do it for their own purposes because they want to want to know like express delivery They want to promote that but at the same time they educate their customers, which are our customers, too By suggesting ways they can achieve that. So one of the ways they have this big report with all of you Do this you should do this you should do this one of the big one of the things that they suggest is that you should build a globally accessible but localized Multilanguage e-commerce store. So actually yeah pushing us to China also China is like a growing e-commerce giant and This really pretty guy here is the bright sea of Alibaba, which is the largest Trading platform for small businesses and he also wants every single small business to go on his platform and Start selling to China So he talks about a single digital market. Okay, might sound a bit futuristic, but Digital single market a global one where every SME will have access to on the same terms To sell and he also highlights the importance of applying Policies and the helping small brands helping young people. So everybody's pushing on that way and Again in Europe, they make sure that this will work Okay, I'm not the person that understand policies and actually they're very boring But it's the base that the beat on which we can build and it's policies actually Influence the behavior So they're working on these things of digital single market They will make they want to boost e-commerce in order to increase the boost economy. So they are Working on that on making the delivery Very easy So one of the major concerns also for small brands is the cost the delivery cost How to what is the price how to pass it to the customer to sell? I don't know the Germany and so they make they will make sure with again rules and stuff That the quality of the delivery will be the same a standard at least So they will checking they will be checking all the shipping carriers and that the cost will be affordable for everyone Also for the consumers and also for the SMBs. They're also changing the rules to for every Person to have equal access. I mean sometimes in some websites when you change the the country also the price changes I don't know if you've noticed. I've noticed that when I'm booking flights So this will change and they will also try to Actually increase the trust of the consumers. So they're working also for us to facilitate the growth of the commerce and lately Actually this January they they're gonna do a big change with battery turns, which is what concerns the Companies so they will put some thresholds and they will make it easier for small brands to sell abroad as if they were sold online and For us the important is that in 2021 this happens already for services, but in 2021 this will be applied to all Kind of stores selling goods. So these will help them a lot to Go outside the borders So sorry for the meme. So what I'm trying to say here is that? Policies big players They're all focusing on how to push Small brands to develop and on e-commerce and for us that means that more and more businesses We want to go online more and more businesses. We want to sell online and So we need to choose a tool Why who commerce First of all, it's a champion and it's the number one in our hearts But also it powers already many stores as you may as you already know the thousand plug-ins huge community to support but it's also a Canvas where everybody no no matter skill can create depending on his imagination and in his technical background It's also fully customizable It will be very important with cross-border to be able to support our payment way gateways and it does already all market places or languages And also providers are helping with it most of what some providers are already offering manage WordPress hosting for years now and now you see you see a switch to WooCommerce So they're starting to offer optimized share hosting for WooCommerce Which might be just a landing page with the same plan, but they do it Or manage WooCommerce hosting so we see that certain search results for WooCommerce hosting are also growing and as a provider And all providers that said that actually started selling Manas WooCommerce hosting they educate the customer customers are Much more educated nowadays and what I mean is that all these drag-and-drop website builder solutions or the free hosting Plans limited free hosting we've been offering all these years actually have Help have helped in education on the education of customers on e-commerce requirements so they're starting to understand that an e-commerce is not just a website and For me WooCommerce is is is much more than a tool Because it allows to anyone no matter if he's a super tech developer or just a guy with some time and some basic skills to build websites for third-party and Actually, this is this person is not your competitor and the customer he gets is not to your customer But I can always hear stories about how people Struggling especially in Greece struggling with life and problems and they find they find a way out in WooCommerce actually a source of income and What I believe is with the open source with WooCommerce there is room for everyone and there is a type of customer for everyone so At Papaki we had we used to offer Website building solution that was quite bad close source of course very limited and Year ago we we were forced to transfer them to a new platform. So we chose WooCommerce 150 customers or 200 Transferring them to WooCommerce in 40 days. It was a great challenge With no sleep and it was also Christmas It was it was interesting. So we went through many procedures many problems We sold them we moved on at the end of the day. We managed to transfer all these customers to a platform that wouldn't limit them So then we asked them How is it going? how is it working for you and Okay, they were most of them they were happy for the options But all of them when we asked them what is the number one service you want With your WooCommerce store now that is online. They said we won't developers We won't develop at ours because we don't offer that I want this thing. I want this customization. How can I do that? Okay, our support was not ready for that We are not developers. We are offering technical support But the important thing is that the moment they show up is online and that's what we took care of it was just there working Perfect. We also implemented plugins for them to be able to receive payments The moment it's online then the journey starts. So they need development so We come to the part of WooCommerce maintenance What we see is that as a providers because sometimes as providers when we offer solutions That are automating and stuff. We are seen as competitors, but actually is the opposite And