May 30, 2017 — The accessibility of a website is significantly affected by the underlying HTML, CSS and javascript that developers use to create it. But it is also possible to impact upon the accessibility of a site at the design stage – both the visual design, and the interactive design or UX. And it’s not just about colour schemes either.

In this presentation I will outline a few key points to keep in mind when you are designing your next beautiful website or theme. I will illustrate the points with some good (and bad) examples.

Good design and web accessibility can go hand in hand – come and find out how.

Presentation Slides »

May 30, 2017 — Rocio Valdivia is a Community Wrangler at Automattic. Mathieu Viet builds plugins, has a WordPress French podcast and is a founding member of @wpparis. They are the lead organizers for the WordCamp Europe Contributor day.

Contributor Day will take place on Thursday June 15th at Business Centre of “Les Docks de Paris”. Registration starts at 08:30 am, and opening remarks at 09:15.

To find out what to expect at Contributor Day go to: https://2017.europe.wordcamp.org/2017/05/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-wceu-contributor-day/

You can find out about the talk and schedule at: https://2017.europe.wordcamp.org/schedule/contributor-day-schedule/

May 29, 2017 — Is your site suddenly spammy? Features stopped working the way they should? Once-speedy pages taking forever to load?

To keep your WordPress website secure and working well, you must maintain it properly.

The code should be updated regularly to increase security, fix bugs, and add features and functionality.
Regular backups are crucial to restoring your site if necessary—things go wrong, even with the best of sites and servers.
Security scanning makes sure that nothing hacky has happened.
Optimizing for speed keeps site users engaged.
In this session, Andi will teach you the basics of WordPress website maintenance. She’ll suggest automatic steps you can set up with your host as well as manual tasks you (or a professional) can complete to boost security and performance.

May 29, 2017 — If you’re a local business then your customer base is local to you. You want customers to come in your store or call your number. You want customers to find you when they search for a local business. In the world of search, the rules on how to rank locally keep changing. In this session we’ll look at current guidelines for optimizing your WordPress site for local search and we’ll discuss the best tools and techniques to use. Attendees will learn how local SEO differs from traditional SEO, how citations and review matter, how to manage your online presence and how to optimize your site for local SEO.

Presentation Slides »

May 28, 2017 — Do you know that if you have a picture of a duck having it face left or right can increase your conversions by 40%?

Think this sounds silly? It is, but backed by research. Spend some time to learn about what a/b testing is, what things to test, testing methodology and the best tools to use for your WordPress site.

Everyone will get a handout of the very same checklist I use when A/B testing our client’s sites. One of our clients, an insurance company, increased leads by making just a small 2px change.

Want YOUR site to be tested live? Please tweet me your URL @MPMIKE with the hashtag #TESTME. Selected sites will get live feedback and examples.

When you launch a website, you are guessing. Sure the guesses are educated based on experience and data, but you can maximize your ROI with good A/B testing

May 28, 2017 — There is so much information put out there about growing a business, about SEO or marketing in general. One area that doesn’t get much love is customer service.

You can get the clients in the door, but then what happens? You want to do a great job but at the end of the day you’re stressed out because things are all over the place. The client wants this or that and it was never discussed.

In this talk, I want to discuss ways to provide an excellent customer service experience while keeping you sane and your bills paid.

May 28, 2017 — Understanding your users’ behavior will help you improve the user experience of your site or product as well as how you market to new users.

In this talk, you will learn how to use different types of surveys to learn about your users. We will discuss:

– Using surveys to segment your audience
– Creating survey questions without question bias
– User research surveys
– Post-sale surveys
– Experience surveys
– When to survey your audience or users
– and more…

May 27, 2017 — Everyone wants to get more done with their day, but we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that putting more hours in at work results in more productivity. I’d like to dispell that myth and offer practical solutions for freelancers and teams to maximize their productivity while working less hours.

May 27, 2017 — Lots of people think website accessibility is a “nice to have” feature when in reality it’s a “must have” feature. In this session, we’ll demystify the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and show how when you make websites accessible it benefits everyone. You’ll be well on your way to being an a11y ally!

May 27, 2017 — Being able to convey both factual meaning and human sentiment through the written word can be challenging. From emails to project updates to tweets, we are constantly sending text artifacts out into the world that may not jibe with what we MEANT to say.

Who needs this talk? EVERYONE! “But devs don’t need to know how to write well,” you say. Sorry, but developers do need to, for:
* Clients (both current and potential) – being able to explain technical issues in a way that is both intelligible and digestible is a key work skill. Many WordPress developers and businesses live and die by solid RFP responses;
* Coworkers – website development can be a solo gig, but often involves code collaboration (even if your collaborator is your future self #docbrown). How you update (or solicit updates from) your co-workers can make or break a project. The words we choose only become more important in situations where cannot rely on body language (such as in Slack, email, forums, or work tickets);
* the WordPress community – when all you have are Core Trac ticket updates, how we bolster support or provide actionable feedback to our peers is crucial. A poorly crafted forum reply can drive someone away from open source contributions, so being able to respond in helpful, respectful ways is a skill we all must hone;
* Yourself – Do you tweet? Do you publish content online? Are you seeking work and need to craft RFP responses or application cover letters? All these require stronger writing skills than a one-and-done draft.

This talk is for anyone who uses words to convey ideas. I will lay out examples of words to avoid and offer alternative ways to convey similar ideas. By sharing easy-to-implement tips and tricks on writing, I will help attendees communicate better in any situation.

Presentation Slides »