WooThemes have announced a new partnership with WordPress training experts, SIDEKICK. This means WooCommerce users will now have a new way to learn how to use the world’s most popular eCommerce platform—by following along with voice-guided, interactive walkthroughs.
WooThemes have created 22 walkthroughs so far, totaling over 50 minutes’ worth of WooCommerce training. The walkthroughs are split into five categories:
- General Settings
- Products
- Checkout and Payments
- Shipping
- Taxes
This is the latest push from Woo to empower their users to get the most out of the WooCommerce platform, following on from their extensive in-house video walkthrough series.
Accessing the Walkthroughs
The WooThemes-SIDEKICK partnership makes the walkthroughs available free of charge to users of both products. This means that to access the WooCommerce training material, you’ll need to install and activate both the WooCommerce and SIDEKICK plugins—don’t worry: both are available for free from the repository.
With both plugins activated, all you need to do is click on the orange “HELP ME” button in the bottom left of the WordPress admin to open up the SIDEKICK menu.
From here, click on the WooCommerce option in the Walkthroughs section. To play a walkthrough, just navigate the five categories to find the one you want, then click. You can easily pause, stop, and replay the video using the orange toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
The walkthroughs are fully guided, which prevents you from getting lost and also allows you to work through the steps at your own pace. For example, SIDEKICK prevents you from clicking through to the wrong screen, will highlight relevant sections of the page, and will automatically pause until you’re ready for the next step.
A Developing Partnership
Although in its earliest stages, WooThemes already has big plans for the new partnership.
With the first set of WooCommerce core walkthroughs already in place, WooThemes will look to roll out more tutorials for the more advanced WooCommerce Extensions.
They have already released walkthroughs for the popular Table Rate Shipping extension, with more expected soon.
Woo also expects to develop the range of WooCommerce core tutorials, and are open to community suggestions on how to improve the training material.
Final Thoughts
The WooThemes-SIDEKICK partnership is certainly good news for WordPress users.
WooCommerce is a relatively complex plugin, and there is often a disconnect between a developer’s claims and a user’s experience—can an inexperienced WordPress user exploit a plugin’s full range of functionality? Often not.
By following along with the free walkthroughs, WooThemes hope to bridge this gap and empower WooCommerce users to get the most from their plugin. In my opinion, this is a positive step, and I’d love to see more big-name plugins follow their lead.
What are your thoughts on the partnership between WooThemes and SIDEKICK? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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