Building your own course marketplace isn’t as complex as building Rome! At least we’d like to think so :-p
Sure there’s effort involved but, you’re off to a great start as long as you know the basic elements needed to create a marketplace on LearnDash.
Speaking of elements, some of the most generic functionalities that strike my mind and might have struck yours too are:
- Creating multiple courses and having multiple instructors/teachers.
- Dividing students belonging to a particular course into groups.
- Getting student feedback on courses.
- Getting student reports.
- Topping it off with a theme that perfectly compliments your website.
These are the most essential elements that form the pillars of any course marketplace and eventually act as a stepping stone towards building a successful business.
In this article, I’m going to tell you how you can use, include and automate these functionalities in your LearnDash LMS to boost your sales.
Utilizing these functionalities to build your course marketplace
To give you a hypothetical picture, let’s use an example to see how these functionalities would play out together in an actual marketplace.
Music School Marketplace
Let’s say you run a Music School Course Marketplace website, where you’re offering courses for learning Guitar, Violin, Drums, Piano, Cello, etc.
Functionality 1 – Having multiple Instructors
Now, practically, it’s impossible for a single person to be an expert in or teach all the instruments. In such a scenario, the most logical step is to get onboard Instructors or Subject Matter Experts who specialize in these respective instruments.
Moreover, empowering them with the ability to create and manage their own courses and students will lead to better communication of knowledge and smoother management.
Functionality 2 – Obtaining student feedback on courses
As an owner, allowing students to give feedback on your courses will help attract more students and improve your courses.
Functionality 3 – Registering students for another course
Since you’re offering multiple courses, you might also be looking for a way to register all of your ‘Violin’ course student base to the newly created ‘Cello’ course at once.
Now, instead of doing this manually for multiple courses, automating the entire process would be beneficial leading to judicious use of time and energy.
Functionality 4 – Getting student reports
When it comes to sustenance and growth, it’s important to understand how much has the student been able to grasp the music courses created by your instructors.
Evaluating the student quiz performance for the above courses will give you insights on the effectiveness of the course.
To top it off…
Apart from the functionalities, your music school website needs to look super attractive and yet give out the vibes of an e-learning marketplace. Your website should use a theme that will instantly make your visitor fall in love at first sight.
Beating overwhelming tasks with automation
We understand that laying the foundation for your marketplace with these functionalities and keeping up with it may seem daunting, overwhelming, and probably cause stress.
However, it is equally important to recognize the need of the hour.
What if you could automate and simplify these tasks to ease your burden and stress?
In doing so, the amount of time and energy you’ll end up saving can be channelized and dedicated to other important areas of your business like marketing, growth, etc.
To help you with this objective, we have a bunch of plugins that can automate the above tasks and enable you to successfully create and run your own LearnDash marketplace.
These plugins are:
- WISDM Instructor Role plugin
- WISDM Rating, Reviews, and Feedback plugin
- LearnDash Group Registration plugin
- WISDM Quiz Reporting Extension
- WISDM LearnDash Content Cloner
Each of the addons has amazing features that will help you fill-up the missing blocks of functionalities in your LearnDash site.
Having said that, let’s quickly explore and find out what each of these plugins has to offer:
1. WISDM Instructor Role for LearnDash
- Empower Instructors to Create and Manage Courses on LearnDash LMS
When you’re building an eLearning website selling multiple courses of different subject expertise then, having multiple Instructors belonging to specific fields of interest create courses for you will make complete sense and is the most logical way to go about it.
This, in turn, will allow you to delegate the course and student management responsibilities to those instructors instead of creating and managing courses on your own. This also enables you to spend more time and focus on other aspects like marketing etc., for your business.
To showcase the credentials and expertise of your instructors, you can make use of the Instructor Profile page, which includes all their details such as their photo, bio, expertise, qualification, courses created, ratings, and so on. Profile pages give instructors credibility and help them showcase their personality. The profile page can also be used to share contact information.
