In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass dive into the intricacies of optimizing their website’s homepage and refining their pricing strategy for their product, OMGIMG. They discuss the importance of incorporating captivating images above the fold to enhance user engagement and consider the visibility of pricing information in the website navigation menu. The conversation also delves into the value of lifetime deals and the potential for a secondary market. Throughout the discussion, they emphasize the iterative nature of website development and the collaborative effort required to continuously improve user experience and drive conversions. Tune in for insights into effective homepage design and pricing strategies for online products.
Top Takeaways:
- Importance of Homepage Optimization: They recognize the significance of having a captivating image above the fold on their website’s homepage. Michelle suggests adding an image to make the page more visually appealing and engaging for visitors.
- Consideration of Pricing Visibility: Michelle points out the absence of a pricing link in the website navigation menu. They discuss the importance of prominently displaying pricing information for potential customers, as it’s often one of the first things visitors look for on a website.
- Value of Lifetime Deals: Corey mentions the success they had with offering lifetime deals during Black Friday sales. They discuss how some customers prefer lifetime deals and how others may collect them without immediate use, indicating potential interest in a secondary market for such deals.
- Continuous Iteration and Collaboration: Michelle and Corey plan to collaborate on optimizing the homepage together. They emphasize the importance of treating the homepage as a living document that requires regular updates and refinements based on feedback, observations, and evolving business needs.
Mentioned in the show:
- Matt Cromwell
- Zoom
- StreamYard
- WP Builds
- WP Coffee Talk
- WP Constellations
- Give WP
- Post Status
- WordCamp
- Appsumo
Sponsor: WordPress.com
Build and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.
You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:
- Corey Maass
- Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.
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Transcript
Michelle Frechette: There we are. So awesome. We’re trying something new today. We are getting out of Zoom and trying to use StreamYard. So that we can actually plan these in advance because with Zoom, you can connect and go live on your social channels like, like YouTube, but you can’t. Set it in advance. And what I wanted to be able to do is set it in advance so that we can, uh, promote it a little bit in a, you know, before we actually go live. So I thought, why not try this? Look, we can play, we can do this. Smaller. It’s fun. I’ve been playing with it a little bit today. And, uh, Even with, if you are interested in learning more, look at that, visit OMGIMG.co for more information. Yes, I spelled it right. I just had that panic thought that I didn’t.
Corey Maass: I checked, I checked.
Michelle Frechette: It’s all good. Yeah, so if anybody does join us, you can feel free to put comments now on YouTube and we will see them and be able to answer them live. So. And if you watch this another day, you can absolutely still put comments in and we will go back and see them and reply to them, or you can DM us or email us or whatever you want to do. Um, but we’re kind of excited to be able to try something new.
Corey Maass: Like early days, Cory and I were a little more diligent about, you know, Oh my god, I’m trying to sign into the OMG Gmail account where I have a bunch of stuff and, and they are sending a verification code to the OMG Gmail account.
Michelle Frechette: Well, that sounds like a circular argument to me or something.
Corey Maass: Exactly.
Michelle Frechette: That’s not helpful.
Corey Maass: Anyway, so so we may not be able to do the preview. We’ll have to um, See if I can find it. But anyway, um, yeah, I I think early on Cory and I were a little more diligent about or we were a little more consistent about speaking every wednesday at noon and so we could sort of promote that and so we had a few people that would jump in and uh, ask questions, but that sort of stopped happening cause we stopped being consistent.
Michelle Frechette: Well, you and I are consistent now, but having a, um, someplace to be able to promote this to link wise, um, we could probably find a way to embed it on one of our pages on the website as well. Well, so that when we’re live, it could be live there and we can always just promote that page kind of like WP Builds does. Uh, so we can maybe think about that, but first things first. How are you?
Corey Maass: I’m good. I’m good. And you?
Michelle Frechette: I’m good. Thank you. End of the day, I, I almost grabbed the bourbon today, but I was too lazy to go into the other room and grab it. So we will share that next week. Maybe I’ll sit here or there.
Corey Maass: Nice. Well, I liked your, um, your, uh, WP Coffee Talk intro that says, grab, grab a mug, grab your favorite mug and then fill it with a beverage of choice.
MIchelle Frechette: Yep.
Corey Maass: And, um, I signed up for a slot in a couple of weeks at 6pm, which is definitely bourbon hours.
MIchelle Frechette: Yes. There will be no coffee. That evening, there will only be spirits.
Corey Maass: It just eep me awake, you know.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. I know that’s what I usually go for the herbal tea or just water. And I feel like I copped out on my own, you know, coffee talk by not having coffee, but it’s all good.
It’s all good. I mean, bourbon is better than coffee. In my opinion, other people may disagree.
Corey Maass: Some days or sometimes, yep.
Michelle Frechette: And if you’re sober, then I will not drink in front of you. Like if I have a guest who’s sober, then, then that’s not an issue, but that’s why you clear these things in advance, you know. But, um, yeah, I’m looking forward to having on there as part of our plan to get you out in more places and podcasts and things like that. So I was like, I better put my money where my mouth is and send you that invite link so we can get it scheduled. I know that you were just, uh, you just recorded with, um, Can Ben, I can’t think of his last name.
Corey Maass: Ben Lair. Blair WP.
Michelle Frechette: I know, but I, he has a real name. He was on my podcast once upon a time. Why.
Corey Maass: Do any of us?
