We are excited to announce the latest enhancements to our Shopify integration.
The Shopify e-commerce solution enables you to start selling your e-learning courses online. Whether you want to set up an online store or sell right on your own website, Shopify is a robust platform when it comes to online retail.
Firmwater LMS integrates seamlessly with Shopify which is crucial for many of the training companies we work with. Shopify manages the entire e-commerce back-end, plus the option to create an appealing online store to showcase products. The platform works with apps to cover a wide range of functionality and features. To integrate with Shopify, Firmwater has built an app that handles the fulfillment of online course products. The app directs purchasers to the LMS site, creates a user account, and places the chosen course into the user’s training plan.
The following changes have been client-initiated. Some of them may also apply to your business model and can be applied to your account optionally.
1. Scenario – Payment by Invoice or PO
Client #1 is transitioning from a legacy platform to Firmwater LMS. Over time, the client has established a very large customer base. Most of these customers are used to paying by invoice or PO (purchase order) for the courses offered. Our client was looking to put any unpaid orders on hold until payment had been received. In the past, we exclusively supported credit card payments through our Shopify integration and would give LMS access to purchasers straight away.
Solution
We made changes to our order processing to support this scenario. We can configure your Shopify store to fulfill and auto-redirect orders based on financial status (pending, authorized, partially paid). An order that is not yet paid, is processed and displayed in the LMS’s Orders menu but purchaser access is put on hold. Once payment is received the order marked as paid in Shopify, fulfillment gets initiated. The purchaser invitation email gets sent out and the seats are made available to the purchaser.
2. Scenario – Duplicate LMS accounts
Client #2 offers a wide variety of compliance training. These courses often require annual or bi-annual re-certification. Client #2 is, therefore, handling a lot of returning customers. As the time-frame between purchases can be several months, learners often forget which email address they used for their last purchase or the email address was entered with a typo. In the past, we used to require for the email address used for the Shopify checkout to match the existing LMS user account email. If a new email address was used, a new user account was created for the return purchase and the client ended up with duplicate user accounts that needed merging.
Solution
We solved this issue by pre-populating the email field during LMS sign up but allowing to adjust the email if necessary. We also added an option to log into an existing account if a purchaser already has one. This will lower the number of duplicate accounts and will lower support cases for merging LMS user accounts.
3. Scenario – Assign courses to users straight away
Our Shopify integration supports single and multi-seat scenarios. We give purchasers the option to either assign the course to themselves or to become a Group Manager and invite others to take the course. We initiate this option with a pop-up window when accessing the courses in the LMS. This course of action has been working great for a lot of our customers. For client #3, a textbook publisher, this behaviour was not ideal. For their business model, each student is supposed to purchase a single book – the option to invite others would confuse the user.
Solution
In a case where the pop-up is inappropriate, we can now disable it for the site. This is especially useful for businesses that focus on selling B2C rather than B2B. The option to invite others is not possible and the course, or in client #3’s case, the textbook is assigned to the user straight away.
If you believe that your business could benefit from using any of these features, let us know.