eLearnCommerce: Building a Platform-as-a-Service on Top of WordPress

Overview

Robert Rusu has been instrumental in developing eLearnCommerce since the release of version 1.3. The platform continues to evolve and offer a seamless user experience with numerous enhancements and improvements.

In a significant step forward, version 2.0 underwent complete refactoring to become one of the first WordPress solutions to handle all front-end processing via JavaScript and API features. This overhaul has resulted in improved performance and speed compared to its competitors. The front-end processing capabilities provide an uninterrupted and streamlined user experience, ensuring that all course materials are easily accessible and navigable.

The effort invested in the complete refactoring of eLearnCommerce in version 2.0 is a testament to the platform’s commitment to delivering an exceptional user experience and staying ahead of the curve in terms of technology and performance.

Objective & Partnership

The key objective of elearncommerce.com is to create a comprehensive and dynamic solution for those seeking a platform to host and share their educational content. eLearnCommerce is a platform as a service solution, on top of WordPress.

The platform is intended to provide an optimal environment for marketers, instructors, and coaches to share their courses.

As Corrado Izzo, CEO of eLearnCommerce, puts it: “Trust is the foundation of our decade-long relationship with Robert, and it’s a Partnership in the word’s true meaning. Robert occupied the Chief Technology Officer role for the first five years and is now our Software Development and Maintenance Partner.”

Content Types

The eLearnCommerce platform allows you to easily create an unlimited number of customized members’ areas and online course portals. Our Index Page shortcode is a powerful tool that simplifies the process, enabling you to personalize your membership area in just a few simple steps.

With its intuitive design, you can quickly and easily generate a professional-looking membership area that meets your specific needs and requirements. The shortcode streamlines the setup process and helps you to get your online course portal up and running in no time. The flexibility and versatility of our Index Page shortcode make it an ideal solution for anyone looking to create a dynamic and engaging online learning environment.

Elearncommerce has different content types:

• Content Pools
• eBooks
• List Items
• Offers
• Videos

Course Types

The eLearn Commerce platform offers comprehensive support for the creation of a wide range of course formats, facilitated by the implementation of a streamlined interface that allows for the seamless switching between course formats with a single mouse click, thereby optimizing the course creation workflow.

Most important features of the courses:

• Blink of an Eye Coursebuilder A powerful tool that enables you to manage the entire course creation process from a single page, streamlining and simplifying your workflow.
• 1-Click Course & Content Layout Activation This feature provides the ability to change the display and presentation of your Members Area, Courses, and Content with ease and efficiency, utilizing a simple mouse click.
• Video Jump Links An effective navigation tool, this feature incorporates anchor links to facilitate navigation within long-form videos.
• Certificate and Diploma Program Create an online certification program to validate and recognize student achievements with ease.
• Learning Paths Personalize the learning experience for each student by optimizing their progress and avoiding redundant teaching.
• Course Prerequisites Define a clear order for students to progress through Courses, Lessons, and Assessments.
• Embed Courses Integrate courses within other courses or any location on the WordPress website, increasing versatility and convenience.
• Cross-Browser & Device Compatibility Ensure that your courses perform and display optimally on all browsers and devices.
• Powerful Assessments Add robust assessments to your courses to effectively test student understanding, with full control over the testing journey design.

Sales Engine

The eLearnCommerce Content Sales Engine is a robust and efficient solution designed to facilitate the management and sale of your digital content.

The Sales Engine lets you set up and run a membership website in less than 5 minutes, granting or restricting access to your content and managing memberships, both free and paid.

This module offers integration with popular online payment gateways including:

• 
• 
• 

The Sales engine offers advanced features, such as automatic user role assignment, post-purchase or content access notifications, and sequential content delivery, to ensure a smooth user experience for customers.

It supports automatic login links and syncs all your Stripe subscriptions, and also integrates with popular cart solutions:

• 
• 
• 
• 

Sales Engine Features

• Free Memberships Create free memberships that give your students access to free courses and content while requiring them to have an account.
• Unlimited Membership Levels Create as many membership levels as you need, such as “Silver”, “Gold”, “Platinum”, or any others, and charge more for higher levels of access.
• One-Off Sales and Recurring Payments Accept one-off or recurring payments and start selling your content in minutes.
• Sequential Content Delivery With advanced drip feeding and content delivery timing options, eLearnCommerce offers a comprehensive solution for delivering your content.
• Content Restrictions Easily restrict or grant access to your content, works with any WordPress custom post type, page, or post.
• Content Upsell Easily upsell your content within your membership site by setting a membership upgrade and/or upsell URL on the content level for each course, execution plan, ebook, or video content.
• Responsive Shopping Cart The Sales Engine includes signup and checkout pages that are fully responsive, look great on any mobile device, and are proven to convert.
• Auto Login Links Allow members to access your content without having to log in each time with auto-login links.

Stripe Integration & Membership Sync

The Sales Engine is equipped with Stripe integration, which enables you to securely accept payments from your customers. In addition, the Sales Engine also offers Stripe Membership Sync, which automatically synchronizes your customer data with Stripe, including payment information and subscription details. This feature ensures that you can easily manage your memberships and subscriptions without any hassle.

Sub Accounts

The Sales Engine Version 1.9 offers a powerful feature that allows you to create sub-accounts, also known as umbrella accounts, group accounts, team accounts, or corporate accounts. This feature is designed to help you sell training membership programs to small businesses, teams, groups, and corporations with ease.

The sub-account owner has the ability to easily set up and manage the access to the sub-accounts, granting and revoking access to members of their team, group, or organization. This not only streamlines the process of selling membership programs but also provides a higher level of control and security over who has access to the training content.

