Issue #191 Loop WP

Q: What’s WooCommerce’s biggest existential threat (internal or external), and what are you doing about it right now?
Matt: “At the scale of WooCommerce… they’re never actually killed by competitors… the biggest threat is internal… it’s always because of execution… our ability to execute against what we’re hearing from the community and what we know the software needs… Open source… increases your freedom… and especially in the age of AI… feature differentiations are going to start to fade… what you’re choosing is a community, a platform… and that freedom stance.”

Q: What are WooCommerce’s competitive advantages and how do they set Woo up for success in the next five years?
Matt: “Biggest competitive advantage is freedom… more liberty, autonomy… sovereign software… The second is Woo’s open and infinitely extensible nature… I think we’ll see… ‘malleable software’… take something that’s already there… with the craft and security… and then you create on top of that… With WooCommerce… everyone in the community can make it better… not just the core team.”

Q: Is there going to be more WooCommerce coverage at flagship WordCamps?
Matt: “If people want it, there will be… Be the change you want to see… make the pitch… look at who’s coming… with almost a quarter of all WordPress websites using WooCommerce… maybe… a quarter of sessions… should be about WooCommerce or commerce more broadly… As long as things are open source, they’re welcome at WordCamps… I’ll keep that in mind.”

Q: WooCommerce serves merchants, product builders, and agencies. Are there goals aligned to those segments — and how are they prioritized?
Matt: “Yes… there are goals tied to each one… How are they prioritized? Off the dome, not certain right now… those are… big personas… there’s been more specific outreach… around growing the agency program… I also saw feedback that WordCamps might not want pitches… but once a product becomes a platform… it’s okay… because a lot of people can build on it.”

Q: If developer resources weren’t a constraint, what would you do — what would unlock the biggest leap forward?
Matt: “It’s very paired with this idea of intelligence being on tap with AI agents… that kind of is an unlimited developer resource… I would pick what WooCommerce’s roadmap is… focus on the interface being more radically accessible… reduce the friction… for merchants running a store day-to-day… every click you can remove… multiplies… checkout… is a multiplier… performance — you can always be faster.”

Q: Any update on UCP (Google) — how will WooCommerce move forward with this?
Matt: “Shopify… will negotiate… exclusive day-of launch announcement… don’t worry… it’ll all be supported… these things are not being used at all… it’s very telling… almost a year after… there have been almost no… transactions… Sometimes… there’s something with tons of hype… and then users are like ‘nope’… My prediction: commerce from people in a chat interface versus AI agents driving browsers… the second part will be way, way bigger.”

Q: Any plans to bring back Woo Express?
Matt: “On WordPress[dot]com, we’re making a ton of investment into making onboarding easier… every paid plan… supports full plugins and themes… you get… scalability… performance… secure… WordPress[dot]com sites basically never get hacked… We’re thinking about tailored experiences… and… preconfiguring a hosting setup… To get scalability and everything you don’t need [Woo Express] anymore… onboarding can definitely still be improved.”

Q: Long term — what does WooCommerce look like in 3+ years?
Matt: “It’ll be faster… updates will be seamless… when an update breaks a site… it makes me furious… totally unacceptable… it needs to happen zero times… the interface will be much more modern… WordPress is going to evolve alongside that… and we’ll benefit from it and build on top of it.”