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Five key takeaways to be learned from WooConf 5 key takeaways from WooConf

Jun 2, 2023

From April 6 to 8, hundreds of owners of stores, developers, and ninjas descended upon Austin, Texas to do only one thing: eat tacos.

Okay, let's say two things: eat tacos, and celebrate the top-ranked eCommerce platform in the second annual Conference (or the way we affectionately refer to it, WooConf).

Between April 6 and 8, hundreds of store owners, developers, and team members descended on Austin to celebrate our second annual WooConf.
Austin, TX hosted our 2nd annual WooConf conference packed with learning, networking, and great food.

There's been plenty of coverage about WooConf 2016 as well as in the coming days we'll be planning on making even more available, including speaker slides and video sessions. However, while you're waiting, we thought we'd give the public a peek at what our team took away from the convention and, in particular the top five learning points.

Take a look around to take a look behind the scenes of our upcoming WooConf and also to discover something about the central themes that emerged from our speaker's talks this year.

The purpose of WooConf

The attendees we welcomed to WooConf 2016 with three guiding concepts: to learn, develop and then sell.

Our second event was to provide store owners and developers using an opportunity to learn more about their preferred platform in the most unique environment and surrounded by enthusiasts and experts alike. Also, we wanted to offer all attendees the opportunity to expand the horizons of their friends, whether that included interacting with our (awesome!) sponsors, or interacting with other participants.

WooConf aimed to be a great opportunity to connect, learn, and develop your skills, whether you were a store owner just starting out or an experienced developer.
WooConf was designed to provide a great opportunity to connect with other people, to learn and improve your abilities, no matter if you're the store's owner new to the business or an expert designer.

In order to achieve these objectives, we offered WooConf attendees two full days of sessions, plus an additional day of the option of workshops as well as a networking lunch. There was also, of course, a Happy Hour and an afterparty! Everyone had plenty of opportunities to network, study and enjoy themselves.

It was a place of learning, a place of connecting... and heck, a place of FUN.
There was a lot of learning learned... and, from the looks of it lots of fun too.

It is possible to get the easy-to-read highlights of the first day here as well as day two on this page.

Based on the many feedbacks we've heard (and there's more coming in) We've heard that everyone took away something a bit more unique from WooConf. In the interest of those of you who weren't in attendance, weren't able to attend every talk, or need a quick recap, here are the most important takeaways we gleaned from our speakers..

The most important takeaway is that the top practice shouldn't be always your practices

It's something we say on our blog all the times: it's not just about doing what you're told is best but rather taking the best approach for your store, your customers as well as your growth.

We were pleased to hear this assertion made more than a few times by our impressive presenters. In fact it was emphasized during the first presentation given by Peep Laja from ConversionXL.

Peep used lists that are commonly found on the internet of best practices for conversion optimization and A/B tests, and informed the crowd that simply being common does not mean that they are effective for you.

Best practices are more like typical practices. Nothing best about them. #Wooconf
-- Christian Rumscheidt (@crumscheidt) April 6, 2016

Peep stressed the importance in creating a procedure to run the success of your own business. Instead of trying various optimizations based on advice found online Find the problems which are affecting your store and test multiple solutions until you can find the right solution.

"Optimization is compound interest for growth." @peeplaja of @conversionxl #WooConf pic.twitter.com/w6r4wNxYMp
--- Dave Lee (@rtwdave) April 6, 2016

It was repeated by other speakers, all of whom stressed the necessity of testing options for your store based on your circumstances. It was thrilling to listen to so many experts stress this point, and this is exactly our own opinions at our site for a number of months.

This, of course, is why we have our ninjas on hand, too: something might seem right for you, but it may not simply work well in practice. Never fear, we'll set you straight.
That's why we've got our ninjas as well as WooExperts available: something might seem suitable for you but it won't perform well when you try it. Never fear, we're fully ready to assist you.

The emphasis on the best shape spills over into the personalization, which we heard come up in many conversations as well however, we'll come to it in the next few seconds.

