Today we reveal 2 new pages we’ve been quietly brainstorming, developing and populating over the past few weeks. Both are resources we hope inspire and equip our community with tips and tools to get their sites supercharged, whilst connecting them with the correct people for some expert guidance.
Customer stories
If you’ve been a regular reader of our blog you would have seen quite a few case studies published from time to time with stories from designers, developers and business owners on their experiences with our products. We’ve published about 22 case studies, but finding them and navigating through them has proven difficult.
Today we’ve taken an active step to bring them to your attention and get you inspired about what can be done with a little creativity and WooThemes products.
View the customer stories pageA re-designed Affiliated Woo Workers page
Our affiliated woo workers page lists some of the amazing freelancers and agencies offering implementation, customization and migration services. They’re some of the brightest folks using our products and are well versed in our codebase.
All these listings on one page was becoming quite a tedious task to manage and update, not to mention cumbersome to navigate for those requiring quick expert help. With the new AWW page we’ve followed a similar structure to our extensions archive page, with the profiles powered by it’s own custom post type and the option to search by country and skillset.
You will notice a couple featured profiles in the listings. More on our involvement with these companies soon.
View the affiliated woo workers page
Congrats on these new pages, they look great.
Out of curiosity, what is happening with the showcase? I found that to be a great source of inspiration to see what can be done with the wooframework and the themes you guys are producing.
We are discontinuing the showcase for now, as the stats proved it was rarely used. We hope to take the customers page to the next level with a showcase feature of sorts – providing real value. Stay tuned.
Great to hear – I for one always referred to the showcase area – so something new and improved sounds good. The showcase area really demonstrated what could be done with Canvas for example and I have never looked back since! 😉
i’m digging this a lot! very cool page and it really brings out some “humanness” to real customers.
Thanks for trying to improve the Woo Workers page.
How does one get in the Featured Service box? Is this a paid slot or randomly chosen?
I suggest showing up to at least 12 and maybe 16 Woo Worker profiles per page. It is easier to scan down a page and compare rather than work through 6 separate pages of entries.
Also, I think that one of the reasons the showcase didn’t have much traffic is that no one could find it. It was buried in the footer links. I’ve gotten quite a few clients off the showcase. While they might like to see our company logo on the Woo Workers page, what they really want to see it our work.
Valuable feedback.
We’ve got a followup post scheduled about the featured services listed. All listings should be far more prominent to potential customers now that they are searchable and the order is randomized.
Regarding the posts per page, we will be increasing the number shortly, as Magnus has already noted this.
We based our decision with the showcase on some solid analytical findings, but we will definitely be working on excavating some of the key showcase features in to future iterations of the customer page.
Thanks Mark for the response. Deleting the showcase altogether using “solid analytical findings” reminds me of a similar decision not too long ago concerning removal of the support forums. This will obviously not evoke the same response as that one did, but there is a lot of value to customers to see how Woo Themes can be customized. Yes, the customer page touches on this but there is something about glancing through a showcase of images of customized Woo Themes that trumps looking at pictures of your customers faces and case studies. Imagine if in the Woo Themes section, instead of showing screenshots of the themes you showed the face of the lead developer or designer…then one had to click on it to see what the theme looked like–that would be crazy non? It’s the same with removing the showcase and replacing it with customer stories only. I hope that future versions of the customers page include a showcase. And I hope that both the customers page and the woo workers page get better visibility than a link at the bottom of the page buried in the footer.
This is cool! I’ll have to submit our story as we used WooCommerce and several extensions to launch our new Bootstrap framework, http://skematiktheme.com. We’ve loved it so much that we’re already planning on migrating current system at http://storefrontthemes.com over to WooCommerce to handle our theme sales.
Please do send us your story. You can contact us for further details on case studies.
Great work on the Woo Workers sites – Cheers
Raison Online Team
I love the new page. I think you handled it in a great way brining fairness and clarity for clients searching to hire someone.
I already am getting double the inquiries because of it.
Thanks!
Do you really have to remove the showcase altogether? I so agree with dotp, while the new page has its merits, it doesn’t allow for the quick understanding of the breadth of creativity and customization possible with any particular theme. Considering the number of ‘subjects’ or projects the themes are used for, it is so useful to quickly scan lots of examples. If you have an idea so useful to check if there are examples, that have done something similar and what is the result.
It is also true the link was rather understated, and in your customers’ journey (as in my case) it was only recently that I found that you had a showcase, and alas, disappointed to see it no more.
Totally agree with the others on the Showcase situation. It was previously very difficult to find, however the Showcase was the reason I went with Woo. It truly showed the possibilities, but was always a struggle to remember how to access it.
From dotp above: “there is something about glancing through a showcase of images of customized Woo Themes that trumps looking at pictures of your customers faces and case studies. ” Let me assure you as a regular customer (not in anyway am I a designer/coder), the showcase was much more powerful.. and I didn’t an wont read the customer case studies.. instead I’ll be looking through the internet for examples of the themes in actual use. Just sayin’