Michlle Frechette: I cannot remember his name. I don’t know.
Corey Maass: You know. Yeah. It’s Michelle or Stellar, you know, or, or Michelle Coffee Talk or,
Michelle Frechette: Yep.
Corey Maass: Cory iThemes or you know?
Michelle Frechette: Yep. Like even on his website, he doesn’t put his last name, so I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m like looking at his website for his last name. Anyway, Ben, you know who you are. Um, and you know, hopefully he won’t actually see this episode because I’ll just be embarrassed if he does, but that’s okay.
Corey Maass: Oh, he’s got a great sense of humor. He won’t be bothered.
Michelle Frechette: He really does. He really does. Um, excuse me. So yeah, he told me you were recording with him and I think you did too. He gave me a link to see the raw, the raw image or the raw recording. And you guys talked for over an hour. So my guess is he’s going to be editing that down a little bit.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Before he said, and he said probably Friday. So we can, um, so we had plenty of time to edit it and we can look at, um, promoting it.
Michelle Frechette: Awesome. Yeah. I told him to reach out to me if he needed any help. Cause this is his first time doing podcasts on his own and not being just a guest. So, um, I’m sure he will reach out to me if he has any questions, but yeah, so that was the first one we’ll get you on. I mean, maybe not the first, I think you’ve been on other ones. I know you were on. WP Constellations, which is one of mine. I should remember that very well, but that was months ago. So I can’t be held responsible for my faulty memory.
Corey Maass: Right.
MIchelle Frechette: Um, but yeah, so the, the idea is just to, you know, to keep getting the word out organically when you are bootstrapping, you know, when it’s a small plugin and you’re just starting out. I mean, it would be lovely if we had millions of dollars to throw at, you know, advertising, but. I don’t have millions. You don’t have millions. It’s not, uh, so we’re going to do the organic thing and just try to get the word out in different ways. And part of that is, you know, on the Post Status website. You can see every episode by the end of the week, we have a transcript and everything. We have our team over there that edits the edits, the, the post puts a synopsis. I love it. They listened to the whole thing for us, put a synopsis at the top, put a transcript in there, um, any links that we mentioned, those will all be in the show notes. And those go out every Friday on poststatus.com. So if you’re interested in looking at some of the back stuff we’ve done, uh, you can do it there or just on the YouTube channel, but the YouTube channel doesn’t have a transcript. So if you’re looking for transcripts, you definitely have to go to the website.
Corey Maass: Although YouTube’s auto closed caption, at least is pretty good. If you don’t need it to be static. Exactly. Exactly. And my articulation is impeccable, so the translation, the closed captioning is elusively dynamic in its ambiguity.
Michelle Frechette: Even humans Going over the transcript, make mistakes. So I found, um, I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was so funny. Uh, on one of the shows that I’d done for Post Status, um, they missed the first line. And I think it said like, that my name was Michelle Fishette. Like I was a fish and I was like first line and my name is spelled wrong. Let’s fix that.
Corey Maass: Okay. So my last name, despite being spelled funny, did my camera just freeze?
Michelle Frechette: It did.
Corey Maass: Awesome. Um, so my last name, despite being spelled funny, uh, is, we at least pronounce it Moss, right or wrong. That’s what we’ve decided on. Um, which meant when I was born, uh, my mother could not name me Chris. I’d be Chris Moss.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, true.
Corey Maass: My mom could not name me Pete. I’d be Pete Moss and could not name me Mickey cause I’d be Mickey Moss.
MIchelle Frechette: Yes, you have to be careful.
Corey Maass: These are the dad jokes that I grew up with.
Michelle Frechette: Yes. Yes. Uh, and some women marry into names like that. I went to college with a girl named Kelly and she married Tom Pangelli and she became Kelly Pangelli. So like. You just never know.
Corey Maass: That’s kind of awesome.
Michelle Frechette: It is kind of awesome. Um, but yeah, any luck getting, getting logged in?
Corey Maass: Of course not.
MIchelle Frechette: Okay.
Corey Maass: Uh, circular arguments with, with Google are so much fun. Um, but I think I can just sign in on the wrong, so it’s, you know, all the bookmarks and credentials and stuff are stored under, I do, I do Chrome profiles. My dog’s about to explode. I apologize for the barking in advance. She hates things on wheels. She was scared at a young age by people on a bicycle and has never forgiven the world. And so the, um, we love this. The our neighborhood has one, two, three, four, four, five, um, eight year old girls. And so we call them the girl gang.
Cause they absolutely in an, in an eight year old sort of way, terrorize the corner that we live on, um, scooters just up and down bicycles up and down, and they even have a little. Um, powered jeep, like one of those kids size jeeps and they’re doing like, what are they called? Like Tokyo drifts. Like they’re doing donuts and stuff.
It’s a riot to watch them. And they just, they play, they play the way that kids are supposed to play. It’s fantastic. We love it.
Michelle Frechette: But the dog, not so much?
Corey Maass: But the dog, not so much. Cause yeah, they’re just, you know, they’re, the kids are up and down the street, up and down and, and again, anything on wheels, we’re not sure if.
She’s actually like protective of the people on the wheels, but anything with wheels, she’s, she’s not a fan of, um, but anyway, yeah. So we were talking about the social preview and the great irony that you’re saying it does not have an actual open graph image.
Michelle Frechette: It does not,
Corey Maass: It should.
