Taking the first steps to set up your store online can be tricky, so tune in to this episode to hear how you can make the process easier, and explore why now is the time to get started. In this episode we'll talk all the importance of using the right tools, and how Plesk can help!
Joreg Strotman
Joe: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to next level ups, a podcast that explores tools, tips, and techniques for hosting and managing websites presented by Plesk today. Our guest is Joerg Strotman, and we are doing our. Quarterly update for the plus company. And we'll be talking all about the Plesk e-commerce toolkit, which we are really excited to introduce to you.
[00:00:28] But before we get started a quick reminder, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, to get the latest episodes. As soon as they come out, you can do that wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, now let's get on with the show York. Thanks so much for being here with us. How are you doing today?
[00:00:46] Joerg: [00:00:46] Oh, thanks for having me, Joe.
[00:00:48] Um, everything's great. I mean, we've been lucky not to catch COVID 19 and all of us have been able to work from home. So I think I speak for everyone when I say that we really miss life at the office and being able to meet our colleagues, customers, partners, and friends soon. And we are just looking forward to finally get the vaccine.
[00:01:07] Joe: [00:01:07] Yes, absolutely. Uh, my wife and I are fully vaccinated at this point. Uh, I'm in the United States for those who don't know. And, uh, we went on our first date in 15 months. So that is since the pandemic started and since the arrival of our second. Um, and it was, it was great. It was a really nice night out.
[00:01:25] I'm really excited to get back to some normalcy.
[00:01:27] Joerg: [00:01:27] Yeah, I'm a little bit behind the plan I received the second Visene in a, in 14 days and then got pimped and can travel. I'll go to
[00:01:35] Joe: [00:01:35] awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing you at a, uh, perhaps a word camp in, in the near future. I would appreciate it. Yeah.
[00:01:44] Awesome. Well, uh, for those of you who don't know, York is the VP of marketing at Plesk. And so, um, well let's just dive right into this. What. What has it been like to be part of a world leading web management team during one of history's most significant digital
[00:02:03] Joerg: [00:02:03] shifts? Yeah. Good, good question. Yeah. I mean, at plastic we see the industry going through a rapid change, um, namely, um, digital marketing and digital commerce, and, uh, that has experienced an undepreciated restoration and then 2020.
[00:02:17] Right. And, um, so. Digital strategy has moved. I would say from the last slide of a pitch deck 10 years ago, to being the foundation of everything we do today. So COVID-19 has catapulted us into the future and I find it somehow. Um, impressive. Maybe, maybe you wrote that stuff down that actually nearly 150 million people shopped online for the first time in the pandemic.
[00:02:43] And the number of e-commerce buyer will only continue to rise. And to, I think in the us a little more money was spent online during April and may than the last 12 cyber Mondays combined. I had this source for MasterCard. Correct. Uh, but uh, I mean, at the high of the COVID-19 pandemic, 10 years of e-commerce growth happened in just 19 days.
[00:03:06] That's impressive. Right?
[00:03:07] Joe: [00:03:07] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, as, as you know, where both in the online space and. I feel like it's been a really hard sell for, for web developers and people online to convince people, uh, small business owners that they need to get online. And like you said, you know, COVID-19 accelerated that and made people realize, Hey, if.
[00:03:30] If I don't, if I'm not online, if I don't have a digital presence, right. As, as Yen's mentioned in the first episode of the season, right. Um, then, um, I'm going to go out of business, right? I'm not going to have any, any customers.
[00:03:44] Joerg: [00:03:44] Yeah. I mean, there are huge shifts in consumer behavior, health learning, many business.
[00:03:49] So often working in outdated system and processes faced with new challenges and they try to capture increased demand. I mean, that's. That's all about. And in this dynamic market end to end, commerce management is no longer a nice to have it's essentially. Yeah.
[00:04:04] Joe: [00:04:04] Yeah, absolute end to end commerce management is essential.
[00:04:07] I love that. Okay. Um, so, you
[00:04:12] Joerg: [00:04:12] know, I'm just mentioning because usually I'm interested in automation and possible end to end. That's why I used the phrase.
[00:04:18] Joe: [00:04:18] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, well, I mean, we, we share that, uh, that interest as well, automation, um, especially for like a solo business owner is so important because.
