eCommerce in eLearning: 4 Steps to Succeed in Business

- 5 MIN READ -

Originally published on January 31, 2020. Updated on March 26, 2020.

For eLearning businesses, providing learners with engaging content is always the top priority. But there’s a lot more to running a successful eCommerce store than awesome courses—the way you handle marketing and sales also seriously affects eLearning ROI.

Take a look at how eCommerce integration supports marketing and sales in these four areas of eLearning business.

1. Attracting Users

At the top of the funnel, there’s a whole digital toolkit for bringing new customers to your store (or bringing your store to new customers).

The more optimized your store, the higher Google will rank it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the industry-standard method for increasing the reach of a site. The process involves developing your content to make it algorithm-friendly, thereby improving your search engine ranking.

Paying attention to the metadata of your site is an easy way to boost your ranking—making sure it’s complete, consistent, and organized. eCommerce integration helps optimize the metadata for your products, categories, and content pages.

Custom URLs = memorable

Not only does it pay to help users find you, once they know who you are, it’s important to make your site memorable. Custom URLs are short, easy to remember, and perfect for including in marketing outreach. With eCommerce integration, you can even autogenerate search-friendly URLs to streamline your purchase path.

For a deeper look at how eCommerce integration can be used to effectively market your eLearning business, check out this webinar on Enhancing your eLearning Marketing to Drive Growth.

2. Engaging Users

When users do click on your site, it’s important to give them a reason to stay. Most people only take seconds to make judgements about an online store, so making a good impression with your home page is essential.

Store design matters (a lot more than you might think)

Studies suggest that users form opinions about websites within 50 milliseconds (!) In other words, a poorly designed storefront can negate the quality of your eLearning content within the blink of an eye.

Luckily, eCommerce integrations can hand over control of the visual elements of your store. Set themes and fine-tune the look and feel of your content to keep users moving towards a sale.

Tip: Design studies show that people love photographs, especially of other people.

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Search terms reveal the true you

Did you know that users who favour your site’s search bar to navigate are nearly twice as likely to make a purchase as those using site menus? eCommerce integration lets you capitalize on these VIP shoppers with search boxes in the upper-right corners, as well as an Advanced Search option.

Search boxes don’t just help users find what they’re looking for. All searches are saved by Lambda Suite, helping you paint a picture of real user needs. With that data, it becomes easy to match popular search terms with your content, offer search suggestions, and catch misspellings.

For a full rundown of Lambda Suite’s eCommerce tools, watch this webinar: Enhancing your eCommerce For Your eLearning Business With The Lambda Suite.

3. Increasing Conversions and Order Values

At the end of your user journey, you want to make it as easy as possible for customers to complete their purchase. At the same time, if you can convince users to add one more item to their shopping cart, you can help raise your average order value and develop your eLearning ROI.

Why not get personal?

In general, the more a customer feels treated as an individual, the more positively they’ll view your business. You’ll always want a store that includes flexible pricing rules that kick into gear when certain conditions are met, so you can to tailor the shopping experience to user groups. Enhance the feeling of being cared for with limited-time offers and coupons that customers can scan with their phones.

When eCommerce is integrated with your eLearning platform, all of your content is only a few clicks away. This makes it easy to insert up-sell and cross-sell opportunities at strategic points along the user path. Tip: The shopping cart is a great place to offer one last item.

Be a smooth (payment) operator

A seamless checkout experience helps users feel they are being treated with care, but also works to reduce the chance of customers stepping off the purchase path. Make sure your eCommerce solution supports stored payment and shipping information, multiple payment methods and currencies, and PayPal integration.

4. Content Marketing and Brand Building

A sale should never be the end of a user’s journey, especially in the eLearning business, where there’s always another course to try out...

Automate, template, coordinate

Regular updates through newsletters and social media help make current and past learners feel part of your eLearning family. For those who believe in the connection economy, it’s making real connections with customer networks, not old fashioned, one-way advertising, where the real ROI lies.

Ideally, your eCommerce solution comes complete with tools that allow you to send professionally designed, dynamic email campaigns with live data from your store. For larger marketing campaigns, be sure you can automate your communications and offers so you never miss a chance to reach out. For more marketing and ROI-boosting tips, find out How to Sell Online Courses and Make Money with Your LMS.

Oh, did we mention that our incredible eLearning business experts specifically designed the Lambda Suite to do everything mentioned above, and more! You might even say it’s Everything You Need To Build Your eLearning Business (watch this webinar to get the full tour of the Lambda Suite).

If you're serious about starting your own eLearning business, pivoting your existing eLearning into a new revenue stream, or require any other LMS, Analytics, or eCommerce solutions, we’d love to hear from you!

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