WordPress community is filled with extraordinary people who are changing lives with their work and support. Cloudways have a special way of recognizing their efforts by inviting them for the interview.
Today, I am excited to interview another rockstar from the WordPress community who has been helping WordPress users both offline and online. She is an active WordCamp organizer/speaker and is making WordPress a better platform to work with.
Cloudways: Thank you, Rosanne, for taking the time out to share your story with our readers. Please tell us about yourself and your journey before stepping into web development?
Rosanne: I did a bachelor’s History and a master’s in Media & Journalism. At the start of my study, I wanted to become a journalist, but when I graduated, I was more into marketing & communication. After my graduation, I worked as a back-office employee and as a marketing & communication employee before starting my own business.
Cloudways: When and how did you start developing websites in WordPress and who inspired you in the early days?
Rosanne: I worked as a back-office employee but I had the ambition to do something else. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. I only had one requirement: it had to be something I could do from my own home.
I looked at a guide from a home study company and reviewed all their studies. The study ‘Webdesigner’ triggered me. I could build websites at home and I expected the internet to become way more important as it was at that moment (2011). Besides that, how cool would it be to build your own websites?!
So I started the study, graduated, read a lot of articles watched videos and learned to build websites one step at a time.
To learn more about WordPress I followed a course given by Sebastiaan van der Lans (Van Ons). He really inspired me in the early days (and he still does!).
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Cloudways: Inside your bio, you mentioned that you started developing the website using Joomla. Share your experience with it and what made you switch to WordPress?
Rosanne: The first year I used Joomla to build websites. I noticed that it was too complicated for my clients, they didn’t understand how to edit content. Therefore I looked for other CMSes and found WordPress. It was love at first sight 🙂 This was in 2012. Since then I’ve built every online project with WordPress. I never used Joomla again, but back in the days, it was just not that user-friendly.
A big bonus for WordPress is a huge and active community. If I have a question I can find a solution most of the time in the WordPress repository or in one of the dedicated WordPress slack or Facebook channels. Joomla didn’t have this.
Cloudways: Tell our readers about Buro Staal. What role do you play there and what made you start a web agency? What initial challenges did you face?
Rosanne: I started the company in 2011 when I was still working as a marketing communication employee. In my own time, I started building websites. The first year I had 4 clients, the second year 13, the third year 45 and now we have more than 300 clients. It grew steady but solid.
In started alone so I did everything myself. In 2017 I merged my company with the company of Annemieke and we continued together. She is a graphic designer and I learned her how to build websites. Besides building websites, I did marketing & sales and Annemieke handled our administration.
Nowadays we also have Johannes and Bianca in our team. Johannes is our lead developer and Bianca handles support & hosting. Annemieke focuses entirely on design. My role has shifted into project management and strategy. And data-driven marketing. And sales 🙂
The biggest challenge was hiring employees. That was a big step. And a lot of responsibility. Very exciting. I’m really happy that we did it because I love our team and the way we make each other better every day.
Cloudways: Can you share the secrete of completing the project with success and client satisfaction?
Rosanne: The secret of completing a project with success and client satisfaction contains, in my humble opinion of three things:
- A well-defined plan that clearly describes what will be made, how it will be done and, above all, which functionalities are included. This makes it clear to both parties what will be made.
- Realistic planning.
- Good communication.
Of course, you have to deliver, but these three points are the basis for a good relationship with your customer.
Cloudways: While working on so many projects and managing the client’s website; what challenges do you face or wish to have a solution for?
Rosanne: time and communication is my biggest challenge. Clients call me, email me, send me WhatsApp messages and colleagues need my help or opinion. Sometimes I wish I could split myself into two persons, so I have more time. A good project management system that can also handle communication would be a good solution. They probably exist, but I have never looked at it. Not yet.
Cloudways: On your website, you have listed Conversion Optimization as one of the services. Can you please share any five tips to improve conversion?
Rosanne: That’s a trick question because in Conversion Optimization there is nothing that will work at every website. But there is always something that will work. If I had to mention 5 things it would be:
- Stop. Using. Sliders.
- Place a Call to Action button on every page.
- Make sure that the Call to Action button has a different color than your company colors so it will stand out.
- Make your content scannable. A good title, nice subtitles, use paragraphs and bullets.
- Make sure that visitors understand in a sec what you do. You can use your logo, pay-off, and menu to make this clear. “Services” doesn’t say anything. That’s why we have ‘web design’, ‘support’ and ‘conversion optimization’ on our menu. Every visitor immediately understands that we’re a digital agency and not a construction agency.
Cloudways: Let’s talk a bit about WordPress 5.4 and Gutenberg. In your opinion, do you see this taking over the conventional editor and becoming a strong competitor for page builders?
Rosanne: I do see it take over the conventional editor but I’m not sure it will become a strong competitor for page builders. We use Elementor a lot and the gap between Gutenberg and Elementor is tremendous. But Gutenberg as we know now it is just a start. I think it will be awesome to use Gutenberg for blogposts, but for pages, I’d rather use a page builder.
Cloudways: If you are given the opportunity to change one thing in the WordPress core. What would that be?
Rosanne: Making multilingual projects way easier. In the backend, we can use a lot of languages but if you want to create a multilingual website you need to use plugins and none of them is a real good all-in-one solution. And don’t start about multilingual webshops, that’s even worse.
Cloudways: You have been an active participant of WordCamps; how important is it to attend these events both as an agency owner and as a WordPress user?
Rosanne: Really important! The community members helped me with so many things. Not only WordPress related but also business-related. Being a volunteer or organizer at WordCamps is our way to so thank you and payback to WordPress and the community. As a WordPress user, we learn so much stuff at WordCamps. Without WordCamps I wouldn’t know a thing about accessibility for example.
Cloudways: Please name any five personalities from the WordPress community who you follow or admire for their amazing work.
Rosanne: Taeke Rijenga, Rian Rietveld, Marcel Bootsman, Luc Princen and Monique Dubbelman.
Cloudways: Who would you like to recommend for the interview with us?
Rosanne: Rian Rietveld from Level Leve
Cloudways: Finally, for our readers, please share the picture of your work station.
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Rosanne: At this moment we all work at home due to the Coronavirus, so my work station is a bit different than normal. It’s just like back in the old days when I didn’t have an office yet and worked at home. 🙂
Ibad Ur Rehman
Ibad Ur Rehman is a WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways. He likes to explore the latest open-source technologies and to interact with different communities. In his free time, he likes to read, watch a series or fly his favorite Cessna 172SP in X Plane 11 flight simulator.
