Myths vs. Realities of Selling Online Courses on Shopify
Running online courses to sell products on Shopify stores is a strategy that combines e-learning with e-commerce. It’s a powerful approach, but not without its challenges. Here are some common myths versus the realities of combining courses with products (digital or physical) on your Shopify store.
Myth 1: It’s a Quick and Easy Way to Boost Sales
Reality: Creating and running an online course is a significant time investment. Developing high-quality content can require considerable effort. The course needs to be valuable and engaging to attract and retain customers.
Myth 2: Courses Sell Themselves
Reality: Even the best courses need effective marketing to sell. You’ll need to invest in marketing strategies like content marketing, email campaigns, social media promotion, and likely even paid ads to drive traffic to your Shopify store and course offerings. The ideal scenario is that you have already started to build a loyal community on your social channels that you can take to the next level by purchasing your courses and effectively selling the complementary products that tie into the courses.
Myth 3: You Only Need to Create Content Once
Reality: Online courses often require ongoing updates and maintenance. As new information or trends emerge, you must update your course content to keep it relevant. Additionally, engaging with your students through feedback and support is crucial for maintaining course quality and customer satisfaction.
Myth 4: You Don’t Need to Worry About Course Integration
Reality: Integrating your online course with your Shopify store can be challenging. You may need to use third-party apps or plugins to manage course delivery, payments, and user access. Ensuring a seamless experience for your customers often requires technical know-how or hiring a developer.
Note: This is precisely why we developed Tevello Courses to make it as easy as possible to offer courses on your Shopify store without ever having to tap developer resources or get involved with the technical aspects of the operational components of running online courses.
Myth 5: It’s All About the Course Content
Reality: While high-quality content is essential, user experience is equally important. This includes intuitive course navigation, responsive design, and customer support. A well-structured course with a good design can significantly impact user satisfaction and course completion rates.
Myth 6: You’ll Only Sell Courses
Reality: Courses can be a gateway to selling other products or services. For example, offering a course can build trust with your audience of enthusiasts and lead to selling physical products that align with the courses. For instance, if you’re selling a course on how to paint using oil colors on stretched canvases, the likelihood of selling products to paint with those products would be a no-brainer opportunity.
Myth 7: Customers Will Always Finish the Course
Reality: Course completion rates can be low. To improve retention, you’ll need to design engaging and interactive content, provide ongoing support, and perhaps include elements like quizzes, assignments, or community discussions.
Myth 8: It’s a Set-It-and-Forget-It Model
Reality: Running a successful online course involves continuous effort. You’ll need to gather and analyze feedback, troubleshoot issues, and regularly update content to keep your course relevant and engaging.
Myth 9: You Don’t Need to Analyze Performance
Reality: Tracking and analyzing course performance is crucial. This includes monitoring completion rates, user engagement, and financial metrics. Insights from this data can help you refine your course content, marketing strategies, and overall approach.
In Summary
Running online courses through Shopify can be a lucrative endeavor but requires careful planning, continuous effort, and strategic marketing. Balancing course creation with effective e-commerce strategies is key to this model’s success.
When the course creation and strategy are closely tied to the products offered on your Shopify store, there is a higher likelihood of cross-selling products with courses and building a loyal fan base who relies on your content and product offerings.
Offer courses and build communities the simple way
Having an out-of-the-box solution for hosting and facilitating digital courses, building communities, and collecting data from quizzes, with the expressed purpose of selling more products where all you have to do is concentrate on the course creation and optimization is a key factor in saving time and money and succeeding with this strategy. Tevello is a Shopify app with features that don’t require development resources, video hosting, or a hefty financial investment. Start your free 14-day trial today, then pay $19.99 a month afterward.