WordCamp Zurich #WCZRH impressed with 50 percent first-time visitors. Our review reports on grilled hosts, digital WordPress nomads and the daily struggle with WooCommerce.
Bigger, even more interactive and with exciting sessions: Compared to 2015, the organizers of the camp have once again managed to up the ante. Raidboxes was a sponsor last weekend. Our WordCamp Zurich recap at a glance:
Pains and Gains with WooCommerce
WooCommerce was much more in demand as a topic at WordCamp Zurich than I have seen at other camps. This was confirmed in discussions with WP professionals and agencies. More and more potential customers are realizing projects in the field of eCommerce - from classic stores to the sale of services and events. Because WooCommerce can do far more than normal web stores. Accordingly, the demand for suitable service providers is increasing.
Tip: Do you want to work with the leading store system in the future? Then take a look at our article WooCommerce for freelancers & agencies. It will tell you more about the possibilities and business models.
In his session "Pains and Gains with WooCommerce", Enrik Berisha gave exciting insights into the day-to-day work of his agency for WooCommerce and WordPress. At the moment, only WooCommerce and Shopify are still growing, the other systems are stagnating. "But the pains with Shopify are even worse than with Woo", says Enrik. But he also doesn't like the "software as a service model": "As Shopify grows, the service automatically becomes more expensive".
Nevertheless, Enrik sees numerous construction sites at WooCommerce. We are also familiar with these from our support team:
- Multilingualism: Manual intervention is necessary for projects with WPML and Polylang. This also leads to chaos with permalinks and duplicate product pages(SEO sin). With multilingual stores, customers regularly underestimate the effort required for implementation and translations (products, buttons, theme, etc.). The finished multilingual feature is then often removed again.
- Multicurrency: Several currencies in one store? With three languages and three currencies, this results in nine different versions of the page. And when caching, incorrect versions and therefore incorrect final prices are quickly displayed.
- Caching: If, on the other hand, you exclude individual WooCommerce pages from caching, the system often slows down. This is particularly tragic for online stores. See our performance recommendations for WooCommerce.
- Bulk price: Graduated and bulk prices can only be solved with additional plugins. But even then, there is often no graduation, e.g. according to attributes or delivery times.
- Point of sale (POS): Want to quickly implement a pop-up store? That becomes a challenge with WooCommerce.
- Multistock: Online stores quickly have two or more different warehouses. Or they want to include a local store in the logistics planning. This is also not possible with the WooCommerce standard.
However, the main problem for Enrik remains: With WooCommerce, everything can be solved via plugins. But these very often don't work together because they don't come from a single source. This is particularly difficult for a commercial approach. Because every interruption costs money.
If a social button on a page doesn't work because of a plugin, that's not so bad. If the shopping cart checkout doesn't work in the store, then that's tragic.
is how he sums up this point. After all, performance is the decisive factor for a web store. A negative user experience not only leads to more abandonments in the checkout process, it also reduces the recommendation rate.
"3 seconds loading time is accepted there. After that, the conversion drops by 12 percent for every additional second" - explained Enrik during his session. Third-party plugins in particular often slow things down here. For example, payment interfaces or solutions for multilingualism.
No cache = no cash ? from 3 seconds loading time per additional second 12% bounce rate ? #WCZRH #WordPress #WooCommerce #eCommerce
- Nick Weisser (@nickweisser) September 14, 2019
His final recommendation:
Test your WooCommerce configuration very thoroughly. Then stick to your personal plugin setup.
See our tip on templates in WordPress and WooCommerce. The same applies to testing and staging. It is grossly negligent to run WordPress or WooCommerce without a separate test environment and backups. One wrong setting in a plugin or a new extension that is not compatible with the rest, and your website is paralyzed. Under certain circumstances, this cannot be easily reversed.
Tip: You can find more tips on WooCommerce in our 70+ page e-book WooCommerce for professionals. It is aimed at freelancers, agencies, WP professionals and beginners.
Location-independent self-employment with WordPress
Michael Hörnlimann was once employed by a Swiss web agency. Today, he works completely remotely, in countries such as Bolivia and Portugal. He realizes projects with WordPress and WooCommerce as a so-called digital nomad. He gave an insight into his life at the camp:
On the benefits of working as a digital nomad, Michael says: "The flexibility of this lifestyle is enormous. Just like the quality of life." It has also changed him personally:
I've become much more open and approach people with confidence ... I've also become more loyal. Especially when it comes to other cultures. Because this lifestyle allows me to get to know them authentically and over a longer period of time.
His tips for a location-independent life are above all:
- Start slowly and in small steps.