Michelle Frechette: At least it wasn’t, I wasn’t getting a preview. It’s possible? Can we test it?
Corey Maass: And if you, if you share it with itself.
Michelle Frechette: I was gonna say, can you use it to test itself? Is that like a little too much inception
Corey Maass: Share screen. I bet I’m going to. Um, it will have to restart. No, I guess so preview what your website looks like.Share.
Michelle Frechette: There we go.
Corey Maass: That’s a better size and shape. Um, but if you plug in the URL, that is the URL. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Okay. Well, that’s interesting. Cause it was not giving that to me in social. When I went into, I can’t remember what our. Our social tool is that we’re using scheduler that we’re using,
Corey Maass: Yeah. But sometimes it takes a little while cause they, you know, it, it has to like go suck it in.
Michelle Frechette: So yeah, that’s true.
Corey Maass: Um, sometimes it takes a little while. Like I’ve noticed that with Facebook, Facebook, depending on how you’re sharing something, like well take an hour. Um, and, um, which is, especially when you’re automate trying to automate stuff, it gets precarious, but anyway. Um, so yeah, um, but this is our, um, social preview tool. So if you go to OMGIMG.co slash social slash preview, or in the footer of our, um, any other page, we’ve got a link, whoops,
Michelle Frechette: Tools, yep the tools link.
Corey Maass: Yep tools and then open graph tester. And I made it, yeah, look, look like a freestanding app, but it’s all part of the same website, but you plug in your URL and, um, so let’s see, I’m going to call you guys out here. Oh, no, you at least have an image.
Michelle Frechette: We do.
Corey Maass: Um, Facebook looks pretty good. The community for WordPress professionals. Excellent. Good wording. LinkedIn. So, I mean, it’s not, you know, there’s some branding there. That’s handsome. But not specific to, well, I guess it is for the homepage. It’s just fine. Like plugging in a URL, you know, it may or may not be specific, but.
Michelle Frechette: yeah, you can hear, I’ll give you another one. I just did a whole bunch of stuff over there. Let me find my stuff. Um, under the news page, we’re going to go to here. We’ll do this one. Copy link address. I’m in another browser. Let me find you again. I’m going to send this to you in the private chat. So pick that up and put that through and see, I’ll add you back. There you go. If you can add that, see what that one comes up with. It should come up with a bird. It does.
Corey Maass: Look at you.
Michelle Frechette: Nice.
Corey Maass: That looks great. And then we validate. Twitter image is missing, but that’s fine because it’ll pull in the Facebook one, and then all your other stuff looks good.
Michelle Frechette: It’s interesting is there is a Twitter image in there. I put it in the Yoast, made a Twitter card and everything, so I don’t know why it’s not showing that, but there is one.
Corey Maass: But that’s, it’s interesting that it’s putting in Twitter label and data. I’ve not seen that before. That’s new to me.
Michelle Frechette: Interesting.
Corey Maass: And you’re the creator.
MIchelle Frechette: I am.
Corey Maass: But that’s Post Status, shouldn’t the creator be Post Status?
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, you’d think I’m the.
Corey Maass: I mean, let’s be honest. This is the Twitter account that should be the one with more followers on it anyway.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Oh, but you put in a URL and you’re only supposed to put in the username because it Yoast, I think automatically puts in the ads.
Michelle Frechette: I didn’t put anything in.
Corey Maass: Ah, interesting.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Corey Maass: This is, this is the fun part of this stuff. Like, I mean, it’s terrible cause it’s all hidden to the human eye. Right. But if you look at your source and it’s, and it’s the magic. And I use that in a, both a good way and a bad way that the SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math or any of them do right. Is, is they try to, they fill in the blanks. Right. And it’s great. 90 percent of the time. And the, and the intention is great because they’re filling in blanks that you may, may or may not even know exist or whatever, but it’s also like, there can be surprises of what it actually pulls in. Um, and it, you know, in our use case, it’s the images like. It took me a long time to understand. I’ve talked about this before, but like going back and forth with Yoast, they explained to me, thankfully, like I’m a fifth grader because I was not understanding it, but of like, they look at the featured image, they look at image in context, they look at, you know, there’s all these places, but it’s like, cause I think most of us have seen that scenario where you share something and you’re like that, that low res. You know, like our logo is usually what’s first on almost all of our websites. Right. And so that that’s the first image that, uh, sequentially top to bottom that might get pulled in. And so suddenly you’re seeing like a grainy low res alias image and isn’t what you, how you want to be represented, you know, but you’re not aware of that process or the magic that it’s doing behind the, behind the scene.
Michelle Frechette: It’s like CSS. I write things in and it does things and I’m like, okay, but then why doesn’t it sometimes too?
Corey Maass: Right. Totally. Yeah. And, and I’ve been dealing, um, taking it a step further. Like I’ve, I’m in, I’m, I spent years running away actively. Running away from the HTML that in emails because it is the jankiest crap. Um, and there’s this, a markup, so HTML hypertext markup language. There is, um, the folks behind Mailgun created a newsletter service called Mailjet. And so to try to normalize HTML email, they created their own markup called MJML that then translates your markup to HTML that is the most gobbledygook God awful in like literally a human couldn’t read it, write it, can barely read it, but it’s what renders the most reliably across. All of the email clients and mobile, tablet, desktop. But man, the gobbledygook behind that is heartbreaking.
