In our last year’s post 2014 Recap, 2015 Plans, we had promised a few things:
- Refined code structure for all 3 plugins & addons
- Releasing the 3 core plugins with some major updates
- Affiliate Program
- WordPress Booking Plugin – a skeleton view
These are very high level items. We managed to achieve our goals for the first 3 points. Alas, we weren’t able to do any work on the WordPress Booking plugin.
Feedback from our customers has helped us immensely in achieving our goals of 2015.
2015 started on a good note when we launched our Affiliate Program in January itself. We refrained from announcing that as we didn’t have any banners or marketing material ready. So we only sent out emails to a few friends regarding that.
In February 2015, we started accepting Credit Card payments using the EDD Stripe Payment Gateway extension. That was a huge thing for us. Since Stripe is not yet available in India, we had to setup a company in US for the same. That is why you see under our logo “A subsidiary of ProTake Productions“. Since then, we have had 40% of our payments coming through Stripe. I can imagine how easy it’s been for our customers.
WordCamp Mumbai was held in March 2015. I got a chance to speak on WordPress Settings API at the event. It was my first time attending a WordCamp, and that too as a Speaker. The experience was fantastic.
Until April 2015, all our team members were working from their home. 21st April 2015 was when we finally began working from our new office. The whole team was excited about it. The energy levels were at an all-time high. In April 2015, we also replaced our ticketing system (based on UserVoice) to bbPress forums.
May, June & July 2015 saw 23 plugin updates being released.
In July 2015, we partnered with CalderaWP. They conducted a User Experience review & Code review for our WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin. The purpose of this engagement was to get an independent perspective about the plugin from all sides. That helped us a lot. We implemented many items in the code & user experience based on that review.
In August 2015, I decided that we needed help with our website, marketing, branding, etc. We were at a flat growth for the first 7 months of 2015. We knew that we needed a better website then what we had at that time. So instead of doing it in-house, we started looking for partners who we thought could do a better job then us. That also meant we could focus on our plugin support & updates.
When I talked to Mario Peshev from DevriX for the first time, I got the confidence that he & his team can do it. His blog posts on business, he being a WordPress core contributor & some of DevriX’s case studies were the major factors that contributed to we choosing them as partners. We set clear targets, and a long-term plan of 9 months to achieve that. We are 4 months into it already & we are on course to achieving that. They have been a phenomenal backbone for all the work we have been doing since August 2015.
The first step of the engagement was to re-launch our website. We achieved that in October 2015. Meanwhile in September 2015, we hired 4 new people. 2 of them would assist us in plugin support. And the other 2 for doing research on other plugins, with an intention to learn from our competitors & see where we can improve. Thus, our total team strength is up to 9 people at this point.
Attending WordCamp Sofia 2015Â in October & meeting the DevriX team was a pleasure.
In November 2015, we released 2 new plugins – Product Delivery Date for WooCommerce (Lite, Pro) & one new addon – Send Booking Invites to Friends for the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin. This was our first addon for the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin that was released free.
December 2015 saw us going on our first office picnic to Daman. We are yet to write memories of that trip. But it was our first office picnic in the last 4 years. That picnic kind of set the closing for 2015.
Some quick stats:
New plugins released: 3
New updates released: 123
WordCamps attended: 3 (Mumbai, Pune, Sofia)
WordCamps spoken at: 1 (Mumbai)
New blog posts: 39
Five star reviews: 44
Revenues:
Year-on-year: 5% lower revenues compared to 2014
License renewals: 9% of revenue came from renewals
Refunds: 4% of total revenues
Conclusion:
We have taken huge leaps in 2015. All of them have turned out to be very positive for our team, our business & our customers. A big thank you to our customers, our team, our partners & everyone who has helped us reach at this stage.
We would like all our customers to continue giving their feedback to enable us to provide you with top-quality plugins & top-quality support.
Wishing all of you a Happy 2016.