The WISDM Instructor Role plugin is the plugin that completely fits the bill here.
Some important features of IR:
- Complete course management by Instructors
- Set commissions for instructors
- Student-teacher communication
- Instructor has group leader capabilities
- Complete restriction to admin dashboard
- Dedicated dashboard for instructors to create courses
2. WISDM Group Registration for LearnDash
- All-In-One LearnDash Bulk Enrollment & Group Management Tool
With WISDM Group Registration plugin, once the user purchases a course in bulk quantity, the group will automatically get created and they will automatically become the group leader which will enable them to bulk enroll students, manage course subscriptions and check student progress leading to increase in course signups.
Moreover, LDGR also works with IR, wherein Instructors can become the group leader of a group and enroll students in it. Instead of having two user roles, you can now have just one user who can create courses as well as manage the group.
Some important Features of LDGR:
- Automatically create group and assign group leaders
- Frontend group management
- Bulk enroll students at once
- Complete admin control to add/remove users or group leader
- Group leader can track student progress
3. WISDM Ratings, Reviews and Feedback for LearnDash
- A 3-in-1 Plugin to Boost Course Credibility
Moreover, with WISDM Ratings, Reviews, and Feedback add-on, you get to have full control over the display of ratings and reviews, make your own custom templates and constantly improve your courses with student feedback.
Some important features of RRF:
- Star Rating
- Feedback system
- Admin control on approval and display of the reviews
- Sort and filter reviews by users
4. WISDM Quiz Reporting Extension for Learndash
- Get Detailed Student Progress Reports for Actionable Insights
The Quiz Reporting Extension for LearnDash gives a comprehensive detail regarding student performance on your quizzes.
It provides you with actionable student quiz reports that will help you gain insights on the student’s understanding of the course and accordingly implement changes if needed.
Some important features of QRE:
- Export reports for a per-student on a per-quiz basis, or
- For all students on a per -quiz basis
- Group leaders can view reports of students enrolled in the group at the frontend with a shortcode
5. WISDM Content Cloner Extension
- Quickly Create LearnDash Courses in One Click
If you want to create a course content similar to your existing courses then the WISDM Content Cloner Extension will help you clone courses in just a click.
This extension enables you to copy the entire course hierarchy including the courses, lessons, topics, quiz, etc. to your LearnDash LMS. It is the smartest way to create LearnDash courses.
Some important features of CCE:
- One-click and fast cloning of course content.
- Bulk rename of cloned course content titles at once.
Having said that, all of the above-mentioned plugins play a vital role in ensuring the sustenance and growth of your LMS.
Taking the L.E.A.P of faith!
All of these plugins will add exceptional value to your course marketplace and you will need these plugins at some stage in your journey.
All of these plugins are now available as a pack in the form of LearnDash Essentials Add-ons Pack (LEAP). We recommend you to check it out as it is more economical and worth considering.
A dash of perfect theme to compliment your website
Now that you’re aware of the plugins that can help you in creating your perfect course marketplace, there’s one more factor that people often neglect – The look of your marketplace website.
You’ve got to ensure that your website looks attractive with on spot design and characteristics so that your visitors don’t bounce off.
For this purpose, we have a theme – eLumine, which is specifically designed for LearnDash.
eLumine + LEAP = Perfect Marketplace
eLumine comes with a clean & organized design that will elevate your LMS and provide a great learning experience for your users.
Some important features of eLumine theme:
- Prebuilt demos for one-click launch
- Swift loading layouts
- Supports popular page builder plugins
We recommend you to try out the live demo of eLumine which will make your LMS stand apart. You can also check out the special eLumine + LEAP pack that is available.
Wrapping it up,
You can fulfill your dreams of building a course marketplace without having to go through all the complexities. All you need to do is acknowledge the basic elements/functionalities, bring them together in your LearnDash LMS and watch your marketplace blossom into a successful business.