Emphasizing "helping" over "selling"

Whether you're a store owner or a developer, your primary goal is to earn money. But the way you do it isn't so simple as opening a shop or declaring "sure, I can do that."

One of the best ways this came through was through the speakers, who stressed providing value to your customers instead of simply attempting to sell them something. The topic was to add value, not simply offer something. This was a big change in mindset.

There were hints of this in Miracle Wanzo's talk about Facebook advertising. In her talk, she spoke about the ways that even paid advertisements that sparks a conversation can be more effective. As she put it, If you've created an appealing ad you will gain more social media impressions which gets you "more value for money."

As speaker Miracle Wanzo stressed, starting a conversation makes even Facebook advertising more effective.
As speaker Miracle Wanzo stressed, adding value makes even Facebook advertising more effective.

The topic was the main theme of Matt White's talk, aptly named "Stop Selling. Start Helping." Matt compared salespeople to lions, and prospective customers to harmless gazelles. He spoke about how the traditional prey-sales model could scare buyers from buying.

Matt stressed the importance of being able to aid potential customers, not deliver a hard message that turns them off. There are a myriad options to help them, as you probably have already figured out that it's possible to do this by providing useful website content or something way more hands-on like a live webinar.

Do you want to viewed as a lion? Probably not.
Are you looking forward to being viewed as the lion? Most likely not.

Also, he shared this fun fact on cold-calling, and how it's fallen out of fashion:

Cold calling can be described as French kissing strangers #Wooconf
-- Erica Schaaf (@EricaSchaaf1) 7 April 2016,

In a similar way, we also enjoyed the WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner's talk about the importance of personalizing website content. Heather shared an highly entertaining story about Nordstrom's website trying to predict what kind of clothing she'd like, and failing miserably.

This is the lesson to be learned: customers expect to receive truly supported, and when you're not able to do it, don't try.

. @heatherjbrunner says consumers are increasingly demanding personalized, targeted and relevant business. #WooConf pic.twitter.com/MLOs0v2Af5
-- Conf. (@WooConf) April 6, 2016

It's impossible to do everything, so do what makes the greatest impact

If you're a proprietor of a shop, you just can't do all things. You may want to do everything, however, the reality is that you have to pick and choose what's going to create the most impact for your business and focus on that area of focus.

Many of our talented speakers shared their tips on how to determine which activities will be the most effective to your store or even finding ways to create the greatest impression with a single activity.

We heard Dustin Stout talk about this while chatting with the owners of shops on social media and content. Instead of choosing every social network or every marketing method and putting money into this, Dustin said to choose one or two in order to "go deep" there.

"Don't run after squirrels" with regards to small business and social media. Concentrate on what matters. @DustinWStout #WooConf
-Get Online NOLA (@GetOnlineNOLA) April 6 6, 2016

Following Dustin's presentation, Drew Sanocki encouraged the audience to adopt the approach of focusing on their "whales" (that is, the customers who bring in the most money and help propel your company forward. By finding which sources the clients come from, you can grow those specific marketing channels, and waste less time and energy elsewhere.

Focus on the "whales" #WooConf pic.twitter.com/bCjZtrIFDc
-- Matt White (@matthew_j_white) 6 April 2016
This probably even applied to our attendees: you have to pick and choose which knowledge is most important (that is, which makes it to your phone camera).
It could even apply to those who attend our events: you are required select and decide what particular knowledge is important (that is, what you want to convey it to your phone camera).

It was even mentioned when it came to tracking the analytics. Beka Rice of SkyVerge mentioned "analysis paralysis" with regards to tracking analytics, and suggested that you can tackle and enhance a couple of store metrics at once, then move on when you're content.

Great guidance From @Beka_Rice. Tackle some NOT ALL of your eCommerce metrics. #wooconf pic.twitter.com/EIOQH6YX5Z
- WP Engine (@wpengine) April 7 April 7, 2016

is much more than "just an empty shopping cart"

It's true: is the preferred platform by more merchants than other ( BuiltWith now puts us at 37%), but it's a little narrow-minded to view it as "just another store cart." Or even "one of the many options for free."

