WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress plugins on the market for users seeking to set up an eCommerce store quickly and easily. LearnDash is a learning management system that is used globally by individuals, companies, universities, and training organizations to create and offer their online courses.
Course creators can utilize eCommerce plugins to streamline the sale of online courses on their websites, offer more diverse payment options, and better service for their customers – and that’s where WooCommerce comes into play.
Can WooCommerce be used to sell LearnDash courses?
In short – yes!
Although WooCommerce was designed initially for websites to sell their products online, its fantastic customization and flexibility mean that WooCommerce can be used for many different purposes such as to sell services, subscriptions, bookings, and online courses.
It’s a simple enough process to enable LearnDash courses to be sold through product listings online – and its range of benefits can make a huge difference for any LearnDash course creator.
LearnDash does have its own payment functionality built-in, but it does have its limitations. While it works as a simple and straightforward payment option, LearnDash was designed specifically for the creation and delivery of learning content. Optimizing your checkout process would mean using an eCommerce plugin that was designed specifically for payment processes.
Benefits of using WooCommerce with LearnDash
Being one of the best online plugins for eCommerce, WooCommerce has a range of benefits that can – and will – optimize LearnDash payment processing. Not only is it simple to set up and operate, but it can be customized with multiple plugin extensions for ultimate control over the checkout experience.
We’re going to run through the positives of integrating WooCommerce with LearnDash for course creators.
More checkout and payment options
WooCommerce can revolutionize your payment options and extend your LearnDash courses’ availability to customers with its multiple checkout and payment options.
The ability to customize website checkout page(s) to suit your wants and needs is a huge plus – for the course creator and the customer. It’s simple, straightforward, and effective. A smooth checkout experience can actually increase the number of conversions a website has, reducing the number of times a website suffers cart abandonment.
The option of additional payment gateways is also desirable for many course creators. A wider range of payment gateways can again mean more sales, offering your eLearning students the chance to pay however they choose.
Being able to support PayPal and Stripe – which is available in over 135 currencies and over 40 countries – gives huge flexibility and opportunity for your LearnDash courses to reach a huge number of customers. Working smoothly on mobile as well as desktop, customers can stay on your website while completing their checkout.
WooCommerce also supports the option to incorporate coupon codes and discounts on your website – being able to entice new students to your LearnDash courses and offering existing customers loyalty discounts can add huge potential to your online offering. WooCommerce supports various discount options, such as percentage or fixed price, while also giving the option to customize discount restrictions.
With more control over your checkout and payment options, you have the chance to maximize your eLearning business’s potential.
Sell courses and products
Another benefit of choosing WooCommerce as your eCommerce solution is that is allows you to easily scale the scope of your eLearning business. Whether it’s immediately or as part of future business growth, the option of selling both physical products and LearnDash courses can be a significant benefit.
However you choose to improve your business, the quality of WooCommerce’s configuration means it supports product and category structure extremely effectively. If you chose a different plugin solution or relied solely on LearnDash’s native payment solution, you are limited to only selling online courses.
The slick configuration options and ability to combine physical and digital services offer you more flexibility to sell on your terms and however you desire. WooCommerce also provides excellent scalability options no matter what size your business.
Course bundles, memberships and subscriptions
WooCommerce also further provides for your business with the possibility to include course bundles, memberships and subscriptions in your service offering.
An excellent opportunity to maximize online services is to offer recurring payments by way of subscriptions, while including larger discounts on course bundles can increase sales and conversions. WooCommerce makes bundling your multiple LearnDash courses into a single product quick and easy.
Various opt-in opportunities for customers in the form of add-ons can definitely boost your business, too. The wide range of options that WooCommerce has to offer gives you the ultimate control over your courses, benefitting both you and your students.
Advanced eCommerce
Taking advantage of WooCommerce’s advanced eCommerce options and extensions is a huge pull for your LearnDash courses.
Its capability to integrate with almost any CRM system and the wide range of additional extensions make WooCommerce an excellent all-around eCommerce solution. The capability to send automated emails to potential students to reduce cart abandonment is another additional benefit of using WooCommerce. Furthermore you can increase your marketing efforts using up-selling and cross-selling solutions for WooCommerce, helping you make even more course sailes.
Utilizing advanced eCommerce abilities can really make a difference in how professional your LearnDash offering becomes – and the ability to tailor it to whatever you require with hundreds of additional extension options cannot be underestimated.
With WooCommerce being such a prominently used plugin with over 5 million active installations, it comes with a huge online community that generate a huge amount of user-based solutions if you encounter any problems.
Drawbacks of using WooCommerce with LearnDash
While WooCommerce adds plenty of customization options, advanced LearnDash integration and a professional feel to your online store, there are reasons to consider why the plugin solution might not be suitable for your needs.
Adds complexity to your site
Using WooCommerce might not be the best thing for you if you desire a very simple set-up for selling your LearnDash courses. Remember, LearnDash does come with a native payment process that is effective if that is all you require.
The sheer amount of potential add-ons and features that are available through WooCommerce could feel overwhelming and this added complexity might be too much for what you’re offering. There is a learning curve involved when you delve into WooCommerce for the first time and this might have a slight impact by delaying your implementation of the plugin on your site.
If you’re a relative newcomer to learning management systems and selling through LearnDash, the overload of advanced eCommerce possibilities may mean that the simple, straightforward payment process through LearnDash is more applicable.
The number of add-ons might add too much complexity, too, if you’re still in the early days of developing and offering your online courses and you don’t want to get too bogged down in how people pay. If you need to spend more time focusing on your courses and can’t delve too deeply into eCommerce at this juncture, it might be worth considering a more robust eCommerce plugin solution at a later date.
Might be more than you require
Too much might just be a bad thing in some cases. If you’re overloading your website for your LearnDash courses with too many plugins and add-ons – but don’t really have a need for them – then it might be a waste of resources.
If you’re sticking to a very basic structure and only have a limited number of courses to offer, adding too much via WooCommerce’s numerous features might unbalance your website and your online store.
Adding too much too soon might delay the launch of your online courses from the get-go and could even slow down your site, so taking stock of what your individual needs are is paramount before you take the leap and integrate a high-end plugin. The price can also increase quite quickly if you choose to include a lot of extensions to your WooCommerce process, which might be more than you need (or can afford) when getting started.
LearnDash with WooCommerce: Bottom Line
There you have it – the vast array of options that come with using WooCommerce to sell LearnDash courses means that you can make your payment process whatever you desire.
The ability to control almost every aspect of your eCommerce solution is a huge draw for utilizing WooCommerce. One of the most widely-used plugins on the internet, you can implement WooCommerce to sell anything you like in tandem with your LearnDash courses, benefit from cart abandonment recovery emails and utilize many payment options for the perfect checkout experience.
The only real drawbacks are if it would be too complex for your website and if a smaller LearnDash offering doesn’t require such advanced eCommerce features.
If you need help configuring WooCommerce on your eLearning site, reach out to the WooNinjas. We’ll get your LearnDash site configured and ready for business in no time!
