In episode 149, I chat with my friend Chris Lema, VP of product over at Liquid Web, a WooCommerce expert and someone who loves telling a good story.

Chris has been on our podcast before, and if you know him, he shares his eCommerce wisdom across the internet and at WordCamps. This time around I am doing something a bit different.

I thought up six random eCommerce-related questions and asked Chris to run with them. :

1. Is there still room for new eCommerce plugin solutions in the WordPress space?
2. Why haven’t blocks made it into WooCommerce core for product pages?
3. What is one of the coolest products or services that has emerged in the WordPress eCommerce space so far this year?
4. What online store blows the mind of Chris Lema?
5. What are the biggest challenges for online stores today?
6. Is there anything, in this day and age that Chris still needs to purchase in person?

Some teasers from Lema’s answers:

Is there still room for new eCommerce plugins in the WordPress space?

… I will remind people that there was a point in time where every eCommerce store on the planet was Magento and Shopify didn’t exist and WooCommerce didn’t exist. That’s not the case today. So there will always be a scenario where you go, well, someone has a majority of the pie and there’s no room for anyone else …

… here’s the crazy thing with marketplace e-commerce, the platform showcases your competitors at the same time as it’s showing your product. …

… I think what we’re seeing is a lot of SAS players who are saying, I’m not going to worry so much about the site you create, I’m gonna worry about all the other features …

Why have blocks not made it into WooCommerce product pages?

… I think people are already doing it, right? …. Gutenberg is where it’s all going. And so it would be silly to not go in the same direction that everyone else has going …

… it makes sense to me that, and I think it’s really what you’re saying too, is that WooCommerce is probably best to leave core in the product page as is, you know … you do have the option of people to build blocks by adding to your store instead of everybody being forced to use it as part of core …

What is the coolest product/service for WordPress online stores that you’ve seen so far this year?

… two products are interesting. They do different things that I think are really cool and they’ve each pivoted this year in 2019 …

… it’s notifications that are contextual, conditional, based on things like what’s in your cart or how many items were put in your cart or what category it was in your cart …

… it uses tags and the tags that are in your internal systems as well as your behavioral paths to shape how you message, where you message, whether you pop something up or whether you just change the texts on the sidebar …

What online store that you have seen blows your mind?

… sizing is a super big deal. And if you’ve ever been to any website and you are looking at something you like and you click on the sizing details, which is kind of the standard best practice, which is not a best practice at all. You click on the link that says sizing details. Um, what do you get? …

… when you load up the home page again, it shows you men stuff. Right. Cause you just told it basically via your clickstream that you’re a man, or at least that you’re looking for stuff for men. Right? I love that. …

What is the biggest challenge for online stores?

… I think the biggest challenge the store has today is storytelling. And the reason I think, it has that problem is because whether you’re telling a story with a Facebook ad or you’re telling a story with a blog post or you’re telling a story, uh, somewhere else, right? I think at the core of this, if you don’t have compelling stories, you won’t get the traffic …

What would Chris never buy online?

… I think there’s almost nothing now that I can’t buy online, right?… so almost everything, … I will say this, for a large guy like myself, inside of the clothes space is still something that only I can evaluate for myself …

Where to Find Chris

Chris on Twitter @ChrisLema

ChrisLema.com

Leaders.blog

Liquid Web.com

Sites and Resources Mentioned by Chris

PootlePress

Ahoy!

Right Message

Universal Standard

Urban Outfitters

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