Sand Batik – Delivering a Better eCommerce Solution to Your Clients

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Sandi Batik is coming back to WordCamp DFW to teach us how to deliver a better eCommerce solution to our clients.

We often get clients whose first effort at an eCommerce site failed. It is usually a “Help me Obi-wan Kenobi you’re my only hope!” kind of phone call. As we analyze what went wrong with the first site, we usually find out the previous developer may have been a great coder, but just did not understand the client’s business model.

In her experience, some clients don’t understand their business model, especially those who are moving from a bricks and mortar business environment to an online store.

Sand Batik - Delivering a Better eCommerce Solution to Your Clients

That’s why Sandi Batik structured the “Delivering a Better eCommerce Solution to Your Clients” presentation to give eCommerce developers a set of questions and checklists that would help them conduct an effective project discovery before they start writing code.

During Sandi’s talk, you will learn how a detailed client discovery gets to the real motivations, agendas, drivers, expectations, and goals of the eCommerce project.

By using a technical eCommerce project discovery processes, your team will avoid being surprised by time-released, headaches throughout the project. When expectations are clear on both sides, implementation is less stressful for everyone.

Sandi Batik’s presentation will include process checklists and other tools to help your team develop a robust project infrastructure to support your client’s business strategies and help them efficiently launch and manage their eCommerce operation.

Sand Batik - Delivering a Better eCommerce Solution to Your Clients

Sandi Batik, and her partner, Nick Batik, have been building static websites with HTML and CSS since 1995. They were developing sites in Adobe GoLive in 2007 when a colleague started raving about WordPress and encouraged them to give it a try.

I think we were at Version 2.1 and the documentation was still sketchy. You pretty much kept the WordPress Codex open at all times, documented what worked, and passed it on.

That year, Pat Ramsey founded the Austin WordPress Meetup. It was about seven folks who meet at the Halcyon Coffee House, mostly sharing tips and tricks. As more members joined, the Meetup moved to Austin’s Conjunctured and later to CoSpace.

In 2010 Pat asked me to organize the WordPress Beginners group, while he and Nick organized the Advanced WP Dev group. We later added an Intermediate WP Developers group and an eCommerce Meetup. I taught the beginners through 2018 and, along with Nick, and Toyin Akinmusuru, continue to organize the WooCommerce Meetup.

Sandi Batik is a Deming Certified Quality Analyst who served in Colorado Small Business Development Office as a Minority and Women’s Small Business Development specialist. She was awarded the SBA Region VIII, M/WBE Procurement Advocate Award; and the SBA Region VIII,  Advocate of the Year Award for Women in Business. She uses that business development experience to provide data-driven solutions for her eCommerce clients.

In 2019, after working together for several years on various eCommerce projects, I joined Nick Batik and Toyin Akinmusuru to form a new company, LoneStarWP. I serve as the COO. Our agency develops eBusiness Solutions, including WooCommerce Stores, WordPress Membership Sites, Custom eCommerce Plugins, and offers Strategic Consultancy for eCommerce Projects.

It is always a pleasure to have Sandi Batik at WordCamp DFW. She’s attended several times and, last year, she presented a talk on ‘Avoiding Scope Creep,’ that included the observation that good project management starts with better client management. That presentation led to some intense discussion during the after-party.

Apparently client management is “a thing!”
I ended up writing out some crib-notes on the back of a napkin to help one of the attendees with an upcoming client meeting. He called me a few days later – the meeting went better than expected.

Sandi Batik told us that several of her online mentors are from the DFW WordPress community.

Every WordCampDFW is like a family reunion. It is an opportunity to spend IRL-time with friends and associates whose work I admire.

Being a contributing member of the Austin WordPress Meetup has blessed me with life-long friends and amazing professional associates.

WPATX is a diverse community of small business owners, bloggers, developers, designers educators, and publishers. Our members often expand our WordPress skills by working together on ad hoc projects. For advanced developers and beginners alike, it is reassuring to know that help and advice is only a Slack message away.

Tweet @sandi_batik during Sandi Batik’s talk using #WCDFW and ask her about her vintage cookbook collection!

I love to cook. It relaxes me. When I’m stressed or stuck on a problem I pull out the knives, cutting boards, veggies and I’m in my happy place. Somewhere during the process, I’ve solved what was bugging me. My dev teams are well fed, and there is always green chili stew, Texas Red, gumbo or scotch broth in the freezer.

Get your WordCamp DFW tickets here so you can understand how Project Discovery helps evaluate your client’s existing business operations to help you build a Scope of Work for developer/designer/content strategist and get a reliable time and cost estimate for a proposed eCommerce project. So valuable!