Michelle Frechette: Yes. Speaking of that, can I share with you something that I thought was very interesting? So I used to be on my. 12 years. I spent 12 years on my school board, my local school board, and there is an alumni association associated with it that I’m not, I mean, I am an alum, but I’m not part of the alumni association. Anyway, a teacher friend of mine, she reached out yesterday and she said that they’re having difficulty with their newsletter through MailChimp. She says, I guess there is not the flexibility to change layout or justification outside of center along with unwanted spacing.Yes, there is, but they don’t understand how to do it. She says, she’s going to be assuming they’re all the newsletter. I was thinking of just creating a word doc, converting it to a PDF and sending it out through the organization’s Excel database, any suggestions on Mailchimp, another platform or PDF, your anticipated input is greatly appreciated.I said, I use MailChimp for my weekly industry newsletter Post Status. I said, it can be frustrating sometimes, but if you want some help, I could probably set up a template in there for you to use or show you how to accomplish what you’d like. Like it, it, no, don’t just send out a PDF. First of all, I didn’t even get into it. That does to the planet. Right? Like you, I was just using it. If you’re sending it to hundreds or thousands of people with attachments like that, the resources that you’re using up in the, in the world are just, Oh my goodness. Plus people don’t want to open attachments. They’re afraid of attachments. And I understand that, right? If it’s just the, yeah, no, please don’t do that.
Corey Maass: Bless her for trying to solve the problem. Right?
Michelle Frechette: Yes.
Corey Maass: And that’s, and I’ve seen this, but like one of my clients, we actually are stuck in this position, not sending out PDFs, obviously, but Advertisers want an email to look a certain way, right? Big, pretty picture with their fonts and, and their branding and all this stuff. And so what we end up doing is sending one big photo, despite the fact that like, if the recipient hasn’t clicked the button that says, yes, Trust this person. They, all they see is a broken, one big broken image. And so we try to make sure that there’s alt text. So it says something. And then I usually try to argue for including a paragraph or something, but you know, so we’re doing it wrong. We’re, we’re doing honestly doing it as best as we can, but it’s like, there isn’t a good, right way to do this and never will. Cause email is email and it’s so ubiquitous and that you, it’s a ship so big, you can’t, couldn’t begin to turn it. So we’re stuck with what we’re stuck with. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s heartbreaking.
Michelle Frechette: But sending a PDF is definitely the wrong solution. I will volunteer my time. I will donate a few hours to you to make that better for you. So one of the things I.
Corey Maass: Same offer stands, we’re totally digressing here, but that’s fine, um, is I had offered to set up like an ACF field that then renders this MJML and we’re finding that it’s, it is very reliable. In fact, the, the only frustrating part is that when it, um, when MailChimp imports it MailChimp then screws it up a little bit. Um, not badly, just that doesn’t like they don’t import, um, the preview text and some little things like that. But, um, but for the most part, we’re finding that it’s very, very reliable. So if you want. I had offered to set that up for Post Status offer still stands.
Michelle Frechette: Thank you I forgot about that quite honestly.
Corey Maass: Um, but if you, um, but at this point, like I’ve now done it two or three times. And so, you know, if, if, if I can help her out as well, like, you know, an hour of my time and, and it’s kind of, and what I love about it is it’s bulletproof, right? So it’s, you fill out a form in one, one way or another using an, using ACF and then It generates HTML. Again, that looks awful, or the code looks awful, but it’s reliably, it delivers reliably.
MIchelle Frechette: Yeah. I haven’t even looked at their website. I don’t even know like what it’s built on. I’m, I’m a little afraid, but I will look later and report back. I did not build it clearly. I have nothing. I have no idea what it looks like. Um, So one of the things I said I would do last week was tweet, or post, not just tweet, but post across our socials a little bit more, and I did that, and I posted at least once, okay, once, sounds better if you say at least once, but even if it was only once, um, in our Facebook group as well, so just trying to get a little more traction, a little more, um, Uh, a little more out there.
Corey Maass: Show a little bit of movement.
Michelle Frechette: Mm hmm. So I, um, I, I was pretty happy. I’m not gonna lie. I like when I can be, um, when I can be creative. And so I did a couple of memes and my favorite way, I will share my screen. How’s that? Wait, I have to remember how to do it. Present. Present. Um, share screen. I got it. I got it. Here we are. There you go. So, I loved this one that I created. Um, let’s see if I can make it a little bigger. But, look at that. It saids make them look. Oops, I did something I should have done. Um, cause you know, I’m not left handed.
Corey Maass: How do you zoom in like that?
MIchelle Frechette: Um. I’m just making the page bigger.
Corey Maass: Oh, okay. I thought you’d actually like zoomed in and moved around. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette:I did. Just with my thumb pad on the Mac book with two fingers, spread it open, spread it, close, move it to fingers, move it around. Anyway. So what I put over the top was make them look and I use, this is one of my favorite memes. I know it’s a little tired, but it still makes me laugh, but like boring featured image versus featured image using OMGIMG. And he’s like, Ooh, check it out. Right. But then my other favorite one. Yes.
Corey Maass: So. No, go ahead. Yeah. This one I loved.
Michelle Frechette: Marked safe from not having an open graph image today. Can you say the same? So, yeah, I mean, even if I’m just making myself laugh, but look at, we’re getting 171 views on that one. Um, this one, we got 197 views and we don’t have, we don’t have 197 followers. So like we have 71 followers, so not bad. Right. So it’s, it’s actually not, not bad.
