The Challenges Of Training Clients To Use WordPress
Training clients to use their WordPress websites effectively has its own unique set of challenges, as this article explains.
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
WordPress powers over 40% of all CMS websites and its global market share is growing. As we argue elsewhere, however, without training and empowering non-technical end-users to use WordPress, the WordPress economy will become unsustainable.
If you build a client a WordPress website and don’t train them how to use it effectively, then you are doing both your business and their business a huge disservice.
Building clients a WordPress website is one thing. Training them to use their sites effectively is an entirely different thing and comes with its own unique challenges.
In this article, we’ll explore these challenges and show you how to address them using our WordPress client training solution.
We’ll cover the following:
- The Challenge Of Keeping Up With Changes To WordPress
- The Challenge Of Training Non-Technical WordPress End-Users
- The Challenge Of Creating Step-By-Step WordPress Training Documentation
- The Challenge Of Updating WordPress Client Training Documentation
- The Challenge Of Making WordPress Client Training Profitable
The Challenge Of Keeping Up With Changes to WordPress
WordPress is continually changing and evolving. New versions of WordPress introduce new features and changes to the existing platform. Keeping up with these changes requires a significant amount of time, planning, research, and resources.
As the table below shows, WordPress releases a new version around every 3-4 months…
Not only do you have to keep up with all these WordPress changes and developments (and changes to related technologies and applications) to continue to meet client expectations and deliver value for your services, but these changes also have to be reflected in your training resources and documentation. Otherwise, the information you provide to clients will quickly become outdated and obsolete.
If you think keeping documentation about WordPress is hard, consider this … even WordPress itself struggles to keep up with documenting its own changes!
So, do you address this challenge when it comes to training your clients?
Before answering, consider also…
The Challenge Of Training Non-Technical WordPress End-Users
Unless you provide technical services for WordPress developers (e.g. plugin or theme developers), most of your clients are probably non-technical end-users.
Non-techies think differently. Most have little to no interest in learning web development stuff, coding, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc., and don’t want to learn how to build, configure, customize, or optimize their websites. Talking to non-techies about techie stuff is all blah, blah, blah to them.
Most non-techies don’t even care if their websites are built with WordPress or some other platform.
To make things even more challenging, many non-technical end-users find that WordPress is not easy to use.
Non-techie WordPress users, however, want to feel they are in control of their web presence and expect their websites will help grow their business.
Empowering non-technical users to feel in control of their sites and showing them how to get better results from their websites requires training content and documentation that makes WordPress simpler to understand and easier to use.
Which brings us to the next challenge of training clients to use WordPress…
Challenge #3 – The Challenge Of Creating Step-By-Step WordPressTraining Documentation
As we’ve just seen, non-technical clients want to feel empowered and in control of their WordPress websites. They want to be able to use their sites effectively to get better results in their business. They don’t want to feel lost, confused, or overwhelmed with technical stuff.
If you assume that your clients know the basics or provide them with only general overviews, your training will confuse, overwhelm, and paralyze them.
So…your WordPress client training documentation needs to explain every step of every process they need to know to use their websites effectively, in absolute step-by-step detail, with no confusing technical stuff.
And you have to provide them with this step-by-step documentation even if your clients completely ignore it and call you or email you instead because they need a lot of handholding or want you to do it all for them (remember, your clients always want to feel empowered and in control of their websites).
This brings us to the next challenge of training clients to use WordPress…
Challenge #4 – The Challenge Of Updating WordPress Client Training Documentation
The challenge with providing detailed step-by-step client training documentation is that whether you provide your clients with WordPress training information in the form of videos, written tutorials, PDF guides, workshops, courses, etc. these all require continual updating.
If you focus on building your WordPress services business first and worry about training clients later, you will probably find it very difficult to manage changes and keep your client training documentation up to date, as building a client training system requires a great deal of planning before you start.
Which brings us to the final challenge of training WordPress clients…
Challenge #5 – The Challenge Of Making WordPress Client Training Profitable
Which of the following options will make you more money?
- Spending 20 hours building clients a new website or customizing their existing one, or
- Spending 20 hours on the phone with clients trying to explain to them how to use their website.
Even if you charge hourly for support, training clients to use their WordPress websites is far less profitable than working on their websites.
The problem as stated earlier is that if your client training consists of providing users flimsy PDF “quick-start” guides or video tutorials containing skimpy or outdated information they can’t follow, then you are not doing either your business or their business any great service.
Creating and maintaining detailed step-by-step client training documentation is very time-consuming and expensive to produce. But if you don’t provide this to your clients, they may find that using their websites is too hard, that paying you every time they need something is too expensive, and decide to leave or switch to other platforms or providers promising them better, faster, easier, and cheaper results.
So, keeping all of the above challenges in mind, how do you provide clients with training and documentation that:
- Keeps up with changes to WordPress, and…
- Empowers non-technical users to use their WordPress sites effectively, and…
- Is comprehensive enough to cover everything they need to know with detailed step-by-step instructions they can follow, and…
- Is kept regularly updated, and…
- Frees you up to focus more time and resources on the more profitable areas of your business?
