How can I connect Tribal Habits with an online shop?

The Tribal Habits platform itself does not have a built-in online shop or ecommerce function. This is because we adopt a 'best of breed' approach to features outside the online learning industry. Instead of duplicating features which are already provided by other platforms, we integrate with those platforms - allowing you to use the 'best of' platforms for online learning and online selling.

To do this, we instead integrate with Zapier, which in turn allows you to connect Tribal Habits to many popular online stores including Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Zapier can connect online purchases from these stores with the creation and enrolment of new users in your Tribal Habits platform.

This allows you to have a flexible approach to your choice of online store, as well as utilising ecommerce features which those stores can provide (which are typically well beyond the ecommerce features provided by learning platforms).

In this article, we discuss some best practices in connecting Tribal Habits to your online shop to assist in the selling of your training courses.

Understanding the process of online sales

Let's begin by reviewing the general process of selling training online. Here's the flow of actions which a customer would take.

Visit your online store and review your catalogue of training. This is provided and managed by your chosen ecommerce platform, like Shopify or WooCommerce.
Select an online course, add to the shopping cart and pay for it. This is provided and managed by your chosen ecommerce platform and your selected payment gateway (which may be also provided by your ecommerce platform, or may be a third-party service like Stripe or PayPal).
After successfully purchasing a course, your ecommerce platform triggers Zapier with a new order. Zapier runs a 'zap' (a series of programmed steps) to create a new user in your Tribal Habits platform and enrol that user into their purchased course. This is managed by Zapier. This all typically occurs within minutes of the successful order.
Tribal Habits then sends an invitation email to the new user, who subsequently logs into your Tribal Habits portal and starts their training.

With this general process in mind, we will now review each of these steps and provide ideas, examples and best practices to help you set up your online store.

Note: As we integrate with many different online stores, and those stores frequently update and improve their features, this article focuses on general concepts. This should guide you through the process of selling your training, however you will still need to review specific options and features of your selected store.

Step 1 - Set up your online store

First, you will need to select a platform for your online store. If you are seeking to integrate this platform with your Tribal Habits platform, to allow for automated enrolments, then you will need to select an online store which also integrates with Zapier.

Start by visiting the Zapier website and filtering for compatible ecommerce platforms. Popular choices include Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

You can then set up your online shop. Each product in your shop should represent one online course, where you provide information and screenshots about your course. Here are two example online stores from Tribal Habits (our own public online store) and RedNose.

Dealing with 'group' enrolments

When integration your online shop, it is not possible to automate enrolments for a 'group' purchase of training enrolments. For example, it is easy to automate the enrolment for a single user purchasing a single course - we can easily link the user to the course as part of the checkout process. However, when an organisation wants to purchase 20 enrolments, this is difficult to automate. The organisation may not have the details for all 20 learners straight away and it can be difficult to capture such information at checkout.

As a result, if you want to accept group purchases of your online courses, we recommend creating two products for each course.

Individual purchase. A product which is designed for a single purchase. So you may remove the option to purchase multiple enrolments (i.e. only a single product purchase is allowed).
Group purchase. A product designed for 2 or more purchases. So you may enforce a minimum of 2 orders of this product.

For individual purchases, you can then automate the enrolment immediately upon successful purchase. For group purchases, you can then use business process to help your customer with their large order (see below for more options about this).

If you review the Tribal Habits and RedNose online stores, you will see that both have individual and group products for this very purpose.

Depending on the online store platform you have selected, the ability to control min/max quantities may be built-in to the platform or may require an add-on or plug-in feature.

Setting up your SKUs

Each course in your online store will typically have an SKU field. We recommend populating this field with the enrolment code for the matching topic, article or pathway in your Tribal Habits portal. This enrolment code will be utilised by Zapier later in automating your enrolments.

Note: You only need to use a Tribal Habits enrolment code for products with an individual purchase (since only individual purchases can be automated). Ideally, for products for group purchase, either leave the SKU blank or use a very different SKU (this will be important later in the Zapier process).

TIP: We recommend using the -RETAKE enrolment code. This means that a new enrolment is created for each learner for each purchase. This can be important if your learner may return to repurchase your course after a period of time, and therefore require a new enrolment (in order to obtain a new certificate).

Step 2 - Set up your checkout

Once your store is created, you need to finalise the checkout and payment processes. This will differ between online stores and your selected payment gateway.

However, there are a few tips we can provide for all checkouts.

Ideally, separate the purchaser from the learner. If you are selling a course where a business may purchase training on behalf of an employee, then it can be very useful to separate the purchaser from the learner. This means that we don't assume that the name and email of the purchaser is also the name and email of the learner. As such, ideally you should add separate first name, last name and email address fields for the 'learner', which are completed as part of the checkout process. This allows the purchaser to enter their details for billing / receipt, while collecting separate details about the learner for automation / enrolment. You can see this process in action by visiting this example product on the Tribal Habits store, adding to the cart and viewing the checkout (to see how we structure our checkout form for this).
Capture first name and last name in separate fields. We store first and last name as separate fields in Tribal Habits, so ideally capture these as separate fields in your checkout (not as a single 'Name' field).
Verify email addresses. Always ask for the email address to be entered twice (without copy/paste) in your checkout. This will help avoid incorrect email addresses, which are the major cause of customer issues (receipts are not received, invitations are not received and so on).
Consider limiting purchases to a single course. Depending on your selected online store, Zapier may or may not be able to process multiple course enrolments in a single order. Some online stores can easily provide information for multiple products in an order, while other online stores do not. To reduce the chances of errors, you could consider limiting your checkout to only accepting carts with a single product. This allows each purchases to deal with a single course enrolment.

