Adrian Tobey’s session is Democratizing Digital Marketing: Why we need to create a better user experience.

From Adrian: “I’m taking my 10 years of marketing and 5 years of WordPress development experience to create new tools for the small businesses of today so that they can grow their businesses quickly without feeling as if they have to learn a whole new language.”

Why did you choose your topic?

The WordPress community has so much to offer the public in terms of both content and software. However, WordPress is losing a battle to the closed source sector.

Every year the SAAS platforms are posting larger user acquisition numbers than WordPress and affiliated platforms. I believe this is because the SAAS industry has truly raised the bar on expectations when it comes to usability.

With the advent of Gutenberg, not only is WordPress signaling to the world that they are ready to compete and deliver a stellar user experience, but they are signalling to developers and publishers alike that we need to get our act together before if we want to stay relevant in 2019.

What do you want people to learn from your session?

I really want to focus on what actually makes for a good user experience. Whether you’re a publisher or a developer, you will learn how to deliver your content so that it can be consumed quickly and implemented effectively.

Why did you decide to speak?

As a plugin developer for WordPress I use a lot of other plugins and I think to myself on most occasions, “How would anybody without an ounce of technical experience figure this out?”

It’s great software, but it’s all about the delivery of said software that will make it successful or otherwise.

As someone with a fairly successful plugin I though I would share my experience on how I delivered content effectively so that the open source community can thrive in the face of SAAS dominance.

What brought you to WordPress in the first place?

Necessity is the mother of invention. My first foray into WordPress was a plugin i developed called FormLift which is used by ~1000 people today.

I was working at a digital marketing firm and I needed to get forms to display properly on the homepage. There was at the time no integration for the particular CRM I was using. So I made one and it eventually turned into a full scale business.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

I just want to help aspiring world changers change the world.

I’m on my own journey to change the world and together with WordPress and the new technology that’s coming down the pipeline the time it’s going to take to make that change is shortening every day.

What advice do you have for WordCamp Toronto attendees?

It’s all about the User Experience. Learn from those who’ve created successful publications and plugins, not necessarily about the content they produce, but how they distributed their content as that is the difference between success and 0 active installations.

Thanks to Adrian for taking the time to answer our questions. You can follow Adrian on Twitter, @adriantobey1