And another event is HERE! We’re headed to WooConf, April 6-8th, 2016, in none other than glorious Austin, TX.
For those who aren’t familiar, WooConf is a conference for store owners, WordPress developers, and e-commerce professionals who are looking to network with likeminded folk and learn a few things. This is not only an epic event that offers a lot of great information for those who are interested in ecommerce and WordPress, but there’s also a very special occasion that is no April Fool’s joke–we promise! Not only are Brian and Lisa going to be there, but Dre is going to be MC-ing the event!
The agenda looks absolutely incredible; there are so many amazing presentations that are being delivered by lovely familiar faces (and some we don’t know…yet!). Here are a few things that caught our eye and that you won’t wanna miss:
Wednesday, April 6
9:00 – 9:15am – Opening Remarks – Joel Bronkowski with MC Dre Armeda
11:45 – 12:00pm – Practical eCommerce: What I’ve Learned Running My Own Store – Brian Krogsgard
I got in at the beginning with WooCommerce, helping a local agency move from a proprietary CMS to WordPress, and using WooCommerce for eCommerce.
I learned a great deal about WooCommerce and how to create stores and manipulate the software, but now that I run my own eCommerce business — Post Status, a membership and subscription site — I believe there are many additional things I know that I couldn’t have learned just by consulting.
In this talk, I will share practical tips for creating better stores and efficiently managing them, so you can help make nearly any store owner love their WooCommerce setup.
1:45 – 2:00pm – Get Started with Sales Tax: What You Need to Know as an eCommerce Merchant – Ellen Wixted
Figuring out your business’ approach to sales tax may not be at the top of your to do list—but you can take simple steps that reduce risk to your business today. We’ll cover the top 3 things you need to know, and share tips for making the compliance process less taxing.
2:00 – 2:30pm – WooCommerce: Scaling in the Way That Matters Most – Patrick Garman
There are three types of volumes that can be defined as scale: traffic, products, and orders. Traffic is great, except when it is not generating sales. Products are great, but who cares about 10,000,000 products if no one is buying them. So how do you deal with a large raw volume of orders within WooCommerce? This is where things get tricky. While volumes of traffic and products can be solved with various methods of caching, you cannot cache the creation of an order.
This talk is going will take you on the rollercoaster ride that is scaling a WooCommerce site experiencing rapid growth on multiple levels, how to accurately gauge the scale of your WooCommerce shop, and how solve the scaling issues that this can create.
3:55 – 4:35pm – Content & Commerce: Implications for Sites & Brands – Heather Brunner
Today, consumers are bombarded by thousands and some estimates say up to 20,000 ads or brand exposures a day. Given this avalanche of information how do brands break through this clutter and get consumers emotionally motivated to dig deeper into a category, learn more about products and ultimately buy a product? We will first explore the evolution of commerce on the web by looking at recent eCom trends, the growing complexity in a customer’s journey, shifting buyer expectations, and so on.
Next, we’ll give a quick example of how brands are doing content and commerce integration of product and non-product content in new and engaging ways. Also we will focus on what the implications are for site development and protecting site performance. We will close off by some thoughts on the future: the need for even more personalized consumer experiences and the integration of new technologies for content-rich experiences that transcend channels and why open source is critical.
Thursday, April 7
9:45 – 10:00am – Shipping: First and Last Impression of eCommerce – Laura Behrens Wu
Shipping is the last step in eCommerce and it’s an essential step for all e-commerce stores selling physical items. At the same time, shipping is boring and expensive. This talk will look at shipping from a customer conversion, customer satisfaction and retention angle. We will look at how shipping affects the customer from the moment they start browsing on your eCommerce store to the moment the postman delivers the package at the end (customer’s doorstep) and also introduce some best practices that are easy to implement for every eCommerce store.
11:35 – 12:15pm – WooCommerce Developer Panel – Brent Shepherd, Beka Rice, David Lockie and Claudio Sanchez
3:00 – 3:15pm – Using User-Generated Content to Boost Sales – Shayla Price
Research reveals that user-generated content has 20% more influence on purchasing decisions than any other type of media. My talk will discuss how businesses can leverage UGC to boost sales. Participants will learn how to capture and aggregate their customers’ content. More importantly, attendees will gain tactics to transform UGC into purchases.
Friday, April 8
11:00 – 12:30pm – WooCommerce Theme Development – Zac Gordon
This workshop is intended to give developers a full overview of the templates, hooks and best practices involved in creating or customizing a WordPress theme for WooCommerce. Attendees will have an option to follow along with learning how to customize a default WordPress theme as well as best practices for building their own theme.
Session descriptions pulled from the WooConf site!
Are you headed to WooConf? Make sure you grab Brian, Lisa, or Dre, and say hello; they love meeting new people! If you can’t go, but would like to live vicariously, you can follow @WooConf or live vicariously by keeping tabs on #WooConf.
We can’t wait! See you there!
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