Using WooCommerce is one of the most popular ways to sell online courses. The global eLearning market is expected to quadruple in size from around $250 billion in 2020 to $1 trillion in 2027. If you have already built your online course and crafted a marketing strategy, it’s time to monetize it.

Woocommerce is an eCommerce software that helps to set up a product or shopping cart, and sell products with multiple payment gateways. Although you can add membership by using add-ons, WooCommerce is mostly used to sell one-time products like digital downloads or other eCommerce stores.

If you are planning to sell your course with one-time high payment or through recurring subscriptions, WooCommerce is one of the best options available to do this, and here is why.

It’s Free:

Yeah, you heard it right, it’s absolutely free. WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform that is free for anyone to use. Normally this kind of features are always paid for but luckily we don’t have to miss its amazing features due to the high price. 

Easy to setup:

WooCommerce has a very user-friendly interface and is easy to customize as well. You can built an entire eCommerce store within a few minutes.

For any person new to this field, using an easy to understand plugin is a huge edge. Otherwise, a lot of time is wasted watching videos to comprehend the whole setting up process or hiring a professional to set it up for you which costs a good amount. You can easily configure it all by yourself.

Scaling up Options:

WooCommerce is easily customizable. As it is built for eCommerce purposes it provides many scaling up options, in case your business grows. You can choose from 40 WooCommerce themes to give a professional look to your website as well as expanding is much easier.

For example, modifying the templates is quite easier. You can do it either from the themes files or you can use hooks and filters. There are hundreds of free and paid Woocommerce extensions as you can easily integrate Google Analytics to get visitors’ data.

There is a live chat option for WooCommerce users which is used by many eCommerce stores for enhanced customer service experience. You can use these extensions to boost your course engagement as well.

Integration:

When you integrate WooCommerce with LearnDash or any other LMS plugin, the users won’t even feel that they are going from one platform to another. Everything is designed for maximum ease of use so the users don’t have to leave their LMS platform to checkout and make a payment. 

Payment Options:

Although market leaders in LMS plugins have a built-in payment option like PayPal or Stripe, WooCommerce gives a whole lot of payment options for different parts of the world like Apple Pay.

With WooCommerce Payments you can accept payments in 135+ currencies. So, the users can pay in their preferred currency. You can track payments, check cashflows, and all your transactions, and keep an eye on your subscriptions all from one place.

Coupons:

Are you are thinking to use coupons to attract people to buy your online courses or do you want to provide referral codes to your students if they refer your course to other people as well. You can do this by using WooCommerce which helps to run these types of promotions and offer coupons for your course.

Course Bundles:

Offering course bundles can be attractive to some marketers as it attract the market. You can wither provide short courses with the main course or you can run a campaign that if a person buys 1 course, he/she will get a 25% discount on the second course. These type of promotions are also easy to manage through the WooCommerce plugin.

Automatic Enrollment: 

If you have read our article on automation tools, you already have an idea about the importance of automation on your WordPress website. You don’t have to do all the things manually when you can link different activities and plugins to automate the whole process.

WooCommerce helps to automatically enroll new students in your course so they can immediately begin taking their lessons rather than waiting for their mentor to enroll them in the course.

Automatic Refunds and Course Removal:

Just like automatic enrollment, automatic refunds are also quite appealing to the customers. If you are giving a trial period with a money back guarantee or providing refunds, people do not want to wait for several days to get their money back.

Now, once they have got their money, you also don’t want to keep them enrolled in your course as well. Removing these students is an added step for you if you are not using an automated process. WooCommerce helps to automatically enroll and remove learners from the course so you do not need to hustle about this.

Intuitive Post-Purchase Experience:

Many course makers do not give attention to this step. Once the payment has been made, the students want you to take their hands and show where the course content is, for which they have paid their valuable money.

In most of the cases, students are left watching a thank-you page, without any direction to go further and they exit the tab. You need to make a workflow where the new customer is taken directly to the course content after making a purchase. It enhances customer experience as well as student engagement.

Multiple Payment Strategies:

There are different payment strategies provided by different course sellers to boost their sales or to generate streamlined income. Some offer subscription methods while some may provide installment options rather than a one-off payment. 

Some provide private tutoring along with the course and some sell digital resources along with the course. Sometimes the course is absolutely free but to get a certification, the students need to pay. However, most educators mix and match all of these options to maximize their income.

They might be selling online tutoring along with digital downloads and make a subscription model. Using WooCommerce, you can easily opt any payment strategy you want without any distress.

Use WooCommerce for the Best LMS Experience

By using WooCommerce, educators can easily integrate multiple activities and enhance the learning experience. Making a professional looking website and using an efficient payment processor also gives an edge over the competitors.

This is why LearnDash advice selling online courses using WooCommerce with its LMS plugin, to maximize the user engagement and after-purchase experience while minimizing your hectic.  

If you want to know more about LMS plugins and which one best suits your needs check our blog post here. If you need an expert to build your entire LMS website we can help you. Book a free call or get our expert consultation before getting started.