Handing over a freshly built WooCommerce-powered store to a client is exhilarating. You’re excited to have completed your task, and your client is excited to finally have the robust, flexible online store they desired.
The trickiest part of this handoff, however, comes in the training. Do no training at all, and your client won’t know how to operate their store. Do too much of it, and you’re likely to get an earful when the bill for your time arrives.
Training clients on WooCommerce doesn’t have to be a challenge. In fact, there are several ways to make this process easier for both parties, and cut down on the number of questions you receive after your client’s new store launches.
Let’s explore some of the best ways you can train your clients to use their new store — withoutinvesting too much of your time or racking up a big bill.
Enroll them in an online course
While you’re likely planning to teach your client the basics — “this is how you get to your orders,” “this is how you add a new SKU” — it’s hard to know what each individual store owner you work with will want to do in the long run. Some stores might be adding new items weekly, while others might just be processing hundreds of orders of the same SKU.
A good way to handle these unique circumstances and teach WooCommerce at the same time is to enroll your client in an online course. Many of our educational partners offer courses and tutorials designed to teach WooCommerce from the ground up.
Udemy, for example, has several courses on WooCommerce. By enrolling your client in a course, they can proceed through at their own pace, and use quizzes or review sections to test their knowledge and confirm what they’ve learned.
Install SIDEKICK to make walkthroughs available
We recently announced that we have paired up with SIDEKICK to bring interactive, voice-guided tutorials to WooCommerce websites and select extensions. This is another excellent training option, especially if your client is relatively self-sufficient.
With SIDEKICK installed on a client’s site, they can simply load up their store and be guided through common tasks and actions. The plugin is free, so it won’t cost either of you anything, and will make the process of learning WooCommerce easier.
The biggest perk of SIDEKICK: the tutorials proceed at the user’s pace, so no instruction is given until it’s needed. This keeps your clients from being overwhelmed or from not being able to absorb the information they’re provided.
Link them to video tutorials
Have you ever just wished you could give your client a video to explain something, rather than typing out a long, complex email? Well, your prayers have been answered.
Our WooCommerce 101 video series is chock full of videos perfect for those who are new to running an online store. They can teach a client to do anything from create a new product to customize their shipping settings, and all with helpful voice narration.
There’s also a swell plugin called Video User Manuals that can be installed right inside your client’s WordPress installation. The plugin makes available videos that teach someone not only how to use WooCommerce, but also how to do WordPress basics. There are even videos for Gravity Forms and Yoast SEO!
Here’s a short sample video walkthrough:
Video User Manuals costs $70 for a single client website, or starts at $24 per month for unlimited usage.
Direct them to the docs for questions
One of the biggest perks of WooCommerce is its documentation. Between our nimble Ninjas and our active, agile community, we’ve created docs on everything under the sun.
If your client is able and willing to do research on intermediate-level issues or minor technical changes before calling you, let them know that they can find a link to “Docs & FAQs” on nearly every page of our site. Here they’ll often find the answer they need in just a few seconds.
If they can’t find their answer in the docs — it does happen, sometimes — they can always go a route you’re likely familiar with, which is hunting online for someone else with the same question or concern. Between support forums and blogs there’s plenty of information abound on nearly any topic you can think of.
Be available for questions that training doesn’t cover
When you finish training your client, remember to mention that they can certainly call you if they need you. Assuming you’re planning on continuing your relationship, you can create a lot of goodwill (and boost your earning potential) by being available for difficult questions or extra development tasks.
Some clients may feel a little hurt if you ask them to self-help or look for answers themselves. For the folks who don’t want to do their own work, or are even resistant to training, make yourself available via email — but also make it clear that there will be a waiting period, and faster results would come through other methods.
As for the really big questions that no amount of training would ever cover, or even mission-critical issues, you’ll need to stick around for those. Make the methods of getting help from you clear — can you be reached by phone or email? — as well as your working hours. If you set expectations right away, this will help both parties.
With these resources, properly trained clients are within your reach
By using one, two, or even all of these resources, you can hand your freshly developed WooCommerce sites off to clients with ease. While it’s never a bad idea to be a phone call or email away — especially for those really big, impossible-to-predict kinds of problems — these tools and tips will certainly make both your life and your client’s much easier.
Source: Nicole Kohler for WooThemes.com