LearnDash Developer Advice – Using the LearnDash Course Page As Your Sales Page – Part 1
When launching your LearnDash course website, you have to decide. Will you:
- use the course page as the course's sales page or
- create a fully dedicated sales page for each course on your site.
Both are valid options. Here is this LearnDash developer's advice for making the right decision for your site.
LearnDash Developer on Course Page Basics
Each LearnDash course has a course page. This is the page you see when you click to visit the course. It gets displayed whether the member is enrolled in the course or visiting the course after enrolling. Using the plain ol' out-of-the-box function (and we cover more advanced options in part 2 of this article), you have a single page that can serve both purposes. For unenrolled members, LearnDash displays a banner showing the course price and a button for buying the course.
The format of the course page is very "course-like." It's not specifically designed for selling, but it can be used for that. You can keep it simple providing written copy or you add videos, images or any content you like. Beneath that, the page lists the lessons that make up the course. If you're not enrolled, the lessons display a message saying they are not accessible. When you are enrolled, you can click each lesson to access them.
LearnDash Developer on Programs That are Course Catalog-Like?
As a LearnDash developer, we build a lot of course sites that are pretty much a course catalog. You have a number of courses that you sell individually. LearnDash provides very nice grid features you can configure using Elementor, Wordpress Guttenberg block or shortcodes. You can display a simple course selection page if you like. You can get more sophisticated and allowing members to view courses by category. You can give them search and filtering capabilities. The sky's the limit here.
When your site fits this model, using the course page works well for selling. You can consistently display your courses. The course pages explain what a course does and how a course is similar to or different from other courses in your program. If your lesson titles give members insight into what is covered in the course, that table of contents view of the course is good for someone wanting more details. It takes no effort to display since its an inherent part of LearnDash.
The LearnDash banner displayed to unenrolled members shows the course price with a buy button. Depending on the e-commerce system you use, the buy button can be set up to quickly get a visitor to the checkout process.
LearnDash Developer on Selling Course Programs or Curriculums?
Some programs are made up on several courses working together to teach a topic. It could be you have a series of courses making up a curriculum you sell as a package. This is when a sales page versus the course page can be a better solution. Instead of selling a list of courses like in my previous model, you are selling something bigger and that is best sold without the confines of the course page.
There are a lot of tools available for building sales pages. My favorite is the Elementor landing page builder. You can use it to build simple and to complex sales pages. In this approach, you list what you sell on your site and provide a link to get visitors to your sales page with links for purchasing it. When the member purchases, they gains access to the courses that make up the package.
When taking this approach using an e-commerce solution like WooCommerce, you can create WooCommerce products corresponding to each sales page. The products are integrated with LearnDash using the WooCommerce for LearnDash add-on. As soon as the purchase is completed, members are enrolled in the corresponding course or courses and they get immediate access.
Note: For detailed instructions on how to configure WooCommerce and Learn, get a FREE copy of my Profitable Online Course Building Starter Guide - LearnDash Edition.
In part 2 of this article, we will cover how to customize your course page so you display different content conditionally depending on whether the member is enrolled or not in the course.