Announcing our new lineup of courses

Why are we making courses?

It feels like 2019 has only just started, and it is already shaping up to be a big year. Shopify Unite is just around the corner, the ‘buy now pay later’ sector is booming, and E-commerce continues to force traditional brick and mortar retail to evolve. However, amongst this backdrop the fundamentals of running a successful business remain the same. It is now more important than ever to have a clear strategy, find opportunities to add value, and never forget to keep delighting your customers.

One of my personal missions for co-founding Hello Digital has been to help and empower businesses from all over the world to succeed online. In the rapidly evolving digital and E-commerce sectors it can be difficult to stay up-to-date, especially when you consider the relentless speed of technological change that is constantly affecting our business and personal lives. This uncertainty can be very discouraging for new business owners, or people looking to up-skill in their existing business.

A large majority of online courses on the internet (of which there are many!) that cover platforms like Shopify present themselves as either the definitive answer to success or are taught as a spoken instruction manual. The key problem with this format is that:

1. There is no 100% guaranteed ‘method’ or ‘hack’ to succeed with an online business. Yes, there are strategies that you can use as a blueprint, but meaningful success takes time and effort.
2. Instruction manuals get out of date very quickly. The leading Shopify courses on sites such as Udemy deep-dive into every feature that Shopify offers. The problem? Unless these courses are being updated frequently, the information becomes out of date very fast.

So, what is the solution? I believe online education provides a unique opportunity to reach people who otherwise couldn’t access or afford workshops or one-on-one mentoring, while also teaching the content in a unique and engaging style. With this in mind I have spent the last six months at Hello Digital planning, filming, and editing a wide range of educational courses designed to help business owners and entrepreneurs succeed online. Rather than creating one type of course I have focused on a wide range of topics and teaching styles across our own site, as well as platforms such as Skillshare.

Our courses are coming to Skillshare and our own educational website

Rather than putting all of our courses into one spot there is definitely value in partnering with a platform such as Skillshare. Skillshare excels in short-form classes, averaging between 30-60 minutes in length, and encouraging the development of a project through a class workshop. Some of our ‘mini’ courses will be distributed on Skillshare.com alongside our upcoming education platform. As a bonus, when you subscribe to Skillshare you aren’t just subscribing to Hello Digital’s course, you also receive access to over 22,000 other courses on the platform. I’ll be writing some more blog posts closer to the launch highlighting my favourites that will complement those I am teaching.

Take a look at our upcoming course schedule to get an idea of the content coming out soon:

Skillshare courses

• Shopify for entrepreneurs – April 2019
• E-commerce strategy – June 2019
• Quick start guide to selling online – June 2019
• Running a digital agency – October 2019

Hello Digital courses

• Migrating from Vend E-commerce to Shopify – April 2019
• Shopify Accelerator – August 2019
• Vend for retailers – August 2019
• Vend for consultants – November 2019

Long-term plans

As well as the courses planned for the coming year, we’ll begin working on sharing snippets and new original content on YouTube from August onwards.

I’ll begin posting more on the Hello Digital blog as the first courses approach release. In the meantime, is there anything that isn’t on our schedule that you think should be? Let me know in the comments down below, or contact us.

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