[00:04:28] You know, it helps things not fall through the cracks. It helps a lot of, a lot of small business owners do multiple things at once. Um, so, so on. So on that same token, uh, has the plus customer base changed or expanded in the last 18 months? Um, and, and if so, how has Plesk adapted to that? Yeah.
[00:04:46] Joerg: [00:04:46] As I, as I mentioned, digital commerce has experienced in an unprecedented destination in 2020, and therefore, um, we did a survey of about a hundred brands and agencies during the pandemic.
[00:04:57] And we're not surprised that over 70% of our customers want to provide a seamless customer experience, whether the client is shopping online. You know, or from a mobile device, laptop or, and brick and mortar store and, uh, um, P people, people often say you can't be in two places at once, but, but here, uh, plastic e-commerce we want to reject that statement.
[00:05:21] Right. And we believe that that you can be in all places at once, because that exactly what. Omni-channel is designed to do. And, uh, and so therefore we are working on a new, uh, e-commerce extension that will, um, so to say, capture all these demands and, uh, follow our customers across all touchpoints from.
[00:05:43] One example from reading reviews on your website or seeing social ads or window shopping at an online marketplace to finally purchasing at your physical store. And, uh, yeah, definitely. We hope with the plus e-commerce tool, you will be able to manage multiple sites as easy as checking your mails and this way you will create a loyal customer who is coming back home for more.
[00:06:05] Yeah. That that's the journey.
[00:06:08] Joe: [00:06:08] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I'm the channel you're mentioned there is, is, uh, another great point, right? Just kind of, um, just recently I've started doing more live streams and I was just on YouTube because of the tool I was using only allowed me to stream to one place at a time and I chose YouTube.
[00:06:29] Uh, recently I picked up a tool that let me stream to multiple places. So I decided I'll just try on my, my Facebook profile on my personal page, Facebook profile, I'll do a public stream there and the engagement increased dramatically just by adding my stream to Facebook. So, um, you know, you want to be where your customers are, where they're hanging out and.
[00:06:54] If you have customers hanging out in multiple places, then you want to make sure to get in front of their eyeballs, wherever they, wherever they are. Right. All right.
[00:07:02] Joerg: [00:07:02] I mean, we need to invest more time in an understanding customer processes as well, and go through each of process of documenting every time a customer or a partner in stacks with our brand, right.
[00:07:11] Um, if it's social or YouTube or whatever, and, uh, this, this exercise will help us to see where we can make improvements as well and how we can make every user experience a personalized and a positive one. Absolutely. Right.
[00:07:23] Joe: [00:07:23] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, again, I just, I. Everything you're saying is I feel like it's, it seems obvious.
[00:07:34] Right. But it's, it's not, and again, I run my own e-commerce store. It's what you're selling by the way. I'm selling online courses. Okay. Um, yeah. I saw your head at a sweatshirt shop. I do, I do have a t-shirt shop. Um, that is completely. Managed by cotton bureau, um, which is, uh, a t-shirt maker. So I just upload the designs and they handle the rest.
[00:07:59] Um, but, but yeah, so I, okay. So I do, I do different types of e-commerce and, um, for my online shop, right. I built that with WordPress and WooCommerce and. Uh, even I, uh, I understand the user experience, but there are tweaks that I can make, right? Because maybe I'm not, I'm not my customer. Um, and I want to understand what's the best way to get them to the site.
[00:08:26] What's the best way to click the buy button. What's the best way to keep them engaged so that they maybe want to buy another course later when the time comes, this is all stuff like you said, we need to document and understand better. Right. So, so let me ask you then, right, because again, we're both online guys, um, and should all commerce businesses.
[00:08:46] Have an e-commerce site, right? Like there's food businesses, artisinal shops. Retailers is e-commerce the future or are there some disadvantages based on the type of commercial business we're looking at?
[00:09:01] Joerg: [00:09:01] Oh, good question. I mean, um, COVID 19 is changing consumer behavior. We said that now and forever. And so in, in other words, um, with plenty of options for discovering, researching, or.
[00:09:15] And buying new products in the digital world, um, customer interaction. That is that what you mentioned to, it must be perfectly choreographed, uh, under a single brand experience, right? And so this, this strategy is no longer just a best practice or luxury reserved only for the big players. It's becoming a new standard for all retailers, all worlds and all brands.