no matter how easy we make it for the end customer to build a WooCommerce store Pre-installed things pre-installed plugins Set things every demo contact demo products everything one click and you have your store there No matter how easy we make it for them They will always Need some kind of a developer actually because a They only have time to run the business. We're talking about small businesses. This is a this is the fact in Greece and in Europe So they will hardly have hardly have ever time to do something else and B, they will never have the knowledge because they're always busy with their store So I wanted to share that with you this information So I'm moving too fast. I still have nine minutes and 45 and everybody's still awake So we're to focus next always from a product perspective perspective, okay so We've been talking a lot. I've been talking a lot with all these beautiful customers We transferred to WooCommerce also with freelancers and friend developers about their struggles and one of the big struggles is That is the actually the collaboration and their communication with the customer on the project So freelancers like you developers many times into where the project manager had Which is a totally different role from what you really want to do Yes, so Our suggestion is that you should choose your tools early many of your professionals already you have everything set But there are many also that are starting now like a web designer girl met before in front of a booth so to say time you need you really need to have your tools ready from the beginning and that means Like a tool to manage your work, which is for us it's trailer and Ticketing system from the first day from day one. Why not not email their plans out like available for $8 per month Which is not a little expensive And you have to be brave as we said before there are different customers Normally the lower educated technical customer would go to a cousin of a cousin a friend of a cousin of Maria And I don't know my uncle from the village and we say I will a website and can you build it for me? So Then he will fail Partly and then he will start to look for some a little bit like better and Then he will maybe he builds a who commerce store and it's gonna bring some money And then okay And now I need a more experienced guy because I want to sell to I don't know Germany and then okay I need my marketing so I then I go to the agency So this is a certain like a line Education path educational path of the consumer. So you have to be brave From the beginning no matter how much you need the money or so and rule out all the problematic customers for you because not everyone is your customer and finally Providers have become very intelligent nowadays. So you can actually use tools You don't have to do everything by yourself. Although we trust you that you can do everything Development marketing You can take advantage of some tools that providers offer so you can save time and focus more on the things We love doing okay So there are several things that nowadays are pretty automatic and quite smart So for example, you can take advantage of the who commerce updates Providers are not I become yeah smarter as I said in that so they use testing They just they don't just push updates or plugins like that and then boom something breaks on your side And you run your customer calls you know, they use visual and or some of them visual and functional testing So they are able to inform you well ahead About some plug-in that is gonna break the website. They even use human testing So for example, they even check what is going on in the market after the plug-in has been and you plug-in release is Is live so you can get the information that something will not work early in your email another new kind of new tool that is Popularly becoming popular is automated testing We do that too actually so we offer like health checks we call it That there are some automated tests that run in the background of the who commerce and they check every several hours The checkout process if it's working correctly the cart the product page If it's okay the home page So I checked several things and if something is going wrong then the sentry in mail and says, okay, look There's something wrong here. You should check it and that's much better than a customer your customer realizing that something is going wrong or realizing from customers that something went wrong after an update and Finally a you can choose Some some provide whatever you can choose Optimized hosting for e-commerce or who commerce because probably they will they they will have some Server level cash some customization that can support e-commerce stores better They will have more experience. They will have failed multiple times Disappointing customers and they will have learned from that and they can support these stores in peak times like a black Friday and situation like that and Finally a little bit of product thinking is that We need to innovate in pricing in the way we price not only you but also us so for you maybe freelancers the important is To price your hour because what that's what is important for you The time the amount of the time you spend on a project But is that the important thing also for the customer? I don't think so. I think which we you should Start basing your pricing strategy On a value metric. So a value metric is actually Something that brings value to your customer. So you base your pricing pricing strategy on something that grows with your customer that's easy to understand and That actually makes you not make sure but put you in a position to rethink yourself as a service provider so For example a service providers will we offer more than one offering you can take advantage of the tools we talked before and Make tires like offer tires You should have the recurring revenue in your mind To keep the customer because this is how service providers were subscription based You should go for maintenance Offerings from the first minute. I know some people already do it and you are really good at that But there are some people that are new so For me reinventing the way you price your customers can Offer you much more in the long term. Okay, so to sum up time is running out smiley so I believe that E-commerce will continue to grow and you shouldn't miss on that especially cross-border because it's connected well with Woo-Commerce and all the functionality it offers and I think you should I believe you should Use the automated tools actually on your favor and put the price tag on the customer and Innovation is here The present feature offered by providers I believe are only the beginning of the innovation we're about to To experience in WooCommerce building hosting and maintenance