Step 3 - Automate your enrolments

With your online store now operational, the next step is to automate your enrolments via Zapier. First, you will need a Zapier account. You can learn more about Zapier in this support article.

Second, you will then need to create your 'zaps' - which are a set of programmed steps in Zapier to automate enrolments. A zap consists of:

A trigger. A trigger is an event in one platform, like your online store. The event might be 'Successful order'. Whenever this event occurs, the zap is 'triggered' to run.
A series of actions. The actions in the zap occur when triggered. They are typically tasks in a second platform, like Tribal Habits. Actions might be to create a new user and enrol them in training.

Zaps can be customised to suit each online store. In this case, let's look at an example zap in detail to give you ideas/inspiration for your own zaps.

Example Zap

In this zap, a line item in an order in WooCommerce will be used to create a new learner in a Tribal Habits platform and enrol them in their selected training.

Here's an overview of this Zap.

Trigger: Line Item in an Order in WooCommerce. This trigger occurs when there is an order in WooCommerce. WooCommerce can break its orders into 'line items' - each item being one course. This means that this zap runs for each item in the order (not for the order as a whole). This means that this zap can handle multiple courses in the same order, since each item is processed separately.
Action: Only continue if... This is an action from Zapier. It checks each item to see if it contains an enrolment code for a Tribal Habits course. If yes, the zap proceeds. If not - because the item is a GROUP order - then the zap stops.
Action: Find User in Tribal Habits LMS. This is an action from Tribal Habits. It obtains the learner details from the trigger and determines if the learner exists in Tribal Habits. If not, it creates them.
Action: Create/Update Topic/Article/Pathway Enrolment in Tribal Habits LMS. This is an action from Tribal Habits. It obtains the Tribal Habits enrolment code from the trigger and then enrols the learner into that course.

Let's examine these steps in more detail.

Trigger: Line Item in an Order in WooCommerce

This is a trigger provided by WooCommerce. This trigger occurs when there is an order in WooCommerce. WooCommerce can break its orders into 'line items' - each item being one course. This means that this zap runs for each item in the order (not for the order as a whole). This means that this zap can handle multiple courses in the same order, since each item is processed separately.

Note the trigger requires an 'Order Paid' (not just an 'Order Received'). You will need to select an appropriate trigger for your online store.

Action: Only continue if...

This is an action from Zapier. It checks each item to see if it contains an enrolment code for a Tribal Habits course. If yes, the zap proceeds. If not - because the item is a GROUP order - then the zap stops.

Note the filter is looking at the product SKU for an SKU which contains 'TH'. Products for individual purchase will contain a Tribal Habits enrolment code, which always begins with TH. Products for group purchase should contain a different (or no) SKU (see above).

Action: Find User in Tribal Habits LMS

This is an action from Tribal Habits. It obtains the learner details from the trigger and determines if the learner exists in Tribal Habits. If not, it creates them.

This action is required to help manage new users. We cannot assume the user exists, so we first try to find them in your Tribal Habits portal. If not, then we create them. Here are some tips to help populate the required fields in this action (from this example).

Username: Typically set to email for convenience, but it can be any unique field.
First name, last name and email: All obtained from the trigger. Remember that if you are asking for separate learner details, then use the learner name and email fields here (not the billing name and email fields).
Type: This is the class of user. Set to 'client' to better differentiate customers in your Tribal Habits portal.
Login: This field will only show if your portal has single-sign-on enabled. If so, then you probably want to set your customers to 'External'.
Active: True. This is important to set, in case the user had been deactivated but now needs to be reactivated as a result of this purchase.
Password: Leave blank.
Send invitation: Best to set to True, even for existing users.
Deactivate Schedule Date: This is an optional field. You can use it to set a future date to automatically deactivate this user. We recommend adding this option where possible. For example, you may grant your customer 12 months access to their training. So you would then set this field as the purchase date plus 1 year. Your Tribal Habits platform can then automatically deactivate your users after a year.
Custom: These are your custom fields as set up in your own Tribal Habits portal. You can obtain information from the trigger (essentially from your checkout form) to populate these fields.

Action: Create/Update Topic/Article/Pathway Enrolment in Tribal Habits LMS

This is an action from Tribal Habits. It obtains the Tribal Habits enrolment code from the trigger and then enrols the learner into that course.

This is a simple action. You only need to specify the username (to match the username set in step 3) and the Enrolment Code 1 (which should be the SKU from the trigger).

Step 4 - Inviting your users (and dealing with group enrolments)

At this point, your customers who purchased an individual enrolment product, will be created (if they don't already exist), enrolled in their purchased course and then sent an invitation email! That's all there is to it!

Options to manage group enrolments

Which just leaves the management of group enrolments - when a customer purchases a product with multiple enrolments.

First, for these products, your product description (and, ideally, the purchase email) should clearly indicate the post-purchase process. Clearly explain to your customer how their group enrolment will be handled and in what timeframe. Explaining this information clearly upfront will prevent many customer questions after purchasing.

Second, you should then select a process to manage large enrolments. There are two possible alternatives.

Provide your customer with a self-registration token. You can create a token for your customer with a limited number of uses (equal to their purchased enrolments). The customer can then provide that token to their users as required for self-registration. You can learn more about tokens in this support article.
Ask your customer for a spreadsheet of learners. Alternatively, your customer could supply a spreadsheet (list) of their users (with name and email). You could then upload the list to create, invite and enrol users. You can learn more about CSV uploads in this support article.