Thankfully, many of our presenters were able to demonstrate the wide possibilities, including sessions on memberships, subscription sites as well as content marketing and so much more -- we scarcely have room to list them all!

A website can have many pages, or it can have just one. As developers like Merrill showed us, it's all within your reach.
A website can have numerous pages, or could have only one. Like the developers such as Merrill demonstrated to us, all is accessible to you.

There were developers such as Merrill Meyer, who talked specifically about ways transform a store to an all-page site. Merrill offered tips for transforming a multi-page store to one page in a manner that is quite simple.

Kenn Kelly delivered a lecture on this very topic, called " is Not (Only) an eCommerce Cart." He talked about the incredible things that can be done through eCommerce, like memberships. He also discussed some possible future possibilities.

"@ can go beyond cart commerce, but will require our collective innovation." @kennkelly #WooConf pic.twitter.com/BQlkMn7Qc1
-David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) April 6, 2016

Kenn specifically mentioned certain developments that we've seen on sites like Amazon such as the Dash Button, and also spoke about the lack of gamification in eCommerce. These are all easily accessible... However, we need the community's help in order to achieve them.

That brings us to our last point.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway of all is the fact that we can do amazing things

There are a lot of developers and store owners making use of, altering their products and services each day. The truth is that we'd be lost without your help.

Yet another fact: When we bring our collective heads together, during events such as this or just on idea boards online, we can accomplish remarkable things.

Our own Bryce Adams quickly came to demonstrate the possibilities for collective development in the demonstration which concluded the day's first. Bryce was inspired to create interactions with the physical world through conversations with colleagues during WordCamp Mumbai in 2015, and showed us that API calls and webhooks can do anything from light up LEDs to fly drones.

Together, we can use webhooks and API calls to take a drone experiment to the next step. We're crossing our fingers for drones delivering drinks at the afterparty next year.
We can utilize API calls and webhooks to bring a drone piloting experiment to the next step. We're hoping to see drones to deliver drinks to the next afterparty.

Imagine how far developers could go with to make this happen. Printers that can fire up on demand, and linking the physical and virtual locations is only the beginning. We think Bryce may have given a number of attendees their own ideas!

WooConf in general is a good example of this idea. Throughout the entire festival, we observed store owners putting their heads together along with our fantastic sponsors to figure out ways to improve their stores. We saw developers offering insight on others developers. There were ninjas operating a live help desk, helping solve problems as they go.

When we come together, we can accomplish anything. Might sound corny, but it's proven to be true.
If we work together when we work together, it's possible to achieve anything. Might sound corny However, this has been proved to be the case.

If we collaborate regardless of whether we're working on the next version of, or an arduous solution for your online store, we'll create magic. And that shone through with WooConf as a whole as it provided a platform for people to learn and share ideas, side-by-side as never before.

As I listened to more than one individual say to me at the end of my dayof school "I've acquired so many things that my brain is with knowledge!"

Keen to join our next time? Stay tuned for future WooConf information.

The second time we've had WooConf to our credit, we're eager to do this next time. This wasn't just an opportunity to learn and network but also a ton of fun.

You know you want to get in on this.
This looks like fun, don't you think? You know you want to be part of this.

If you're interested in joining our next event, you can sign up for updates on WooConf.com. We'll begin making announcements as we decide on a venue, call for speakers, and narrow down our dates. One of the biggest challenges for us is not to repeat the mistake the same thing over and over again!

You'll join us next year, we hope?
You'll join us next year Do we think so?

If you attended the conference this year or not, we hope you've enjoyed these insights. We'll now wish our best wishes and say we hope to see with you again at the next WooConf!

Farewell for now, see you next year!
Farewell for now, come back next year!

The credit for all images in this post goes the photographer Todd White. Kudos for his amazing shots!