WooCommerce had some great things to share at their 2014 conference in San Francisco

Last week, your BNG Designers – Ryan, Kim and Stacey – boarded a jet plane set for San Francisco, CA. Why you ask? We were on a mission to learn all things WooCommerce and e-Commerce at the first ever WooCommerce Conference.

Day 1: Experts talking about what they know best

We were able to listen to experts who spoke not only about e-Commerce and how to correctly use WooCommerce, but also how others are utilizing it to further their businesses. We were also able to hear about the latest in security for your website, marketing an e-Commerce website, how certain aspects of a store can create more sales and much more!

Day 2: PayPal and workshops

After a crazy day of knowledge and information, we were treated to a final presentation on how PayPal is advancing and what that means for the e-Commerce world. Afterwards, we were split into two groups, one was “Woojutsu: WooCommerce Extension Development” and “How to Properly Setup your WooCommerce Shop”. Both taught us very valuable things on how WooCommerce is set up and how to interact with it as a devloper.

So what specifically did we learn at WooCommerce Conf?

Ryan’s takeaway

“I was overall very impressed with WooConf, being that it was the first year, everything went surprisingly well. The speakers were all well known in the e-commerce or WordPress landscape. There were speakers and attendees from over twenty countries, and they all were very nice. The biggest take away from this event for me was validation that BNG Design and the BNG team as a whole are on the right track. The industry leaders that I hold in high regard and many of the speakers at the conference have very similar values and work ethics as us. So seeing where I want us to be and knowing that we are working every day to get there, with the right values, gives me a great deal of confidence in our approach to business.”

“One of the other things that was interesting, and a little surprising to me since this was an e-commerce conference and not a marketing specific conference was the number of speakers that stressed the importance of good content marketing for e-commerce businesses. Many speakers talked about developing personas for your ideal customer. There was a lot of talk about calls to action and how to effectively convert traffic. Others talked about strategic content delivery, like email drip campaigns and auto-responders. If you would like to talk to us about some of these strategies for your e-commerce site let us know.”

Kim’s takeaway

“I think WooConf 2014 was extremely well put together. For their first year, they made sure to handle as many things as they could think of. All the speakers had something to say that I had not thought of before, but I feel the best presentation was “Security with WordPress and WooCommerce” by Sam Hotchkiss. He was able to not only keep my attention throughout the entire presentation, but also present so very useful tips when it came to the security of your WordPress and WooCommerce websites. I feel that everyone who attended this conference came away with something they would be able to utilize while building sites in the future.”

Stacey’s takeaway

“I am very impressed with how well WooConference was planned out and how awesome all of the speakers were. One of my favorites was “Security with WordPress and WooCommerce” by Sam Hotchkiss. It is always great to hear new talks on how to keep all of our websites and our clients’ websites as secure as possible. My second favorite was the “WooCommerce Extension Development” on Day 2 by Max Rice, Justin Stern, Brent Shepherd. This workshop was not only informative, but also very well put together between the three speakers. Having Nic & Gareth from Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues as the MC’s was a fabulous idea. They were hilarious and kept everyone laughing. Thank you to the entire team that planned this awesome event. Overall, I would consider WooConference a total success and hope to be able to attend again in the future.”

Want to learn what WooCommerce and BNG Website Design can do for your business?

Contact us today and we would love to talk to you more about your business plans and how our new knowledge can help you grow your company.