There are people that ask Alexa. How are the apps are running in some booth outside? So you could also try that Thank you Sorry if I was talking too fast. It's my first time Any questions? I didn't put a friend to ask me something. I already knew No, I thought about it though A number of WooCommerce users around the world Uses do we know well actually it's a 42% of all e-commerce stores Yeah, on the entire internet, which is growing all the time. It's a big percentage. Thank you for the question You're so nice. Okay. Thank you guys No, no 42% is globally on the entire But it's also good for the the percentage of the WooCommerce users in Greece is high too No, I don't remember but I can search it. I will be outside about safety on WooCommerce about Security yes, security. Yes. Well security is you know a hot topic with open source and and It's something there updates should be done. It's an open source. Everybody's contributing security issues occur all the time for us, I mean for me as a provider we try to make it easier make the life easier about it with the updates and stuff but Security issues are there and that's why we have the updates. But what do you mean exactly? Information being hacked and stolen. Yes, that also happens. That's why we have all these security releases And updates do you need an add-on something extra for security? Yes, there are plug-ins you can use or well the security is I mean, it's in different part. It can be on a server level like your service should be secured And then it's on on the WooCommerce level on the WordPress level You should have your updates on time and maybe there is some plug-in strange that has a hole No, so in open sources like that security as many aspects Because there is new laws very strict coming the GDP are you mean correct? Yes, okay Yeah, the GDP are that's true They're coming next May and this is a hot topic everybody discuss about it in terms of for example As a provider because every company needs to handle that in a different way for us We hired some experts they're working on it And we will make sure for example that all the data of our customers are secured in the European Union stuff But do you have a specific question or something like no no it's just general. I'm just trying to build something. Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, so thank you. Thank you for trying to build something Later on right we have talks about GDP are later on in track B Are you the entrepreneur speak the truth Okay And Was it challenging to manage all the pool of Customers come coming from the Scrooge store when it was closed That was a painful story and it was Christmas And yes It was very challenging Everybody was working at that But the it was difficult because you know the Scrooge store was a closed It was it was a closed platform. We had to build scripts to be able to take the data from there and then to Manipulate change them the developer somewhere here that did it and then upload them to who commerce and then the images were Different because the sizes were different there and the framework is different on who commerce and the payment gave ways we implemented plugins to Assist and the connection with the Scrooge store It was long. Let's say yes. It was it was it was it was difficult. It was a challenge in the beginning. Okay Developer who wrote the script is invited doesn't speak here Yes, you're worse. Where are you? Thank you for that time. So yes, it's true. It was difficult but and challenging but In the beginning, you know, you know resistant to change You know, they got crazy. They were like, okay It was bad. It was in the liquid language and I couldn't even change a color But it was working and it was fast and it was and Then after three months for months away. Oh, I like that I can change that. Oh, I can do that. Wow With one plug-ins I could put good points and stuff. So it's also education, you know So they needed their time and then they got excited and then I was having called because I was talking directly with some of them I was having calls. Hey, Mariana, you know, this is so cool And I did that and I did that and I did that and did that and now after one year and that's why I say Who commerce has future after one year. They're like, okay, Mariana. I need a developer. I was like, okay Okay, yes, can you suggest someone blah blah blah? So I thought that was the important part Because we have direct access as providers to end customers that don't know much But we guide the decisions by offering them manners who commerce hosting and then they become more educated And that also helps the community and developers and the agencies and stuff. They're not ready to go to a super tech Developer agency from the beginning. They want to go through the painful process of learning It works for everybody at the day. Sorry. I'm talking too much Other questions Please don't be a technical one, please don't be a technique How are we going? Hello, how are going to convince me to convince someone to change to who commerce from another platform Or to building who commerce how about How we how we're going to convince someone to change to who commerce from another platform Well, he has an opinion about Well, you're some you're the decision-maker. I mean do they come and they say I want a new store on Wakes or something? No, they're like, I want any store and I don't know what to do and can you help me and This is I think it goes like that. No, do they do they get to choose? many customers choose in Greek Reality to see a skirt or whatever they heard about it or magento They have an opinion about it. So we're bound to convince them Convince to choose who commerce look there. They're all like like we say there's always gonna be somewhere cheaper than you So we're gonna fight for that customer if you have experience in building with magenta and stuff Yeah, you should work with us Eventually, maybe he will realize that who commerce is a better tool I don't have a lot of experience in my general about the price. Oh, but the price as you said, it's cheaper Yes, and it was just an example of what I'm saying but This is the role of you you play a role also of educator when you have the choice To select your tools then you choose it when you have it when you don't have a choice And you need this customer if you need him you can work with that you can give him suggestions You can give him examples of how will come as works if you're gonna also sell a maintenance I mean if you're gonna continue supporting this customer after then maybe you should tell him You know, this is the way to go and of course for me will commerce is really a very really really cool Tool for everyone next but not for everyone. So Thank you. Thank you very much