As e-learning becomes evermore mainstream, the market is being flooded with a variety of LMS systems and e-commerce platforms to help aspiring, emerging, and well-established edupreneurs generate recurring income. But whether you’re first starting out or are a veteran in the e-learning industry, choosing a new LMS system can be daunting, to say the least.
In this review, I’d like to introduce you to a sophisticated learning management system (LMS) and e-commerce platform called LearningCart – an all-inclusive solution to market and sell online courses.
What makes LearningCart different?
As mentioned, there is no shortage of high-quality e-commerce LMS platforms like Podia and LearnWorlds. But usually, with one-stop-shop solutions, something takes a hit. Whether it’s the lack of freedom that you have with the look and feel of your brand, storefront, and courses, or the lack of e-learning functionality and interactive features you’re afforded, there’s usually some kind of trade-off.
So, what makes LearningCart different? Firstly, this platform is a major step-up from its competitors because it offers in-depth and top-notch features on both the e-learning and commerce sides of your edupreneurial ventures!
Let’s have a closer look at their main offerings…
Extensive e-learning tools
While many e-commerce platforms only offer basic e-learning tools, LearningCart goes above and beyond! LearningCart:
- is SCORM compliant
- provides blended learning experiences
- allows for digital downloads
- offers a quiz builder
- distributes transcripts
- customizes certificates of completion
- grants continuing education credits
- integrates with Google Analytics
Because LearningCart is SCORM compliant, it is a versatile e-commerce platform that efficiently hosts compatible courses authored by Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Lectora, and Camtasia, among many others. In line with its wide authoring-tool compatibility, LearningCart is highly flexible regarding the types of content it accepts and delivers, including:
- Videos
- Digital and physical products
- Course feedback forms
- Custom applications
- Certificates and transcripts
Moreover, your customers will not only be able to navigate an intuitive and familiar workflow, but prospective buyers can smoothly transition to the conversion stage of the process. Your students will be able to access their courses, view their grades, and download digital files. If they’re interested in purchasing physical products, then LearningCart will escort them through the traditional shopping cart experience.
There are also many standalone LMSes – without an e-commerce element – that do very little to accommodate blended e-learning experiences. But LearningCart affords the widest flexibility because it does it all! Blended e-learning experiences are not only flexible, but effective, efficient, and accommodate the diverse learning styles inherent to virtual and traditional classrooms. In fact, in most cases, blended learning experiences are an economical choice that allows you to preserve the most complex subject matter for the classroom while making the rest available online.
By selling both physical and digital products, like textbooks and eBooks, while integrating with GoToWebinar and scheduling in-class training sessions, LearningCart provides the full suite of technological features required for your students to maximize their learning potential.
One of the most important features of any LMS system is its assessment capabilities. From my experience, not all LMS systems or authoring tools are made equal in this regard. But LearningCart didn’t skimp out on this obligatory feature! It comes equipped with high-quality assessment capabilities through its quiz-builder tool.
Not only can you create multiple question types, but you can do so with ease. You’ll be able to create:
- Question pools
- Customized feedback
- Randomized questions
- Time limits
- Pass or fail messages
That’s not all! You can also set parameters such as the number of questions per quiz and what constitutes a passing score!
The comprehensive assessment capacities of LearningCart’s quiz-builder tool is not only handy, but necessary when you consider its ability to generate and distribute customized completion certificates and transcripts. This ability is critical to leaving your students with a sense of accomplishment. You ultimately increase learner engagement when your students feel as though they not only have something official and tangible to work towards, but something that they can print and show off to proud loved ones!
And if, for whatever reason, your learners are struggling to earn these certificates, LearningCart seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics’ robust reporting system so that you can track student activity, usage, and progress. By harnessing these in-depth insights, you’ll be able to tackle any problem areas with your students by communicating with them directly and tweaking your courses based on diagnosed weaknesses in the content and structure. These improvements are not only useful from the learner’s perspective, but from an e-commerce perspective as well.
Let’s walk you through LearningCart’s powerful e-commerce capacities!
