Patrick presented in the eCommerce for Site Owners session, which is available for immediate replay right now. In his presentation, Patrick walked through installing and using WooCommerce in great detail. Hands-down, it is the best demonstration of WooCommerce I have ever seen.
Check out his interview answers below.
Where can we find you on the internet?
The best place to find me is SpeakingInBytes.com. I like to blog about whatever I’m learning at the moment. There’s a lot of WooCommerce goodness there and plenty of other tech & WordPress posts. You can also follow @BFTrick on Twitter.
When and how did you get started with WordPress?
I used to do a lot of customer PHP work right after college. Worst. Thing. Ever. Don’t do it. By the time you’ve coded your 3rd or 4th login page you quickly start to look for prebuilt solutions that handle all of the common content management system problems. WordPress was the easiest to setup so I went that way.
What resources do you turn to when you want to learn something new?
Honestly, Twitter is the best source of news out there. I follow specific people who are leading the way in their industry and they supply me with the best articles about that industry.
What is your favorite WordPress feature/aspect?
Pfew – big question! I would say the customization. Everything is open source so if you like the way something works but want to tweak something you can do that! With hosted e-commerce solutions you don’t have that opportunity. You can be locked in and I like the freedom to change things if need be.
What is the most significant thing you’ve learned about ecommerce over the last 5 years?
E-commerce can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. I’ve seen successful stores who just run WooCommerce, a couple free plugins, and a free theme. I’ve also seen customers with 50+ WooCommerce plugins who appreciate every bit of value they can get out of these extensions. They send customers follow up emails, they subscribe them to newsletters, they have fancy table rates for shipping, etc. E-Commerce doesn’t have to be complex. You can start out with something simple and add on more features over time.
What is the one tip you would give anyone considering to add ecommerce to their site?
Start with the basics. Don’t plan out an entire e-commerce experience without first installing a plugin and seeing how it works.
What advice do you have for others looking to become WordPress experts?
I’m very much a go-getter, so you just have to jump in! If you want to learn something, you do it by getting your hands dirty. Everyday try to learn something new. Push yourself to learn more and more about WordPress. If you learn some (small) thing new every day in a year you’ll know a ton.
What is one interesting non-WordPress-related fact about yourself?
I love acro yoga! Being able to trust and communicate with another person while you’re suspending them in the air or visa versa is an amazing experience.
Thanks Patrick!
If you want to see Patrick present on using WooCommerce, get your event ticket today!