A chat with Justin, the force behind the WP eCommerce plugin, about the past, present and future of WordPress and eCommerce.
With the growing presence of eCommerce in the WordPress space, I thought it was time to bring on veteran Justin Sainton, founder of Zao, a software agency and the force behind the WP eCommerce plugin. Justin has seen a lot transpire over the years as eCommerce developed and I wanted to get some feel for what it was like when he first started, what has happened since and what he sees for the future of eCommerce and WordPress.
You will find a full transcript at the end of this post.
We chatted about:
* His plugin’s rep as the original eCommerce plugin and why he started it
* How and if WordPress was even considered an eCommerce solution when he first got into it
* His largest pain point as a plugin developer when first venturing into the space
* How page builders play into the WordPress online store
* The largest strides made in eCommerce and WordPress two years following his plugin release
* What he considers to be the biggest struggle for online store owners
* Some thoughts on the future of WordPress and eCommerce
Transcript
You can also download a pdf of the full transcript here: BobWP eCommerce Show October 14 2017 Episode 112
Bob Dunn: Hey, Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Sainton: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Bob: It’s kind of funny because you and I have a backstory. When I started this podcast, I named it WP eCommerce Show. I changed it to BobWP, and I remember a tweet from you. “Wow! Hey, I had to do a double take. Is there a podcast about my plugin?” So, for anyone that doesn’t know who Justin is, give us a little bit of your background and what you do.
Meet Justin Sainton, Founder of Zao
Justin: Sure. Yeah, so my background is I dropped out of high school at 17 to start the company I’m running today, Zao. We’re a software agency, and we focus on WordPress and eCommerce, and the convergence of those two spaces. We’ve been doing that for about 13 years now. I got into the WordPress space around 2007. I had started my company in 2005, and it’s been a solid 10 years of digging into the deep end of WordPress, and the complicated world of eCommerce, trying to marry those two. (With some success, thankfully.)
Bob: That’s interesting because 2007 was when started diving into WordPress too, so we’ve both been in the space, trucking along here for about a decade. So very cool. Now, I have seen where you’ve actually labeled your plugin as the original eCommerce plugin for WordPress. Can you tell us what drove you to start it up? At that time, did you think WordPress was even an eCommerce solution?
What drove you to create your eCommerce plugin?
Justin: Great question. A little backstory. It was started before I even got involved in WordPress. It was started by a guy in New Zealand called Dan Milward. A lot of people who’ve been around WordPress forever will know him, though he’s been less involved over the last few years. He pivoted his time to building a game-building platform on top of WordPress, which is really cool. So he spends a lot of time at universities, but he started it back in 2006 to solve a pretty simple problem: he wanted to help some friends of his had a band, and they wanted to sell their CDs and MP3s and stuff on their website. This was back in 2006, and WordPress was just a baby. Nobody thought of WordPress as anything but a blogging platform, right? This was before custom post types, before the MU merge, before a lot of stuff where today we say, “Yeah, WordPress is for more than just blogging.” Nobody was saying that back then.