Exhaustive e-commerce platform
LearningCart remains a station above even premium e-commerce platforms like Teachable and Thinkific for the following reasons:
- High usability
- Maximal customizability
- Ultimate scalability
- Blog engine features
- Memberships and subscriptions
- Product bundling
- Coupons and discount codes
- Vast marketing plugins and integrations
At the end of the day, the ideal e-commerce platform for creating and selling online courses is the one that has the widest reach and generates the most revenue. Not only does LearningCart have over 30,000 people using its system every month, but it generates well over $500 million in revenue every year from its users. But what contributes to this platform’s uniquely successful statistics?
One of the biggest factors is its high usability. Easily-navigable interfaces maximize customer conversion rates! Few things are more frustrating and discouraging than being keen and curious about a product that’s displayed on a confusing, counterintuitive, eye-sore of a website. Because LearningCart gives you the option to sell bundled and blended-learning courses, and digital and physical products across different categories for cross-marketing optimization, it’s of paramount importance that its storefront is effectively and instinctively organized.
Furthermore, to keep your customers coming back for more, you’re going to need an e-learning platform that accommodates the look and feel of a unique and trustworthy brand. This is an area that I find lacking in many e-learning platforms. You’re usually given limited options for colors and templates, some of which don’t even accommodate a personal logo. To instill trust and a sense of legitimacy in current and prospective customers, LearningCart allows you to white-label and customize your landing pages and storefront, add in your logo and any other trademarked features of your brand, and have complete control over even the minutest elements of your site, such as personalized buttons, notifications, and professional and sleek template designs that can differ on a page-to-page basis.
Other distinct features of LearningCart’s e-commerce platform include:
- Support for multiple currencies
- Multiple, per-product, pricing options
- UPS quotes in real-time (weight-based)
- Robust reporting with Google Analytics
Because LearningCart also offers ultimate scalability, it’s the ideal choice for businesses that will be producing and selling quite a few, relatively simple courses. Unfortunately, not many e-commerce platforms are effectively designed to meet your potential for rapid and ever-expanding market demands. However, LearningCart’s renowned for its enterprise-class, cloud-based framework. As a result, you’ll be able to expand your offerings across multiple portals while providing regular product updates and feature enhancements!
It’s hard to imagine a top-ranking website without a blog engine for driving traffic and converting customers. Through the comments feature, LearningCart allows you to receive invaluable feedback, engage with prospective buyers by answering questions, and expand your reach by allowing them to share your blogs on various social media platforms! The blog post editor is easy to use, integrates with Google Analytics, and lets you choose a unique template for each post! It would be disingenuous for an e-commerce platform that lacks a blogging engine to position itself as a premium choice.
Another necessity of e-commerce platforms, especially in the e-learning business, is the ability to create memberships and subscriptions to generate residual streams of income. But what’s more is the ability to bundle products into exclusive packages or offerings. You can show gratitude to exclusive members or subscribers via coupons and discount codes to create incentives for those who are dawdling or sitting on the fence. Plus, LearningCart incorporates vast marketing plugins and integrations for multiple payment gateways, email and affiliate marketing campaigns, live chat support, and much more!
With all this value, it’s understandable that you’d be keen and curious about the cost!
Learning Cart Pricing
As you can see above, LearningCart offers flexible pricing plans to accommodate your unique needs. Prices start at $179 per month for their basic silver plan and go up as far as $509 per month for their gold plan. Bear in mind that – unlike e-commerce platforms like Teachable and Thinkific – LearningCart doesn’t punish you for your sales! In other words, there are no hidden expenses like transaction fees or percentage cut-offs!
With all of the premium features and marketing tools at your disposal, all for a simple monthly price, LearningCart delivers more value long-term than any other platform! But to be sure, the best course of action is trying their commitment-free 30 day trial.
Final Thoughts
LearningCart is a top-grade, all-inclusive solution for your course creation, selling, and marketing needs. Moreover, it doesn’t skimp out on any one of these individual aspects. Rather, you can deliver high-quality online or blended learning experiences with maximum control over your personal brand and top-grade marketing and selling tools! Few LMS systems and e-commerce platforms can boast the level of sophistication, thoroughness, and scalability that LearningCart applies to every aspect of its services! It’s the optimal choice for businesses that plan to sell more than a few courses. But you’ll just have to see for yourself…
Take advantage of LearningCart’s 30-day, no-obligation trial to see if this platform’s the right fit for you!
By Sydney Mansaray for Learning Revolution
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