Corey Maass: Yeah. I think, you know, this This is where I’m hearing very strange noises from.
Michelle Frechette: Oh. Haha!
Corey Maass: There is currently a monster under the bed. Um, I don’t know what she’s gotten ahold of, but anyway, um, uh, yeah. So the OMG account, it’s kind of a neat, I hadn’t thought of this so specifically, but like there’s a, there’s almost a relay race element of this, like OMG post something, which is obviously us. Which might get a dozen views, but then you and I repost it or comment or something, which then, you know, opens it. Opens it up and it’s, but at some point you hope that OMG will catch up and be able to like get those kinds of results on their own. And then ultimately like, you know, blow past us. Probably not, but you know, potentially, but it’s kind of a neat, I hadn’t thought of that, like that relay, ray relay race sort of effect or catapult kind of effect, you know.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah. That is, um, I do that all the time. I, I, I try, I do it sparingly, of course, because, uh, my followers on my Twitter account, for example, aren’t wanting, they’re, they follow me not because I’m sharing out other accounts all the time, but sharing my own thoughts and whatever, um.
Corey Maass: I think there is a good mix like, uh, you know.
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. So, so I do it sparingly, but it’s, I especially do it when it’s something that I’ve created in the other account and think is pretty funny or whatever, and be like, Oh, look at me. I’m really awesome. Um, but without saying that. But I make myself laugh. I hope I make you laugh too. Kind of thing, you know, um, which is.
Corey Maass: Um, what I was going to say is you, what I had never looked up was the origin of that image because of, like you said, it’s a very prevalent name. And so apparently it was actually a Portuguese stock photograph. Um, but if you look at the wiki, Wikipedia page, it actually, the first known use of it as a, as a meme and all that stuff that like, I had just never. Like memes are memes right and like once in a while you’re like, oh, I you know I know the movie that that’s from but like something like that. I had never thought to look up.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah I didn’t know where that one came from either. That’s awesome. So this is gonna be two more go ahead. Sorry I talk over you all the time.
Corey Maass: No, no, no same. Um, it was uh, first used on like a prog rock site in or forum, uh, in like more than 10 years ago in the Netherlands or some, you know, something like, I love that they could actually track the history.
Michelle Frechette: That is wild. I saw a, this is a complete aside. I saw, I read a story. I don’t remember if it was on like HuffPost women or someplace, something like that, but, um, about this woman whose daughter became a meme and it was a cautionary tale of not sharing your children’s pictures on social media because this, this woman, her daughter was like, just very young, like two or three years old sitting on a swing, like a, like a, in the park. And she was just grumpy. And she was like, her hands crossed her face, grumpy. And it said mood swing. And so that, but one of her friends took that picture, created the meme and started to share it. I don’t think they stayed friends. Um, and it turned into this huge thing where she was like, Quickly learned. You cannot take those things back once they’re out in the world, they are out in the world. Right. So you do have to be careful. I’ve misspelled things on memes before and got called out on it. And like, it was not me misspelling it. It was a typo. Literally my finger just missed it. And I went with it and I was so excited. Then I was like, now it’s got like 300 views and two and like, you know, 20 comments and I’m like, I can’t just delete it and do it again. Cause it’s got the momentum. But yeah.
Corey Maass: Well, I’ve seen the same with like pictures that were compromising and, you know, or, you know, people smoking or drinking or, you know, and other things. And, um, and it can’t come back. And, you know, and as, as you’ve commented on about a lot, there’s a lot of creeps and so they’ll tend to run with those things or they get, you know, viewed as a, in a creepy way, um, and it goes on and on, um, the, on a lighter note, there’s that. Um, like, what do I want to say? People, companies, whatever, who, um, squat on domains, there’s like a standard picture of a young woman, um, I don’t even remember the pose, like, just kind of in a park or something, and apparently that that is the single most viewed image. Because there are hundreds of thousands of these squatted domains and they all just use the same placeholder because the way you get around squatting on a domain is to sort of have a fake website. And so it’s the bare minimum meets the bare minimum requirements of that. Um, but so apparently that is the single most viewed image on the entire internet forever because it’s just on all of these sites.
Michelle Frechette: And I don’t even, I don’t know if I’d recognize it if you showed me. Probably would, but I can’t think of it. Um, I just had a thought. So first I want to show you what I had to write it down so I don’t forget. So first I want to show you this is, this is going to be our, um, our tweet tomorrow, our post across socials tomorrow, just highlighting the preview. And so that’ll, that’ll go out tomorrow. But remember a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about having a crafted 404 page.
Corey Maass: Mm hmm.
Michelle Frechette: Did we create one yet? I don’t remember.
Corey Maass: No.
Michelle Frechette: Probably not. Okay, so I just had a good like, caught us with our pants down kind of idea, which is, OMGIMG or OMG nothing to see here. Oh, the irony of it. Like an image plugin, there’s nothing to see here. I want us to do that so badly now.
Corey Maass: Totally love it. Add it to the list.
Michelle Frechette: Yep. I will write some content for that. I love it. That should be so, so much fun.
Corey Maass: And I still owe us the counter on our sticker landing page.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah. And I need stickers.
Corey Maass: But I’m.