[00:09:35] We want to stay competitive in the. Coming here. So at least from my perspective, and to only channel is about, it's all about creating this powerful integrated band or brand or product experience. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's quite quite interesting. Um, I think Harvard business review was that will report that and shows that 73% of customers are using those multiple channels students.
[00:10:00] They're shopping Sterling. And it means that a great majority of all your potential customers combined on and offline activities. And so from my perspective, and now it's the time to act and regarding your questions affecting all or companies and, um, So the bold and the ambitious companies that embrace the new reality and take timely action can capture market share, and imagine emerged.
[00:10:22] So to say, after the crisis at market leaders. And so I have there hope that's okay. I have that somehow three recommendation to consider, um, for e-commerce when responding to a new e-commerce reality. So the first thing is that you explore your digital business model. So revisit the foundation of your business model to make sure that it's still valid in the context of the dessert sales channel and profit models.
[00:10:47] And the second one is that you're strange to the customer experience, that you understand the parts to purchase of your new online customers. And that the third is that you strengthen your technology platforms, that you pressure test your e-commerce platform, expand necessarily cap it capacity limits to prepare for an increasing customer flow.
[00:11:09] On so general to your question is affecting all customers, rather it's food business or AutoZone or shops or fashion retailers,
[00:11:16] Joe: [00:11:16] correct? Yeah, absolutely. And you said, you mentioned that these interactions should be, uh, perfectly choreographed and, and I agree that right. It needs to be. As easy as possible for someone to give you money.
[00:11:33] Uh, we can say frictionless. Frictionless. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Your shop should support the payment methods, for example, right. That your customer. Uh, wants to use, I make sure to have the apple pay and Google pay buttons on my site, um, because that's really convenient for a lot of people. If I see the apple pay button, I'm, I'm maybe more likely to buy because I don't have to go through the rigmarole of, of putting in my credit card information.
[00:12:01] I can just hold up my phone and. And buy something. Right. Um, right. And, and further, you want to make sure that your, your, um, customizing these experiences, right. We have the ability to do online. What we, maybe can't without say a personal shopper in, in a physical store. If we know our customer is interested in a WordPress and we're selling.
[00:12:27] WordPress courses. Um, we can surface those courses to them, or if we know that, um, if we know that our customer is vegan, uh, then we're not going to show them meat options on our, you know, on our restaurant site or, or whatever. Right. This is, we have the ability to do things like this now. Absolutely data driven.
[00:12:47] Yeah, absolutely. And so w and so with that, right. You know, I'm not just talking about like pie in the sky, uh, uh, examples here. These are totally possible. Um, what, what are, what are some of the best tools for getting started? With an online store. Um,
[00:13:06] Joerg: [00:13:06] I would say as the e-commerce base continues to become more and more competitive, um, consumers expect that that's what you said at a certain level of quality from a website, there was a chat, right?
[00:13:20] And I would say design matters. Yes. Uh, messaging matters. Yes. And so what am I competing? You decide to run Medis. Yeah. But none of those marketing aspects are necessarily non negotiate. It. So in the, in the e-commerce world, I would say the following are absolute non-negotiables to running a successful business for me.
[00:13:41] It's site speed, stability and security. Yeah. So for example, page load speed. Um, the, the ETL load time, um, for a peak conversion is no more than 2.7 seconds and every 100 millisecond delay, uh, above that can reduce conversion by up to 7%. Right. And, uh, so using, for example, a content delivery network, CDN is a smart way to speed up your site, your website.
[00:14:07] The second one is, uh, uptime, you know, just, just like an. Give me an example of an Olympic athlete. Um, you, your site has to perform at peak conditions through every grueling test, you know? Okay. Can, can it handle the double whammy of black Friday and cyber? Yeah. What about flash sale or as a celebrity influencer campaign, you know, and, uh, sites must be able to handle large amounts of traffic in very short periods of time to grow your business and maintain customers' trust and loyalty.
[00:14:34] And my third advice is a sideways. Security and peace of mind, I think, uh, it's it's related as well. What you mentioned with payments, you know, in today's e-commerce world site security means protection against hackers, PCI compliance, DDoS mitigation, when necessary, and site-wide HTTPS, you had that podcast with Krista last time.
[00:14:56] Um, These are all the necessary means to probably achieve e-commerce security. And so these are my top three beside a lot of other things. Yeah. And once, once you have these three, non-negotiables cover it, your e-commerce site is ready to launch against the
[00:15:10] Joe: [00:15:10] competition. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love that.
