The Future of WooCommerce in 2025 with James Kemp, Woo's Core Product Manager
Dec 18, 2024
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James Kemp, the Core Product Manager for WooCommerce and founder of IconicWP, shares insights from his journey in the e-commerce space. He discusses the future of WooCommerce, emphasizing the 'More in Core' initiative, which integrates essential plugins directly into the core product. James highlights the importance of community feedback in deciding core features and maintaining a balance between functionality and extensibility. He also touches on WooCommerce's ongoing efforts to enhance user experience, making 2025 a pivotal year for merchants.
James Kemp outlines the 'More in Core' initiative, aiming to integrate essential features into WooCommerce for enhanced usability.
The focus for WooCommerce in 2025 includes improving performance and user experience to attract a broader audience while maintaining extensibility.
Deep dives
James Kemp's Background in WooCommerce
James Kemp has recently become the core product manager for WooCommerce, bringing significant experience from his previous role as a product manager at Stellar WP. He has a rich background in the WooCommerce ecosystem, having founded IconicWP, a WooCommerce plugin company that was acquired by Stellar WP. Through his work, he developed numerous premium WooCommerce extensions and fostered relationships with key figures in the community, enhancing his understanding of product development within WooCommerce. Kemp's knowledge extends back over a decade, beginning with his experience in creating plugins for platforms like Magento and later JigoShop, pointing to a deep-seated expertise in e-commerce solutions.
Core Experience versus Core Platform in WooCommerce
Kemp's current focus as core product manager splits between core experience and core platform, with the former dealing primarily with user interaction and usability aspects of WooCommerce. The core experience is concerned with optimizing how users, developers, and merchants interact with WooCommerce, ensuring that it is intuitive and efficient. Conversely, the core platform focuses on backend performance, testing, and the foundational aspects that drive the overall functionality of WooCommerce. This organizational structure aims to improve the user journey for different stakeholders and provide a cohesive experience across the platform.
Integrating Features into Core WooCommerce
Kemp discussed an initiative aimed at evaluating and potentially integrating basic features currently available as paid plugins into the core WooCommerce product. The consideration for these integrations arises from feedback indicating that users find certain functionalities, such as shipment tracking and back-in-stock notifications, to be essential yet burdensome as premium plugins. The approach involves distinguishing between basic functionalities that should inherently belong to WooCommerce and more complex plugins that enhance e-commerce capabilities. This strategic decision is part of ensuring WooCommerce remains competitive with other platforms like Shopify while retaining its extensibility.
Looking Forward to 2025 and Performance Improvements
Kemp expressed excitement about the potential developments for WooCommerce in 2025, particularly the focus on improving product performance and user experience. Both the core platform and core experience initiatives are aimed at enhancing the efficiency of WooCommerce, such as optimizing database queries related to order management. The overarching goal is to define a clearer, more intuitive offering right out of the box for new users while maintaining the extensibility that current users appreciate. By creating a more feature-complete core, WooCommerce aims to attract and retain a broader user base, reinforcing its position in the e-commerce market.
In this episode of 'Within WordPress,' I talk to James Kemp, the new Core Product Manager for WooCommerce. James shares his journey from founding IconicWP to joining WooCommerce, detailing his previous roles and responsibilities.
We discuss the future direction of WooCommerce, focusing on the 'More in Core' initiative aimed at integrating essential plugins into the core product. James elaborates on the decision-making process behind adding new features, handling community feedback, and maintaining the balance between extensibility and basic functionality.
He also emphasizes WooCommerce's ongoing efforts to enhance performance and user experience, making 2025 a promising year for Woo merchants and developers alike.
00:00 Introduction 00:17 Meet James Kemp: WooCommerce Core Product Manager 01:09 James Kemp's Career Journey 03:24 Building WooCommerce Plugins 06:12 Magento and WordPress Integration 07:37 Transition to WooCommerce 12:43 Role and Responsibilities at WooCommerce 13:24 Core Experience vs. Core Platform 15:48 Order Management and Fulfillment 20:54 Deciding Features for WooCommerce Core 23:24 Premium Plugins and Core Integration 28:35 WooCommerce Plugin Strategy 30:10 Comparing WooCommerce and Shopify 33:28 User Feedback and Core Features 35:26 Challenges of Integrating Plugins into Core 37:11 Future Plans for WooCommerce Core 40:09 Balancing Core Features and Plugin Ecosystem 44:39 Extensibility and Community Feedback 59:00 Looking Ahead to 2025
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