Michelle Frechette: You need to send me some stickers. So I can, uh, cause I have, um, expected that I’ll be going to WordCamp Montclair the first weekend in June. Then I will definitely be at WordCamp Europe, I already have my tickets, but, um.
Corey Maass: Nice.
MIchelle Frechette: Yeah, so I’ll be there too. And WordCamp Buffalo is coming up on May the 4th and I will be there as well. So yeah, send, send me stuff. I’ll bring them with me.
Corey Maass: Cool. And Canada. Are you still going to Canada?
Michelle Frechette: I am still going to Canada. That’s in July. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Yeah. All the places I’m ubiquitous. I’m everywhere. I wish. No, I don’t. I’m tired from being everywhere. Just kidding. Oh my goodness.
Corey Maass: The year before I was a couple of years before COVID that I stopped Camps because I was going to one a month at least and um and Meetups and stuff and it was too much You know, like I it was fun until it wasn’t I think it was also I stopped seeing, this is very self serving, but I mean, that’s sort of par for the course. Like I also stopped seeing a return on it, you know, like seeing the same people. So I’m in theory, giving them the same stickers or the same spiel, you know, as am I really spreading the word at this point? And that’s, I think that’s one of the. We talk a lot about camps. Camps are great, but there’s, depending on the camp, a lot of the time, like you’re just seeing the same faces. And then, and in fact, I.
Michelle Frechette: For the big camps, for sure.
Corey Maass: Yeah, you know, I was going to say that, like the, there’s real value. And this is why I’m like, I’m excited that the small camps are kind of crawling back or clawing their way back. Like most of them have been, some of them gave up even before COVID and then COVID. And so then I think a lot of them are stumbling to a start, which is great, but it’s those little camps that I think make a bigger difference for those small local communities, business owners, users, devs, you know, that kind of thing, like I’ve, I’ve talked about how I’m starting to go to the, my local Meetup is an hour away, but. That’s what I’ve got to work with, but I’m like, you know, and there’s only about four to six people there, but it’s that’s the community. So, okay.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s um, it’s interesting because Europe and Asia seem to be redoing like WordCamps are coming back much faster there than they are here in the states. And I don’t know if it’s because of the cost of things here or, or what it is.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Well, people were talking in the, um, the Post Status Meetup today, as you know, about how, um, costs, you know, prohibitive costs and how many spaces closed and how more spaces are more commercially minded post COVID like, so New York City, it’s like, if you’re what, so I’ve lived in New York for 12 years and ran Meetups while I was there and there were for me the, I mean, my Meetup was music based, but so it, um, an easy one was, um, nightclubs essentially before they opened. And so it led us into, you know, either a side room or an event room area, you know, and, and we would be long gone before the music started. Um, You know, or little theaters, there was a theater that I, I actually paid a little bit for, but I was, I was donating to them anyway, and so they were kind of happy to have me. But it’s sad and shocking and the state of things that, you know, in, in a lot of places you can’t find spaces anymore, or there’s liability issues or what have you.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I mean, our Meetup, our Rochester Meetup, we have not gone back to in-person, but we continue to have monthly Meetups, partly because for me, um, mobility is an issue, so I can’t walk in and out of places like I used to. And so I would have to have a friend with me that can put my scooter together. And it’s a whole thing, but also partly because over the course of the last few years, since we went into lockdown, we have a huge, um, attendance from outside of our area. So I have a, I have a fellow who comes almost every single month from Australia. And then we have other people from across the United States and into Canada. And so it doesn’t make sense to be like, okay, bye. We’re not going to incorporate you anymore.
Corey Maass: Right.
Michelle Frechette: It’s just convenient, quite honestly, to keep doing it online for me anyway. And if somebody else wants to take it over thats fine.
Corey Maass: At what point is it WordCamp Michelle and not, or, or, you know, Meetup, Michelle Meetup instead of Rochester Meetup. If most of the people are not local, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just a different way of viewing it.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, we did try to come back to in person. We tried to have some coworking and people would not leave their houses. And it was so much extra work for me that I was like, well, somebody else wants to go organize some in person Meetups. Go for it. It’s not just me, but, um, it doesn’t tend to keep going otherwise. So, yeah, I don’t know, but it can be fun. I, uh, finding a location that’s open and free or very low cost is also challenging. So, it’s just a lot of, a lot of things stacked against us.
Corey Maass: Like usually. Like Nashville and then the one in Keene there, somebody runs an agency. And so it was nice enough to open their doors for the duration, you know, for an hour or stay late. You know, on a Tuesday once a month or something. And like that, that seems to work out well. There was, and, um, yeah, Nashville, the parking was an issue, but otherwise it was, you know, a nice group of people that would meet up and pretty, but same scenario, even, even in a city, the size of Nashville, like it pretty much, we always, it was always the same people. And we, we all knew each other, you know, which it worked out well because we were the ones that would help out. Ultimately would help out with WordCamps and then Nashville wound up hosting WordCamp US. And so we already kind of had a core group of people that were. Embedded and willing to help and, and whatnot, but, um, yeah. And what was it? New York, uh, Microsoft actually sponsored it.
Michelle Frechette: Oh that’s right.
Corey Maass: And so it was fun. It was fun because you, it was a building that I never had access to previously. And so going up 10, 10 stories and into, you know, basically as bland an office as you’d expect Microsoft to have in New York City. Um, but still kind of satisfying and, and they’d bring, they consistently had 50 or more people, which is pretty impressive.
