Issue #206 Loop WP

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #206 of Loop WP!

Last week, I explained why I was pressing pause on the normal Loop WP format, so if you missed it or you are new to this newsletter, make sure you read last week’s issue.

This week is the first week of our new format for the next six weeks or so. We’ve got an expanded “News & Tips” section, as well as a more conversational style on WooCommerce’s radical experiments and more.

Let’s go! 👇

Automattic is currently in the midst of “radical speed month,” a one-month initiative in which two-person teams are given full autonomy to build and ship projects without the usual approval processes.

I want to take a look at two of those, below.

Beau Lebens has been working on a project concept as part of Automattic’s Radical Speed Month.

He's looking into overhauling the WordPress admin menu for WooCommerce. It's a dramatic improvement, much, much, much better than the current admin menu, and I loved the consolidated and nested elements.

The GitHub pull request for it is currently a draft, and he's got some before-and-after screenshots; there's also a Playground demo link you can check out.

❤️ I would absolutely love to see this included with WooCommerce.

Luigi Teschio has been working to improve the product catalogue and management experience, and to scale it, especially for larger stores.

You can view the progress on GitHub, and there’s also a Playground demo.

Speaking personally, when working with clients with smaller catalogues, the current setup is not perfect, but it's fine. For larger stores, it is definitely a pain. What Luigi has developed so far is a dramatic improvement.

🤔 For larger stores, in the past, I would have used spreadsheets and import/export or Setary (which is wonderful). I don’t know if this experience would replace it as the default, but for smaller stores… it looks very good!

I don’t want always to compare everything to Shopify, but, in my opinion, the Shopify Product Catalogue Experience is currently much better than WooCommerce (FluentCart’s product management is also excellent).

💡 Whilst Luigi’s approach is different, it also feels familiar, and I think a lot of us who work with WooCommerce also work with Shopify or have experience with it (or certainly have test stores to keep up with what's going on) will find this new approach intuitive.

🤩 I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I am; it’s not only visually a breath of fresh air, but it’s relatively frictionless to work with.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the work of James Kemp and Poli Gilad on improving WooCommerce variations.

🎉 Working with variations can be an absolute pain in my experience, so anything to improve the experience is welcome, and this looks good!

🚨 Shopify have released this must-read (seriously) report on Store Speed and Conversion. Some of the action points at the end are Shopify-specific, but can be translated to WooCommerce.

The “Performance in context” section is worth highlighting, too.

💡 Something I love about this, and I wish WooCommerce had something similar, is actual RUM data built in to make more accurate performance decisions.

I know external tools exist, but something internal would be lovely.

That’s it for this week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, please reply, and I will respond as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,