- So if someone is still working full-time in the office in the traditional way, there may be the option of working from home. See our tips on working remotely.
- Classic areas for digital nomads are graphic design, web design, social media and online marketing.
- A financial buffer is particularly important with this lifestyle.
- Work locations must have a good infrastructure. For example, a fast internet connection but also good shopping facilities.
Want to find out more about the work of digital nomads? Read our interview with Michael. In it, he gives detailed tips for working with WordPress from other countries. Also interesting: Jan Tissler's blog post on typical freelancer mistakes and how to avoid them.
Great motivation: Michael Hörnlimann's talk on #digitalnomade at #WCZRH. ????? Read his story here: https://t.co/K2Wf0svByh @wordcampzurich #selbstaendig #remote #freelancer #WordPress #independent
- Raidboxes (@Raidboxes) September 14, 2019
Roast my Host
Around 80 participants wanted to know how web hosts deal with typical customer problems. And how they can assess the quality of their service provider. Our support hero Tino from Raidboxes and representatives from Cyon, infomaniak and AlpHosting took part. The panel was moderated by Lucas Radke from Plesk.
It was about missing brackets in the source code, backups, deactivating and selecting the right plugins, searching through logs, modified .htaccess files, but also about hacked WordPress sites. The questions hardly made the four representatives break a sweat. Therefore: "Roast my Host" passed.
The different approaches to solutions were only visible in isolated cases, for example between shared and managed hosting for WordPress. Especially when it came to performance and page speed. Some representatives recommended the use of plugins for caching. Raidboxes relies on the integrated approach here. The same applies to WordPress security: when it comes to removing malware, the other hosters refer to external service providers. We offer this as an additional or even integrated service (in the Fully Managed tariff).
Raidboxes @ WCZRH
We supported WordCamp Zurich as a bronze sponsor and microsponsor. Already at the "Sponsor Dinner" on Friday evening there were exciting discussions about WordCamp Asia, the development of WordCamps in Switzerland and of course the latest developments in WordPress.
The Raidboxes table was very well attended on Saturday. Numerous WP professionals as well as agencies from Switzerland and Germany took the opportunity to talk to Tino and me about high-performance WordPress hosting as well as our FREE DEV program and affiliate commissions. Our tools for developers were particularly popular. For example, for cloning WordPress projects with preconfigured plugins, settings and themes.
We were particularly pleased with the interest in our e-book WooCommerce for professionals - in the printed version. By late afternoon, all copies were gone. This also shows us that WooCommerce is "coming" as a topic.
WordCamp Recap
The WordCamp took place at Technopark Zurich, just like in 2015, when there were around 200 registrations. The numbers for this year's camp:
- 240 registrations
- 200 participants
- 23 Speaker
- 27 Volunteers and organizers
- 30 percent women, a significant increase on the last WordCamps in Switzerland
Another particularly nice fact: 50 percent of the participants were attending a WordCamp for the first time. This shows that it's by no means always just the same group of "old hands" at WordCamps. The organizers managed to get almost 100 new faces excited about WordPress and WooCommerce.
Thanks to the organizers & volunteers for a great #WCZRH. See you again for sure 😉 ????? @wordcampzurich #WordCamp pic.twitter.com/9VbHNl5hbR
- Raidboxes (@Raidboxes) September 14, 2019
Many thanks at this point to the team. In particular to Nick Weisser, Gerd Zimmermann, Christian Zumbrunnen, Silvan Hagen, Claudio Rimann and Michael Hörnlimann, with whom we had great contact as sponsors.
WordPress community in Switzerland
The annual WordCamps in Switzerland are now firmly established. The next WordCamp Switzerland will take place on March 21, 2020 in Geneva. See
There are further WordPress meetups in Baden, Bern, Fribourg, Lausanne, Lucerne, Lugano, Monthey, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen, Sion and St. Gallen. Find out more in the overview here.
The WordPress Meetup Zurich has over 800 members. However, for time and organizational reasons, there are no regular monthly meetings yet. The team would therefore be delighted if you would join in! You can find more information at https://wpzurich.ch/community/.
You can read more voices and sessions from the #WCZRH here:
- Nick Weisser: Biggest Swiss WordCamp in History
- Gabriel Figueiro: Lessons Learned @ WordCamp Zurich 2019
- Martin Sauter: Multilingual websites with WordPress
- Michael Hörnlimann: Slides of the session "Digital Nomads"
- Mark Howells-Mead: Photos from WordCamp Zurich 2019
Have you also written about WordCamp Zurich? Post the link in the comments and we'll add it to the list.
