Watch the State of the Woo! After You Give WooCommerce Your Name and Email Address

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If you didn’t watch the live stream or attend WooConf in-person, you’re in luck as videos from the event are starting to come online. The first talk highlights is the State of the Woo by Todd Wilkens, Head of WooCommerce. Wilkens shares stats, provides an overview of projects the team is working on, what to expect in new versions, and explains the relationship between WooCommerce and Jetpack.

The video is available to watch for free, but viewers must provide their first and last name as well as an email address. Clicking the play button without entering this information displays a message that says Please enter your full name. This is a classic technique used by many internet marketers.

Although you can provide fake information in order to watch the video for free, I feel it’s an unnecessary burden. The WooCommerce team could obtain the same information with a form in the post. An alternative to watching the video is reading the company’s great overview of Wilkens’ session. The team plans to publish other talks from WooConf in the coming weeks.

Updated November 14th: An Automattic employee has removed the email form and made it skippable.

8 Comments


  1. Hi WP Tavern,

    I moved the email form and made it skippable. ;)

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    2. Thanks Ryan, I’ve updated the post to add this information. There’s something about the way the form was used that rubbed me the wrong way.

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      1. That’s certainly understood, I apologize for that.

        It was actually my human error that had it at the beginning of the video and was non-skippable. It was not meant to be like that from the get go. Like my reply to Matt’s comment says it was meant to be valuable content put out there for free, and if you were interested in the next WooConf then you’d leave us your email address.

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  2. So it was initially removed, but now you have to add in name/email to find out the expected total revenue of WooCommerce stores…

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    1. Yep around the 6:10 mark it does require, name and email address to continue watching.

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    2. Hi Matt,

      I apologize for my initial reply being confusing. I moved (not removed at the moment) the fields from the beginning of the video. It’s also skippable now if you want to watch the video, but aren’t interested in the next WooConf. :)

      The balance I’m attempting to find is to have some great content available for free, but also try to ask nicely for an email address if you’re interested in what we do at WooConf.

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  3. So as sure as the sun will shine
    I’m gonna get my share now of what’s mine
    And then the harder they come
    The harder they’ll fall, one and all
    —Jimmy Cliff

    I can’t wait until Google starts sandboxing/demoting sites for having those “intrusive interstitials.” Nothing worse than trying to read something/anything and Bam! you get hit with a promo.

    Woo is good. Woo is big. With all the tentacles they have on the net, they have plenty of room to play around with marketing tactics. I am just glad WPTav keeps everyone on a fair playing field.

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