[00:15:14] And, and right. Our conversation with Chris title, if you, if you miss that. Yeah, exactly. I listen
[00:15:18] Joerg: [00:15:18] to that as we're talking
[00:15:20] Joe: [00:15:20] about it. Yes. Yeah. For those listening, if you didn't hear that head over to plas.com/podcast, and you'll be able to catch that. And some of the other episodes that we've referenced here, but, uh, Chris mentioned like, if you don't need to take on the, that kind of security risk of taking payments, you shouldn't have to.
[00:15:37] And again, there are a lot of tools to help you. And so. Getting started, right. We're talking about site speed, stability and uptime and security. Uh, what, what are the best tools for running and scaling an online store? Let's say somebody who has gotten set up, uh, they maybe, you know, their, their best friend bought their first product and everything's working great.
[00:15:58] Now it's time to, to, uh, be where the rubber meets the road and, and run and grow your online store. Okay. I mean,
[00:16:07] Joerg: [00:16:07] um, Plus plus gives you the power to easily sell anywhere to anyone as we set across the internet and around the world and, uh, you know, control everything. Everything from a single platform was centralized inventory, order management and present pricing analytics.
[00:16:24] It doesn't get any simpler than, than this. So, um, I would say one of the best tools if you sell on the website, I think over 70% of SMBs use website as their primary marketing channel. So, um, I think create a new website from scratch and just five minutes with simple, customized and design tools to quickly.
[00:16:43] I don't own that store for existing website. If it's WordPress do blur, you know, Joomla wakes up. Or any other CMS with technology and that instantly mimics your current design. And so no, no coding or software should be required. I mean, that, that is mandatory. And I think you mentioned in the early beginning, um, sell on social media, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, or whatever else, I think.
[00:17:07] 42% of FMBs use Facebook already now for customer acquisition. So at the end, you need easily to add and sell your products on Facebook and Insta, or if it's Pinterest or whatever else, and collect shoppers browse and make purchases from inside their favorite social media channels. So, you know, maybe you need a link to Tik TOK, WhatsApp messages, or, you know, whatever else.
[00:17:29] Um, you know, but, but. We've got you covered, you know, and, uh, maybe third option could be sell online or in store or on the go. Um, I, I know that 34% of SNPs use mobile POS systems and, uh, so accepting payments and undergo, um, I don't know if it's Stripe square PayPal or if it's evil payments or whatever other systems.
[00:17:54] Um, so, so usually, um, You're a counsel stays perfectly in sync with your overall backend of your store and a modern, maybe modern customers want to buy anywhere on any device at any time. And plus we help small to medium sized business developers, designers, and agencies to meet these requirements. That's our, that's our higher intent, I would say.
[00:18:20] Joe: [00:18:20] Yeah, modern customers want to want to buy anywhere on any device. At anytime. Right. I love that. Um, and what you say about mobile point of sale?
[00:18:29] Joerg: [00:18:29] It's it's, it's really
[00:18:31] Joe: [00:18:31] like that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, I mean, we're looking for convenience, right? And we, we, I mean, perfect example. Um, you know, I signed up for stamps.com recently.
[00:18:42] I've been mailing out a lot more stuff and I cannot believe what I've been missing out on. Right. And I mean like stamps.com, doesn't sponsor this podcast that they sponsor a lot, but, um, It's just the convenience of me not having to go to the post office or, you know, you have these gig economy, food delivery services, right, where you don't have to go to the restaurant to pick up the food.
[00:19:06] The food comes to you and, and convenience in payment, whether it's online in Facebook or Instagram, through a mobile point of sales system, right. You can plug in a device to your phone and take credit card payments. Wherever you are, uh, right in, in, in a time in the near future, when we're, when we're at conferences, you could sell services and get paid for those services at the conference.
[00:19:36] It's it's incredible. So, yeah. Um,
[00:19:39] Joerg: [00:19:39] I mean it saw at bakeries, you know, they, they went online, digital businesses as well, and you can purchase now your bread online. Yeah. And can you imagine that 10 years ago, five years ago? Unbelievable.
[00:19:49] Joe: [00:19:49] Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. And I, you know, I might've told this story again.
