Marketing to End-Users Subgroup – October 11, 2017

Subgroup Goals

Marketing WordPress to End-Users: this subgroup focuses on marketing to end-users of WordPress: Site Owners, Small Business owners, and Content creators / bloggers / contributors. Information is more focused on the usability of the software, Features and integrations which will help them self-manage their websites, and information comparing WordPress to other website solution. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

Today’s Meeting

Slack Timestamp

We decided to created End-user Personas document and Trello card here.

@miker asked whether we are doing personas similar to what we are doing on other segments (Marketing to Developers). @bridgetwillard guided to the TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. board we have for Marketing to End Users, where we are still building up our activity. @mcdwayne invited contribution to the ongoing effort for personas on the Marketing for Developers Trello Board. @miker offered to work on a doc for end users for the next meeting and get feedback from the group.

We discussed that we may not need personas at this stage for end users. As @skarjune mentioned, they are needed when we have specific marketing or targeting goals.

@harryjackson1221 asked whether users can be categorized as beginner, intermediate, and advanced. @skarjune added that with GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ around, there would be renewed interest from advanced end users.

It was interesting to note a variety of views on how Gutenberg would change things for end users. @vishalmukadam noted it would make things easy for end users. @maedahbatool made a point that we shouldn’t proceed until things are finalized in Gutenberg, the project being a work in progress as of now.

@nagpai (self) suggested using our own stories about what brought us to WordPress to tell end users what they could benefit from. @miker added that adding “security” aspect would help, too. @meher added that mentioning personal experience will help beginners connect better when they relate their own, and gain confidence.

@vishalmukadam suggested that we add a Trello card for End User personas.
@miker suggested we start with 5 personas.

There were interesting ideas around segmentation.

Quoting @newyorkerlaura
“1) small business owner of a local service business like a restaurant, dog groomers or such and
2) New person to blogging: maybe pick a popular social cause like environment or healthy eating.”

Quoting @miker

1) DIY Webmasters (complete newbies who are interested in learning to build their own site
2) Power Users, who don’t understand the technical underpinnings of WordPress, but know how to configure it
3) Designers / Artists – people that understand and are interested in design, especial the look of their site, but are not interested in the technical operation of WordPress
4) Coders / Developers, who may not have any CMS experience, but want something that will handle the user authentication, UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. etc
5) Project Oriented – users who don’t know or care what platform they use, but are focused on the specific solutions it can provide”

@harryjackson1221 added interesting points about lower setup costs and the ability to begin free and move to self hosted sites. WordPress dominance in eCommerce which is a gaining segment in small business and even some end users was also noted as a cue.

Attendees : @harryjackson1221 @skarjune @bridgetwillard @mcdwayne
@Afshanadiya @miker @vishalmukadam @meher @dhruvpandya @newyorkerlaura @prathameshp @maedahbatool @sagarprajapati @parth @nagpai @arvindhbaraskar @eliassecchi

Notes taken by: @nagpai