Meet WordPress Developer, Zach Stepek
Each month, we’ll be chatting with a WordPress developer and highlighting the unique stories of the WordPress Community. We want to highlight the behind the scenes stories, tech stacks, and trends going on in the world of WordPress and ecommerce.
We recently sat down with Zach Stepek, CEO of Mindsize to talk about what he’s working on and ecommerce trends that he’s interested in.
Hey Zach, Tell me about how you got started with WordPress.
I resisted WordPress for a long time. It was my friend and long-time collaborator Chris Kelley that got me to reconsider WordPress for a project we were working on together, and I was amazed by how far the platform had come since the last time I had seen it. It was around the time that 3.2 had come out, so there was a brand new admin experience, and it felt like a new beginning for the platform. I dove in, and haven’t looked back.
What’s your background as a developer?
I started building websites in the 1990s with the HotDog HTML editor. I used single-pixel spacer gifs and tables for layout. I lived through asking hosting companies to enable the FrontPage extensions. Then I started building data-driven websites with Macromedia ColdFusion 5. I realized that empowering users to update their content without a developer freed me up to work on the things I loved: building and learning new things.
From ColdFusion, I moved into building Rich Internet Applications with Macromedia Flash. It was a natural transition since Flash could speak to ColdFusion directly over a binary format called the Action Message Format, or AMF, so the communication was faster than with SOAP-based web services or XML. I lived in the Flash industry, later teaching ActionScript 3 and Flex everywhere from IBM to MTV.
Then, one day, Flash wasn’t viable anymore. It felt like it happened overnight. I struggled to decide where to focus my effort next, so I took a bit of time off from working as a developer and dove into learning new programming languages, one of which was PHP. Shortly after that, WordPress found me.
What’s in your tech stack?
I’m definitely an Apple fan, which I know is funny coming from a former Flash developer if you believe that Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” killed the platform. I don’t think it was the largest factor, though I acknowledge it was a factor. Apart from that, I use Adobe Creative Suite, Atlassian JIRA and Confluence, alternate between Atom and VS Code depending on my mood and utilize Laravel Valet for local development.
Are there any tools you use as a developer that make you more productive?
Delegation.
What resources do you use to stay current in your industry? Are there blogs, podcasts, conferences that you recommend?
I love podcasts since I can listen to them while I’m working on other things. eCommerceFuel is probably one of my favorites, and not just because I’ve been on it, but because I’ve learned more from the group of store owners and professionals that talk with Andrew Youderian during that podcast than pretty much anywhere else. I’m also a big fan of Nerd Marketing, The Gary Vee Audio Experience and the eCommerce Marketing Podcast for staying up to date on the newest techniques in content marketing strategy. In the WordPress space, I listen to Post Status, Doo The Woo and The Admin Bar.
As far as conferences, I speak at a ton of WordCamps and get a lot of value from attending some of the other talks and from the “hallway track.” I’ve also attended eCommerceFuel Live, which is excellent and I recommend to every store owner that can go, and I try to make it to IRCE every year, but mainly for the vendor floor. We’ve developed more relationships with vendors that we work with on a regular basis there than anywhere else.
What kind of projects are you currently working on at Mindsize?
We’re always working on a wide variety of projects, everything from subscription box companies to large, tens-of-thousands of product catalogs, both B2C and B2B. Most of our work tends to center around businesses that are trying to scale to the next level and are having some concerns around whether or not their current technology stack will be able to support their growth. We’ve run high-traffic and high-volume sites on multiple platforms and are continually looking for projects that fit our team’s highly specialized skill set.
What ecommerce trends are you excited about?
I think we’re going to start seeing ecommerce expand beyond the screen and into areas like voice assistants, such as Alexa, Siri and Google Home. I’m enthusiastic about the continuing rise of mobile usage by buyers and think that it will lead more companies to develop hybrid-native experiences that improve the overall user experience, reducing overall friction through the conversion funnel while remaining grounded in the browser and utilizing technologies like Progressive Web Applications and tools like React Native.
The rise of headless ecommerce platforms is enabling things like this to be within reach. I’m also very interested in the use of technology that has originated in the ecommerce space to transform brick-and-mortar retail experiences, like using location-aware beacons and near-native mobile apps to augment in-store wayfinding and deliver personalized experiences without increasing staffing. The sci-fi geek in me is ready for the future I was promised would be here.
What WordPress ecommerce plugins do you have experience using?
I’ve used most of them, from WP ecommerce to Easy Digital Downloads, but I’ve only really focused on WooCommerce. It’s the platform that got me into the ecommerce space, and our team is highly specialized in advanced WooCommerce development and scaling.
In your experience, why is it important for developers in the WordPress Community to understand ecommerce?
Ecommerce is complicated. Exponentially more complicated than running a content-focused website. I’ve identified up to 17 systems external to an ecommerce platform that you may or may not need to integrate with based on the size and complexity of the business. You need to know how to incorporate marketing automation, inventory management, shipping and fulfillment, resource and production planning, customer support, and numerous other distinct systems into a cohesive whole.
If you’re considering an ecommerce build the same way you’d approach a marketing site, you’re going to end up with ineffective results and disappointed clients. Success in ecommerce requires having your finger on the pulse of every part of the business. Your choices directly affect sales immediately after deploying changes to the site.
Where can developers go to learn and become an ecommerce expert? Are there blogs? Reputable classes?
I don’t think there’s a quick path. You’re not going to become an expert after taking a class or reading some blog posts. To truly understand the ecommerce world, you need to embed yourself in an ecommerce company. Get your hands dirty and pack and ship products. Sit in the meetings where they’re planning their social media marketing spend. Learn the struggles that store owners and their staff deal with from a daily operational standpoint. Once you’ve lived in that world, you’ll be better equipped to know why you’re building things and how the things you’re building will directly impact every part of an ecommerce store. There are so many moving pieces that have to work in concert with one another to run a successful ecommerce store, and the school of hard knocks is the best way to learn how to orchestrate all of it.
What are your thoughts on BigCommerce’s headless ecommerce initiative, specifically the WordPress implementation?
I firmly believe that headless ecommerce is an important step forward and that every SaaS platform will have to consider how their platform can be used outside of their sandbox. I’ve been very impressed with the progress that has been made on the BigCommerce for WordPress integration so far, and look forward to being able to get more hands-on with it in the future.
Thank you to Zach for being part of this interview and sharing your insight with the BigCommerce Dev Community.
Learn more about Zach’s company Mindsize and the work they are doing here. Interested in exploring headless commerce — check out the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin here.
Want to continue the conversation? Connect with Zach on Twitter. Have a question about how to get started with ecommerce on WordPress? Ask it in the comments below or reach out on @BigcommerceDevs Twitter.
