Delivering learning content is one thing, seamless eCommerce capability within your LMS is another.

A 2024 report stated that the global eLearning market will reach over £640 billion by 2030.

And, since 2000, the eLearning industry has seen growth of 900%.

So it’s clear that eLearning is going nowhere. 

But if you’re trying to make the most of the market, then you might be finding blockers on the way. 

One key blocker more sophisticated learning providers have, is finding a tool that can support them in their quest for eCommerce capability. 

We recently developed eCommerce capability in our own LMS, so let’s go into more detail on how we can support you. 

• What is eCommerce in an LMS? 
• Challenges with integrating eCommerce into your LMS 
• How our eCommerce plugin works 

Let’s get started. 

What is eCommerce in an LMS? 

eCommerce in an LMS is simply the ability to sell your learning content to an external or internal audience. They can go through a normal checkout process to obtain learning content or secure a spot on a learning event. 

🛒 Related: How to sell learning content in a Totara LMS [product sheet]

Chances are, you’re creating learning content for your audiences. 

And you might also be considering (if you’re not already), selling your content. 

Whether that’s making the most of internal company content, or specifically building and selling eLearning content, you need a tool to help you achieve your goals. 

Many LMS tools fall short when it comes to selling this content. 

Content creation, building learning pathways, automating audiences might all come as standard. 

But connecting your LMS to a payment provider is a little more tricky. 

💡 Pro Tip

Not sure what the benefits are to eCommerce in an LMS? Well, we’ve rounded it up for you.

Here’s why an LMS is key to selling eLearning content

Challenges with integrating eCommerce into your LMS 

There are a number of issues for companies looking to integrate eCommerce capability into their LMS, mainly: 

• Integration issues 
• Secure checkout 
• Admin and data 

Let’s look at these in more detail. 

Integration 

Many LMS tools out there don’t offer eCommerce integration at all. Which means you’re left stranded when it comes to integrating payment options to your learning content. 

Without the right tool in place, you can’t even begin to setup eCommerce capabilities. 

💡 Pro Tip

Totara doesn’t natively offer eCommerce capability. But at BuildEmpire, we’ve built a plugin so that any Totara LMS can add payment integration to their courses.

Learn more about Totara eCommerce 

Secure checkout 

When you’re handling payments, you need to make sure that it’s secure and safe. 

While some LMSs do offer payment functionality, it’s not with a trusted or reliable payment partner. That means your customers are left vulnerable, and so will likely not engage with payment. 

Admin and data 

Let’s say you integrate your LMS with a tool like Eventbrite to manage payment via there, you then create more work for yourself or your team in order to keep the administration of content delivery up to date. 

For example, you will have to manually arrange event attendance for paying customers, or if they’re buying online content, arrange for them to receive it. 

This creates an awful lot of busywork for your L&D team. 

How our Totara eCommerce plugin works 

Building eCommerce functionality in Totara is easy when you partner with BuildEmpire. 

Here’s how our plugin works: 

Create a catalogue 

Similarly to how you currently add learning to your Totara platform, you can add paid learning to a catalogue. 

Even better, if you want to keep some learning separate, you can use two different catalogues. This allows you to have more control over what can be seen on your publicly facing catalogue. 

Create learning content 

When you’re setting up your new learning content for your eCommerce catalogue, it’s the same as normally setting up Totara learning courses. 

There is just a small setting you need to enable to allow it to feature on the correct catalogue and display a price. 

Of course, you can also add free learning. 

Rank your content

Given this learning content is publicly available, you will be able to rank in search engines like Google. 

You can set your URLs with slugs to start ranking online, and use the description boxes to add keywords to help you attract users to your courses. 

Set your price 

Of course, you can set a price for your learning, and choose a preferred currency. 

This will mean that when users click through to purchase, Stripe will automatically collect the correct amount of money for that specific course, just like in any other eCommerce setting. 

Easily change prices in the admin settings if you need to. 

Add key filters 

When creating new courses, you can assign key information to them to help users find the right content. 

From category, to course duration or learning type, you can set key filters so that long catalogue pages are more navigable. 

Add recommended courses

At the bottom of each course page, you can guide users to other similar, or recommended content.

This can help you to promote equally useful content to learners and push further interaction and purchases.

Integrate eCommerce into your Totara LMS

Missing eCommerce capability in your Totara LMS and want to start selling your content? 

Our eCommerce offering is new to our LMS, so is fresh and full of innovative features that will help you make more out of your content. 

Book a demo to see how we can help you sell your eLearning content, plus see what else is available in the BuildEmpire edition. 

We have tweaked aspects of Totara, built our own theme and added exclusive features – it’s the obvious LMS choice.

Secure, reliable (with a 99.998% SLA) and easily customised, we can help you achieve your L&D goals.