Fortunately, we provide an inexpensive and “hands-free” client training solution that addresses all of the above challenges.
Train Your Clients To Use WordPress With WPTrainingManual.com
With WPTrainingManual.com, you can focus on doing what you do best and use our WordPress user and client training system to train your clients…completely hands-free!
Our training products don’t compete or conflict with your WordPress services…they complement services like website building, WordPress setup, configuration, customization, maintenance, optimization, etc., while helping to free up your time and resources.
Here’s how we address the challenges of training WordPress users…
#1 – Training Content That Keeps Up With Changes To WordPress
Having been a WordPress user almost since the beginning of WordPress itself, I am well aware of just how difficult it is to keep up with changes to WordPress, especially with training documentation.
I’ve spent 10+ years running WordPress education seminars and workshops for businesses, publishing several WordPress how-to guides, writing hundreds of detailed step-by-step WordPress tutorials for regular WordPress end-users, and working as a blog editor and writer for a leading WordPress services company. WPTrainingManual.com is the result of years spent planning, developing, and finetuning a training system designed to keep up with changes to WordPress and help non-technical end-users learn how to use their WordPress sites effectively to improve their results.
Keeping up with changes to WordPress is no simple process. Just like painting bridges, the job is never done. Which is why our only focus is on creating and maintaining training content and documentation for WordPress end-users.
When WordPress releases a new version, we review and document any significant changes and update our written training manuals and online tutorials.
#2 – WordPress Training Created By A Non-Techie For Non-Techies
It’s not enough to simply document changes made in new WordPress versions. We also need to translate complex and technical information into simpler concepts and present this in a way that non-technical users can understand and apply.
All the content in our WordPress user manuals, online tutorials, email courses, downloadable guides, checklists, etc. has been expertly written by a non-technical WordPress end-user who has spent many years teaching and training other non-techies to use their WordPress websites effectively and building different kinds of WordPress sites for various types of businesses (including this one).
As stated earlier, WordPress is not easy for non-techies to use but our Rebrandable WordPress User Manual and accompanying tutorials, guides, courses, and resources make WordPress easier for non-techies to use.
#3 – The Most Comprehensive And Detailed WordPress Step-By-Step Client Training Available
Our comprehensive Rebrandable WordPress User Manual and accompanying WordPress online tutorials provide your clients with meticulously detailed step-by-step written tutorials that focus only on the areas of using WordPress that your clients need to know to get better results in their business.
The downloadable PDF WordPress User Manual is 2,100+ pages, fully illustrated with thousands of screenshots. The manual’s tutorials link to 130+ accompanying online tutorials with expanded information, plus our comprehensive email courses, downloadable guides, and additional resources (checklists, templates, etc.).
Additionally, you can provide your clients with access to our WordPress and Digital Business video course library (2,000+ video tutorials) or use the downloadable video training packs included in your membership (400+ videos) to host videos on your own site.
#4 – Regularly Updated WordPress Client Training Documentation
We regularly update the content in the Rebrandable WordPress User Manual and accompanying WordPress online tutorials to reflect significant changes and new features made to WordPress.
When WordPress releases a new version, we post information about new WordPress updates on our online tutorials section, then update the relevant sections of our WordPress online tutorials and the content in our WordPress user manuals. We also periodically review and update content in other areas, including our courses, guides, and additional resources.
We also keep our growing video library of 2,000+ video lessons maintained as described in this post.
#5 – A Profitable And Cost-Effective WordPress Training Solution For Your Business
As stated earlier, creating and maintaining training documentation regularly updated can be very time-consuming. We provide a comprehensive, regularly updated, cost-effective, and profitable “hands-free” client training solution that will help free up your time and resources and allow you to focus on growing your WordPress business by delivering more services to more clients.
Our WordPress User Manual (2,100+ pages) and 130+ online WordPress tutorials contain over 300,000 words of expertly-written content plus thousands of detailed screenshots. Additionally, we provide email courses (200+ lessons), detailed and comprehensive guides, additional resources (checklists, templates, etc.), and access to a growing video library with 2,000+ video lessons.
Multiply the above numbers by any amount and this is how much it would cost you to recreate what we have done.
Writing detailed and expertly written high-quality WordPress training content takes time. You can’t shortcut this process, but you can save many years of effort and many thousands of dollars in content creation costs simply by taking everything that we’ve already done and putting it to use immediately to train unlimited clients and grow or scale your WordPress business.
Get Started With WPTrainingManual.com
If you build WordPress websites for clients and want to train them how to use their sites effectively in a way that addresses all of the above challenges and will help grow their business and your business, then check out everything that we include in our “hands-free” WordPress client training product here: Rebrandable WordPress Client Training Manual.
See our FAQ section or contact us if you have any questions.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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Updated: February 19th, 2022