Michelle Frechette: That is impressive.
Corey Maass: New York city. You’d kind of hope so.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s true. But also it’s difficult to get around in there. So, and traffic and everything else. I mean, I know you don’t, most people aren’t driving, but yeah. Interesting for sure. So what should we work on? I’ll be adding more social content this week. That’s one thing on my calendar.
Corey Maass: Um, on my list, I am working on, I’m going to do another batch of, um, blog posts and I think we’ll just schedule them out, you know, they’re evergreen, so it doesn’t matter when they go out. And so one a week, um, covering, in fact, some of the topics that we had me talk about at the Rochester Meetup.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, perfect.
Corey Maass: You know, what makes a good photo? What makes a good featured image? What’s the difference between, you know, that still kind of pulling on that thread. Um, I think it, it’ll end up overlapping with some of our other content, but you know, for better or worse, some of this is, some of this is meant for human consumption and some of it isn’t really like, it’s still readable and right. You know? And so, um, and then it also gives us something to post about, something to tweet about, that kind of thing. Um.
Michelle Frechette: Overlap is fine.
Corey Maass: Yeah. And then, um, and then I’m still, um, I basically owe the world one again, like one or two big features that I think are going to push OMG over the, over the, uh, into like, I’d actually call it version one, like feature complete, not perfect by any stretch. And it, there’s a long, long tail of in the actual like image builder. There’s a long tail of. You know, styles and options that, that we could add to forever. Um, but at least the, the actual like generating of images, especially bulk generation is pretty crucial. So, yeah. All right. Dogs.
Michelle Frechette: Dogs saw wheels. Dogs saw wheels.
Corey Maass: We, uh, yeah, the, the good and bad of, of when we meet is, yes, hello. Um, 20 minutes from now is dinner time.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Corey Maass: So, uh, energy level starts to build, you know, and.
Michelle Frechette: Yep. I get it. Trust me, my tailbone’s been sitting here all day. I’m anxious to go sit something soft myself, but, um, yeah, yeah. So, so definitely, um, I’ll be working on some more social stuff to, you know, more entertaining as opposed to instructional, uh, cause you got to have a nice balance there and keep working on seeing if I can get you out to a few more either Meetups or on podcast, that kind of stuff to talk about what we’re doing, uh, with OMGIMG, uh, those are my two big ones right now, as far as getting some, some momentum going.
Corey Maass: Um, yeah. Um, and I’m, I, I have in the back of my mind. Um, so we have a trickle of traffic and we’ve had a few sales, but that tells me that, like, I mean, the number, it’s one of those, what’s the, the, there’s a term in statistics, but basically your data set is too small. It’s not significant. Um.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, not statistically significant.
Corey Maass: Not right. Um, uh, at some point I still. Think that we’re not like our homepage isn’t converting essentially. Um, and so we’re not telling the right story. We’re not convincing people of the, you know, and, uh, and or the price is too high and or people don’t actually have the problem we think they have. Or, I mean, there’s a ton of things to look at, but, um, but at some point, I do think we need to revisit that, whatever that, I don’t know what that means, whether we hire somebody or we, you know, we should, we need to bring people as guests onto our “podcast”.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Actually.
Corey Maass: And then give them the opportunity to, um, tear our homepage apart. Um, Matt Cromwell comes to mind. Um, what’s his name? Luke. Um, like, you know. And.
Michelle Frechette: One thing I just noticed is, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but it’s, we’re plugging about image and there’s no image above the fold. So like, there’s nothing there that’s captivating. And we’re telling people it needs to be captivating and you need these images to grab attention. So we definitely need to put something there that it’s a little less word and more, you know, what, how good it looks and that kind of stuff. So.
Corey Maass: Yeah, I was going for simple and yeah, big and bold to get the message across, but I wonder that that explainer video, you know, isn’t better served. Up above, even though it’s, you know, not as, or not perfect or not as pretty or whatever, but.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I think it should probably go back up at the top and then I, and then I also,
Corey Maass: I’m sorry, good ahead.
Michelle Frechette: I still think it needs my face up there.
Corey Maass: You want to be added to the roster?
Michelle Frechette: I mean, I wouldn’t be bad at it.
Corey Maass: All right. Happy to.
Michelle Frechette: It’s not a plugin by me, but I’m part of the team now. So.
Corey Maass: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Um, And then I think a lot of the copy, I, I approached it as again, so like, you know, solving a problem like a more traditional SAS versus, you know, as we’ve talked about a few times now, like we are. The icing on the cake or we are the, you know, the glitter bomb that you’d love receiving in the mail or something. Um, and so we might revisit it in that way. Um, anyway.
Michelle Frechette: I’m going to start using the word pizzazz more.
Corey Maass: Love it.
Michelle Frechette: It’s a good word. It fell out of common use and we should bring it back. Or maybe razzmatazz. Something with Zs. I don’t know why Zs just make it like sizzle, right? Like jazz hands.
Corey Maass: Like sizzle.
Michelle Frehette: Yeah, exactly. Make your, make your featured image sizzle. Make it jazzy. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.
