How to Use Your Shopify Store to Sell Online Courses

Sell Online Courses

When online entrepreneurs are considering building an online store, Shopify is the first tool that comes to mind. 

This is no surprise since Shopify currently offers one of the best e-commerce solutions in the market. According to Shopify News, the platform has documented a total revenue of $988.6 million in the first quarter of 2021.

Right now 2,297 million active websites are already using Shopify and over 1.7 million merchants sell their products on the platform.

Such figures show that not exploring Shopify’s advantages as a course creator means you are missing out on huge revenue potential. 

Making Use of Shopify’s Best Features

Shopify helps business owners, online retailers, merchants, and course creators build an online store and sell their products on the spot.

It allows a course creator to sell digital products along with physical ones catering to most retailers. Shopify gives you everything you need in terms of features, functions, ease of use, pricing, and customer support.

As a course creator, not only can you promote and sell your online courses but also sell physical products that apply to your course subject, area of expertise, or brand merchandising. 

This way, you can increase your sales, expand your online presence, and build on brand loyalty. 

If you want to tap into this opportunity, this article can help you learn how to do it step-by-step.

How to Sell Online Courses on Shopify

After you sign up with Shopify and build your online store, all you need to do is connect it with the learning management system (LMS) or course platform you are using. Not every tool can connect with Shopify so it’s best to check with your LMS or course platform provider first. 

Once you have set it up, go through the following steps:

Step 1: Create the course in your LMS provider

First and foremost, you will need to create your online course inside your LMS provider.

In this example, Supakit – an online academy on cat training that uses LearnWorlds as their LMS provider to deliver the courses, follows the process of building a course there first.

From there, you create your course title, add your course content and you are ready to go.

Step 2: Connect Shopify as the Payment Gateway & Sync the Courses

Once you have uploaded your course in your LMS, make sure to choose Shopify as your payment gateway through your LMS settings. 

This should allow you to connect the two platforms – your LMS and Shopify, and sync your online courses.

Step 3: Edit and prepare your course

Log in to your Shopify account and go to the Products > Add products tab, and create a product.

If you are a LearnWorlds user – just like Supakit, the online course will automatically appear in your Shopify store through the integration.

List your product as a digital product to allow the platform to sell it as such and exclude the shipping options. 

Make all the necessary edits to your online course while working inside the Shopify platform.

Add a title, a detailed description, product details like pricing, and all the media you want to include to provide potential learners with all the information they need to see on the checkout page. 

Step 4:  Prepare your sales/checkout page

Then, edit your sales or checkout page and offer your website visitors the option to add your course to their cart.

Once people buy your product, they will receive a link to the course platform via email.

You can see this order and manage all of the upcoming orders by going back to the Shopify side menu and clicking on the Orders > Orders tab.

From there, you can see which orders are not yet fulfilled and you click on the ‘Fulfill item’ button to complete the order. 

Sell Online Courses

Step 5: Grant school access to your learner

Once the learner has checked out they become auto-enrolled, and an account is created for them in your LMS. 

To allow the learner to access the course, you can automatically send them an email that will grant them access to your online school. Offer them the option to set up their own password and access the account.

After they have successfully logged in, another email will be sent out notifying learners that they are in and can begin learning!

And, that’s it!

The screenshots show how the online course selling process looks inside both platforms (LearnWorlds & Shopify) and how Supakit is using Shopify as a payment gateway to make it easier for their customers to order the products they need.

Sell Online Courses

Supakit’s Academy landing page

The shopping cart looks like a great add-on for any website and online academy, showing that there is more to it and site visitors can check it out.

Delivering the course with a plugin or LMS

While you are here, don’t forget to check out what other tools and apps Shopify has in their inventory for you. 

Apart from connecting your Shopify as a payment gateway, you can connect it with a plugin or a native app called Courses in the Shopify App Store. This way you get to turn your store into an online course platform within just a few clicks.

To make sure you are exploiting Shopify’s full potential, check out the following apps as well, which can diversify your marketing efforts at large:

Ready to Sell Your Online Courses With Shopify?

As you can see, there are many ways you can benefit from using Shopify. Not only do you have the option to turn your Shopify store into a course platform but also integrate it with your favorite LMS and connect Shopify as your main payment gateway.

Not to mention, you get access to several marketing apps that can help you boost your sales.

This way Shopify allows you to continue using your LMS or course platform to deliver your course content, and then use its platform to boost your sales and explore all the possibilities that come with it!

Further reading

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