With the Sales Engine 1.9 and eLearnCommerce, you can provide a comprehensive training solution that meets the needs of various organizations, while ensuring a smooth and secure experience for both you and your clients.

Member & Content Migration

The CSV One-Click Members Import and Notify feature within eLearnCommerce’s Content Sales Engine has been specifically designed to simplify the process of migrating users from any Membership Site to eLearnCommerce. With just a few clicks, this feature allows you to easily import members of your organization, team, or corporation into the platform.

Here are the steps to use this feature:

• Format a CSV file that contains the list of users, employees, team members, or students you want to import.
• Configure your email notifications, which will be sent to your contacts with their login information.
• Assign specific Content or Membership Plans to each user in the CSV file.
• Import the CSV file into eLearnCommerce.

Once the import process is complete, each user will receive an email notification with their access details to the eLearning Platform. They will then be able to log in, access the Content or Membership Plans that were assigned to them, and start learning. With this feature, it only takes a few seconds to set up, and it makes the process of onboarding users to your platform efficient and seamless.

The Sales Engine Version 1.9 provides a user-friendly and efficient solution for integrating your previous WordPress Membership and Form Plugins with its Third-Party Import feature. With just a few clicks, you can easily import your Content access rules and form integrations into the Sales Engine, allowing you to take advantage of its robust and custom-built capabilities.

Team Training & KPI Scorecard

A scorecard is a powerful tool that allows individuals and organizations to track their performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) over daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly cycles. In this write-up, we will explore the key features of a scorecard and how it can be used to optimize an organization’s performance.

Key Performance Indicators

A KPI is a metric used to evaluate the performance of an organization in achieving its strategic goals. For instance, a KPI such as “return rate” can have a predefined goal, such as maintaining a return rate below 10%. With a scorecard, KPIs can be configured to track progress and compare results against the defined goals.

Once the KPIs have been set up, the scorecard displays the KPIs’ progress by indicating whether the KPI’s goal has been achieved or not. The scorecard can use different colors to indicate the status of the KPIs. For instance, if the goal has been achieved, the scorecard displays the KPI in green. If the goal has not been achieved, the scorecard displays the KPI in red. Additionally, if the KPI is in progress, and the actual value falls between the predefined thresholds, the scorecard displays it in blue.

Administrators or coaches can configure the KPIs that are tracked using the scorecard. They can set specific KPIs, assign goals, and define permissions to users. The scorecard offers four types of permissions: hidden, view, edit, and edit & set goals. Hidden KPIs are not visible to users, while view KPIs can be seen but not edited. Edit KPIs can be modified, and edit & set goals KPIs allow the user to modify the KPIs and set goals for them.

If a KPI is not met or is consistently not met for three weeks, the scorecard can recommend training to the person responsible for the KPI to help them improve its performance. By providing a quick overview of an organization’s performance, a scorecard can help organizations make informed decisions and improve their strategic planning.

Types of KPIs

The scorecard supports three types of KPIs:

Number KPIs measure the count or quantity of something, percentage KPIs measure the proportion or rate of something, and currency KPIs measure the financial value of something.

Employee Management

The Scorecard feature allows you to customize access to your scorecards by team members. You can easily set up and manage access to specific scorecards and define the type of access each team member has to each metric.

In addition to customized access, there is also a default setting for scorecards. This default setting allows each user to have a personalized default scorecard, and each user can have individualized permissions for each KPI. With this level of customization and control, you can ensure that each team member has access to the information they need to be successful in their role.

Training Suggestions Based on KPIs

With eLearnCommerce, you have the ability to suggest training programs based on your team’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This feature allows you to identify areas where your team may need additional training and offer targeted content to improve their performance. By analyzing KPIs, you can make data-driven decisions to help your team reach their goals and achieve success.

Personalized Learning

The eLearncommerce platform offers a range of tools and resources for creating engaging and effective e-learning experiences.

One of the key features of eLearnCommerce is its ability to allow students to learn at their own pace. With the platform, you can create a learning experience where students have the freedom to decide how quickly they’ll move through the content, rather than dictating a fixed rhythm. This can be particularly helpful if you’re teaching a longer program that spans 12, 24, or 48 weeks.

eLearnCommerce offers personalized learning experiences for both individuals and groups. Instructors can create custom-tailored 1:1 learning journeys that are tailored to each student’s unique needs and learning style, or create learning journeys for hundreds or even thousands of learners and set them on autopilot.

eLearnCommerce is a powerful platform for creating engaging and effective e-learning experiences. Whether you’re teaching a long-term program or looking to provide personalized learning experiences to a large group of learners, this platform offers the tools and resources you need to achieve your goals.

Data Portability

All content can be exported in .json format, including all uploaded files.

• CSV Import (users and content structure)
• CSV Import using Sales Engine

Results & Impact

Results and impact

Across a decade-long partnership, eLearnCommerce evolved from a premium WordPress plugin into a full platform-as-a-service. Its version 2.0 refactor made it one of the first WordPress solutions to handle all front-end processing via JavaScript and API.

Before

• Traditional WordPress server-side processing (from version 1.3)
• Performance bound by standard page rendering

After

• One of the first WordPress solutions to handle all front-end processing via JavaScript and API
• Improved performance and speed compared to its competitors
• A full platform-as-a-service: unlimited members’ areas, a Content Sales Engine, Team Training with KPI scorecards, personalized learning journeys, and data portability

Conclusion

What began at version 1.3 has grown into a full platform-as-a-service on top of WordPress, refactored in version 2.0 to handle all front-end processing via JavaScript and API. It remains an ongoing software development and maintenance partnership.

In the client’s words: “I cannot recommend Robert enough. We look forward to working with Robert for years to come.”