Corey Maass: Add pizzazz.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, all the Z words, except like zoo, like zoo doesn’t make any sense, but it’s got to have a double Z, I guess. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Four of them with pizzazz, but yeah, I think that we’re getting there.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, you know, there’s just, there’s, there’s always a hundred things you could go in a hundred different directions. What do you choose? Um, You know, but I was, and I keep trying to think of, think back to my innocent days. Um, but like 10 years ago, starting Kanban was the first big commercial plugin that I released. And it was just me. And. And it took years. I think, I mean, the market has changed. Like there’s no question about that and, and competition and the way you reach people and community, community, you know, and all that kind of stuff, but it’s still, there are still parallels. And so I got the word out slow and steady over, you know, with a zero budget, you know, in a number of different ways. And so I, you know, I keep trying to. I didn’t keep notes or anything. I had a diary. Maybe I should go look at it. But, um, I’m just like, what, what did I do? That long tail, you know, kind of got more people through the door essentially.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I also, so I’m just looking at it again and I’m also looking at the fact that there’s nothing in the, I am logged in and I don’t know if we have a different menus for logged in or not, but, um, there’s nothing in the navigation at the top that says pricing or learn more. There is a big button that says start creating better images but to me that doesn’t say check out the pricing. Look and see the features, compare the features whatever. Maybe adding pricing in the navigation. Cause when I go to a plugin site, the first thing I do, like when I signed up for Streamyard today, the first thing I did was look for the pricing. Just me?
Corey Maass: Cause you’re signed in. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Okay. Perfect. Okay, cool.
Corey Maass: Plans and pricing features and benefits plans and pricing.
Michelle Frechette: Perfect. Yep. I was, I wondered if that was the case because I am logged in right now. So that makes perfect sense then. Good.
Corey Maass: Yeah, it’s exactly, I’m, I I’m exactly the same as you. First thing is, you know, is this even a price I would consider? Okay, I’ll read about it. Okay. I’ll read about it. But I’m, there’s no way in hell I’m ever gonna buy this unless somebody else pays for it.
Michelle Frechette: Mm-Hmm.
Corey Maass: Um, so, and.
Michelle Frechette: There is a lifetime deal, so like people could really get that in there. People love those.
Corey Maass: Exactly. Yeah. When, when we did Black Friday, we had about three dozen sales, and I think we were about half and half for the lifetime. And, and it’s, it’s interesting that, um, I, I had the same experience as stop sharing. There we go. Um, with social link pages, I actually put it on App Sumo and a lot, a lot of people bought it and didn’t ever activate it. People, there are surprising number of people that just collect lifetime deals. Um, and I’ve, I’ve definitely grabbed lifetime deals when I wasn’t necessarily ready, but. I was, yeah, it wasn’t, it wasn’t just to buy it, you know, but I, but people will sit on it. Um, and I don’t know, hope to resell or there’s so many Facebook groups that are dedicated to that stuff. I wonder that there isn’t like a secondary market. Um, once the lifetime deal goes away, people will then resell at a markup or something like that.
Michelle Frechette: There might be.
Corey Maass: I have anecdotal evidence of that. No proof. Um, whatever, whatever works.
Michelle Frechette: For sure. Okay, so I will work on homepage ideas, and I will work on, uh, writing some content for the 404 page, and creating some more social posts for this week. That’s my work.
Corey Maass: Or you’re fired.
Michelle Frechette: I don’t, no, I don’t, I, I, I, I was gonna say something about pay, but I couldn’t, so. I couldn’t think of anything fast enough. Damn it.
Corey Maass: Or I will do all that and I will owe you a second beer.
Michelle Frechette: There you go.
Corey Maass: Um, yeah, no, I honestly like, yeah, your, your eyes on the homepage would be great. Cause it’s, it’s one of those things like you, you want to review every, every once in a while anyway. I had momentum and then I got sidetracked. And so now you show it to me and I was like, Oh, right. I meant to go do dot, dot, dot. Like it’s a short list, but there’s still a list. And so frankly, if you looked at it and we’re like, well, we’re in there, let’s. Move these things around or change some of this copy and certainly add your smiling face. Like definitely now’s the time.
Michelle Frechette: I’ll make a list.
Corey Maass: Perfect. We could even do it live Would be kind of fun Because yeah, I feel like most homepages are living documents more than what we, we realize. Um, at least up to a point, I think if you’re, once you’ve reached Give WP status or, you know, like big and big and ongoing, like, um, you know, then it’s, you’re, you’re less likely to make impulsive decisions. Or it should be frankly, less likely to make impulsive changes. Um, but at our level, I’m, I’m, as I’m browsing around and looking at other people’s homepages, I’m like, Oh, we don’t have that. We should have that quick, go slap it in there, even if it’s, you know, a little more than a placeholder. Um, but, and then, and then you can continue to sort of massage over time. Um, But yeah, um, yeah. Get me that copy. I’ll make some changes. Um, and then I’ve still got, I want to flush out the sticker page landing before I forget about it. And we actually give out stickers and then people are mad at us. I’m mad at me.
Michelle Frechette: I can’t vote. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Um, and then, um, yeah. And then I, like I said, I’m, I’m, I want to do some blog posts. I think it’d be good to kind of, you know, continue to flesh that out.
Michelle Frechette:Yeah, I agree. Sounds good.
Corey Maass: I think we got our plan off a little early.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I got our homework assigned for us. So go enjoy your dinner and we’ll see everybody else next week when we hopefully a little more, at least I am a little more organized and we can make some, some more, uh, strides forward on that homepage. So, all right, we’ll see you all later.
Corey Maass: Bye.
This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 10, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.
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