The e-commerce service in the platform lets you sell courses and track sales directly through the platform. It supports card payments using Stripe as the payment processor. Stripe accepts Visa, MasterCard and
American Express credit and debit cards. Stripe also offers many options for tracking your sales, dealing with refunds, running reports etc. You can find out more at: https://support.stripe.com/
Enabling e-commerce
Go to Settings and Services and open E-Commerce:
| Enabled | Tick this box to enable the e-commerce service. |
| Enable VAT collection | If you need to add VAT to your prices, click Enable VAT Collection. If you would like to use the VAT API service to deal with your VAT payments, a box to insert the API key will appear when you enable VAT collection. |
| Enable discounts | If you enable this, you'll have the option to create discount codes. |
| Default Currency | Select the default currency - you can find a list of the relevant codes here: https://www.iban.com/currency-codes |
Configuring payment methods
Now that you've enabled the e-commerce service, you need to configure your payment methods. You'll see that an E-Commerce option has now appeared in your settings sidebar. Click on it and select Payment Methods:
| Vouchers Enabled | If you would like customers to be able to use vouchers, click this box. Vouchers can be useful for giving access to the course as part of a bundle with another product if you want to give the course away for free in some circumstances etc. |
| Payment Method |
We currently only accept Stripe as a payment method. If you would like customers to be able to pay for your course rather than just using vouchers, select Stripe. |
If you don't already have a Stripe account, you'll need to go to https://stripe.com/ and create one. Once your Stripe account is configured, you'll need the Public and Secret Keys. You'll find a link to these keys on your Stripe dashboard:
For this guide, we're going to use the test keys which can be found just above the live API keys:
Tick Enabled and paste your key and secret into the relevant fields in the platform:
Make sure to click SAVE when you're done.
Adding products
Click E-Commerce > Products.
Click +ADD PRODUCT
| Learning Experience | Select the learning experience that you would like to sell. |
| Populate with Learning Experience details | Click here to pull through the image, title, and description from the learning experience. Alternatively, you can give it a different name/description. |
| Price | Enter the price you want to charge for your learning experience. |
| Currency | This will default to the default currency you set up earlier. |
| Product Reference | Add a product reference - this won't be seen by your customers, it's just so you can keep track of sales. |
| Live | Only click this once you're ready for your product to go live and start accepting purchases. |
Note: Consider how your learning experience is set up. If it's set to Public and Allow Self Enrolment, then anyone on your platform can find it and purchase it. If a course is Secret it can only be found by directly visiting the course or product URL. If a course does not Allow Self Enrolment, it can only be purchased by directly visiting the product URL. Click here to read more about learning experience settings.
Note: If you're testing this, make sure your account isn't already enrolled on the LX, as you won't see the payment screen. Users can still be manually enrolled as with any other LX, they'll only see the payment screen if they aren't currently enrolled.
Creating a voucher
A voucher is a code that allows someone to purchase products without using a credit or debit card.
Each voucher has a value that you can specify.
A typical use case might be that a business wants to purchase one of your courses and offer it to all of its staff. They could purchase a number of vouchers from you (for the value of the course) and give a voucher to each member of staff. The member of staff could then ‘purchase’ the course, but instead of paying for the course using a debit/credit card, they would enter the voucher code.
To create a voucher, go to E-Commerce > Vouchers:
Click +ADD NEW VOUCHERS:
| Prefix | Add a prefix such as "LP". This will appear at the start of all your vouchers and will help you identify which offer/company/source the voucher has come from when it's redeemed. |
| Created For | Enter the name of the organisation you're making the vouchers for - this is optional, but is handy to keep track of who's spending what. |
| Number of Vouchers | Enter the number of vouchers you would like to create. |
| Value | Specify the value of each voucher. |
| Cost | This field is optional. It can be especially useful if you are running any sort of promotion. For example, if you want to give a user £50 in credit but only make them pay £35 for it, enter the number '35' in this field. |
| Currency | The currency that the voucher will be issued in. |
Once you click SUBMIT your voucher codes will pop up. You can make a note of these now, or copy
them from the vouchers page.
Creating a discount code
To add a discount code, discounts must be enabled in the service, then, go to Discounts and click +ADD DISCOUNT CODE
| Name | Name your code - only you will see this name |
| Code | Add a code - this is the code that users will need to enter. Try to make it memorable! |
| Live | Tick this box once you're ready to activate your discount code. |
| Percentage discount / Value discount | Decide whether you want the discount to be percentage or value-based. |
| Amount | Specify the value of the discount. |
| Quantity | Decide how many times the discount code can be used. Once it's been used this many times it will no longer provide a discount. |
| Valid from / valid until | The discount code will only work between these dates. |
| Products | Use the drop-down to select which product this discount can be applied to. If you want to add multiple products, use the + button. |
Linking your marketing site to your platform
Once you have created your product(s) in your platform, you might want to create a public-facing webpage to advertise your courses to your audience. While this page is not created within the platform, here is some advice on what information to include on this page:
• A list of your courses
• A description of each course
• Costs
• Guide for first-time users
Before users can use the links to your courses, they must first be registered on your platform. On your
site you should include a small guide on how first-time customers can set themselves up, providing
them a link to your organisation to register.
Once the customer has registered for the platform and logged in, the course link will take them to the payment page to complete the transaction.
Overall, the general end-user journey looks like this:
1. End User views your promotional page(s).
2. End User identifies a course that they wish to undertake.
3. End User clicks on the course link that you have placed on the page.
4. End User is taken to the course payment page in the platform.
5. End User completes the payments, is enrolled on the course and is given a link to the course.