[00:19:52] I think when, when I taught, when we talked to two Yans bankers, um, in the first episode of this season, but my bakery did just that and it was amazing. I ordered from my phone, uh, they told me when to come by, I picks it up on a table outside. It was. Um, it was just so convenient. Um, And so again, we're talking about this Omni Omni selling channel.
[00:20:15] Um, at the beginning of the episode, we teased the Plesk e-commerce toolkit. Um, how does, how does the plus e-commerce tool kit tie all this stuff together? What makes it. Unique, what makes it a unique offering? Okay. Um, I mean,
[00:20:32] Joerg: [00:20:32] I mentioned and, uh, the, the load speed, the page load speed. I remember. And, um, I would say, um, so the, the Plesk, uh, e-commerce extension is powered by AWS, uh, with service globally.
[00:20:45] So. Stole Lord's fast, no matter where they shop. And, you know, from my perspective, keep in mind when you start a business and just wants to click and go selling simplicity. As you mentioned now, there are so many things you need to handle. So it's a good thing that, uh, page load speed. For example, it's, it's handled by one of the most famous web services worldwide.
[00:21:04] All good. So, and, um, you mentioned payments. Often. And so with best equals to be, you can use all of these new payment options without having to pay somehow transaction piece for it, for example. Yeah, that's right. Unlike many other platform, plus doesn't charge any transaction fees, no matter how many sales you make, you only have to cover the payment provider fees, you know?
[00:21:28] And, uh, he, he, here's my tip, um, about it's confidential. Don't say that. My, my, my mantra or the meaning will be here each more customers and more revenue. And my advice is to have a look at Evo payments, for example. So our partner for all services that make your payment transaction safer, simpler, more efficient.
[00:21:46] And so there's a team of experienced specialists and an outstanding technical platform providing the foundation for excellent solution and simple, fast and secure handling payments. So maybe just have a look. And finally as a third, I think as over these three points today, um, um, it's, it should be as secure as it gets.
[00:22:03] And, uh, so our e-commerce solution is, uh, somehow a level one PCI and DSS certified, which protects our consumer data to ensure a peace of mind for you and your customers and to you in addition, uh, thanks to Chris, you get a free SSL certificate. Uh, so, and we are looking forward to launching our new extension.
[00:22:23] There, there will be, you know, Let that one, 100 flowers blossom. We will add there as well, something more, but maybe that as you know, firsthand
[00:22:33] Joe: [00:22:33] what's inside. That's great. So, I mean, it's, it's. First of all you've, you've cited, uh, a large amount of stats. So it's very clear that you and the folks at Plesk understand what is, what one needs, how customers behave.
[00:22:52] And it sounds like you built the e-commerce toolkit. Um, With all of that knowledge in mind, right? Yeah. Plus is a very big company globally. You reach a lot of people until you have, you have more data and you have a great understanding of, of how people. Are using e-commerce from both the seller perspective and the customer perspective.
[00:23:15] Joerg: [00:23:15] So, um, I can quote you and maybe not only do we want to understand overall marketing demand from a customer perspective, when it comes to personas, we want to anticipate that change and we want to impact it.
[00:23:28] Joe: [00:23:28] Yeah, anticipate and impact. I like that a lot. Uh, well, we are coming up on time here. Um, if people want to check out the e-commerce tool kit, uh, where would they be able to find that,
[00:23:42] Joerg: [00:23:42] oh, just eating all the T plus.com and, uh, you know, there, there will be a teaser or something else that we'll hear in, in your directly, or just visit our blog and read our new e-commerce, um, to at blog posts.
[00:23:54] Joe: [00:23:54] Fantastic. We will link to those and a lot of other things in the show notes, which you'll be able to find over at plesk.com/podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. Uh, are there any other words of wisdom you want to impart on the listeners before we sign off?
[00:24:13] Joerg: [00:24:13] I would like to, and I appreciate your, you.
[00:24:17] Oh, yeah, the next word candor would be great. Long, long time. No.
[00:24:22] Joe: [00:24:22] See Joe Long time, uh, far too long. So I'm, I'm absolutely looking forward to that as well. Um, York, thanks so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Thanks dude. Thanks for having me, uh, our pleasure and thank you for listening for all of the show notes, head over to dot com slash podcast.
[00:24:39] And if you liked this episode, please consider subscribing. Thanks so much for listening to next level ops. And until next time, remember to take it to the next level. .