Tips and Tricks for Creating Your Test Prep Company’s Ecommerce Storefront

Test Prep used to just be selling a study guide or two. Luckily, we’ve come a long way from those days. You can now sell simulated practice exams, adaptive learning courses, microlearning modules, gamified experiences, and, as always, the old-school textbook (available as a pdf, of course). 

And, you bought a learning management system (LMS) so you can provide them all.

But, how do you market all of these offerings effectively?

Luckily, your learning management system (LMS) can help with an ecommerce integration. 

This blog will walk you through all the tips and tricks you’ll need to make your ecommerce storefront a success. With a digital storefront, you’ll take your learning offerings from amateur to pro within minutes.

Organizing Your Ecommerce Storefront

Just like a bricks and mortar storefront, your ecommerce storefront needs to be organized. You’ll find that selling digital offerings is much like selling your in-person test prep courses. At the end of the day, you want your learner to pass the exam. And, your products will help them do it!

Categorization

Categories will help users find what they need in your ecommerce storefront. They’ll also act as tags so your software can pull up resources during user searches. You can also align your categories with search engine optimizations (SEO) keywords to help your site rank well on Google.

Suggested categories for test prep companies:

• Study guides, physical and digital
• Practice exams
• Test prep courses
• Certification or recertification courses

Product Pages

Your product page has two essential functions: 1) Sell the value of your course, and 2) Create SEO opportunities.

Add these essential product page details to sell the value of the product:

• Video sample, especially if you’re selling an adaptive platform or simulated exam.
• Course description, including the syllabus and learning objectives.
• Testimonials detailing how others found it useful.
• Price, including links to bundled products offering discounts.

SEO opportunities on your product page include:

• Align your categories to keywords.
• Label your navigation links, urls, and product pages with keywords in mind.
• Write the metadata to the product page based on keywords.
• Include alternative text for your images using keywords.

🔎Related: How to Turn Learning Science Concepts into Profitable eLearning Products [On-Demand Webinar] 

Improve Your Sales with These Techniques

Test Prep companies often serve audiences from around the globe. You may have decided to buy a learning management system (LMS) to increase your market reach.

You’ll want to get the most out of your ecommerce store by using the latest digital marketing techniques:

• Connect your ecommerce store to an email account for automated upselling
• Set up trigger emails if users abandon their purchases in their carts
• Buy retargeting ads on social media like FaceBook to sell to your customer
• Harness SEO techniques so your ecommerce store ranks on Google

Digital products can be easily bundled, sold individually, and ranked based on popularity. Here’s a few suggestions on how to sell more learning products with some tried and true sales techniques:

• Bundle test prep resources together with savings clearly marked
• Create a basic, mid-level, and advanced level for different resources
• Highlight popular courses
• Offer discounts or coupon codes
• Allow users to pay by installments

🔎Want to find out how BenchPrep wins at test prep? Read our case study, Test Prep that Sets the Pace for Triple Digit Growth with BenchPrep.

Setting Up and Testing Your Ecommerce Store

You’re almost done setting up your storefront. You just need to select a few more administrative details:

• Link payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, etc.) to your store.
• Set up taxation procedures.
• Determine currency, especially if selling globally in multiple currencies

Fortunately, an ecommerce store allows you to test your products before ever selling them to an actual human being. You can walk through the process as many times as you like to find bugs before receiving customer complaints.

Testing tips before going live:

• Preview your ecommerce storefront on desktop and mobile
• Test purchases to ensure everything works, including taxation.
• Double check automatic enrollment and welcome emails.
• Test your marketing triggers for abandoned carts.

Launching and Monitoring Your ecommerce Store

You’ve created some marketing buzz. Now it’s time to sit back and watch the test prep courses fly off the virtual shelves.

Luckily, robust data analytics allow you to track more than just the number of sales. Your data reports will become an important monitoring tool to keep your ecommerce store on track. They’ll also allow you to measure the return-on-investment (ROI) of your LMS.

Tips and tricks for generating more revenue with data-driven decisions:

• Popular test prep courses. —> Develop more courses on similar topics.
• Drop out points in courses. —> Optimize course with more engaging content.
• Geographic data. —> Market in these regions more aggressively or differently.
• Learner strengths and weaknesses. —> Upsell learners new courses for weaknesses.

An ecommerce store does more than simply monetize your learning offerings. It gives you access to valuable data about your learner, your product, and your organization’s content.  

 Want to learn how ASCM created lucrative new revenue streams through digital learning? Check out our case study, ASCM Nearly Triples Goal For eLearning Seats Sold In First Year with BenchPrep.