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Coursepress Signup button BEFORE payment.

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Hi there.

I have set up a new course which is accessible by payment and Market Press.

The problem is, when people view my courses, they have an option to ‘SIGN UP!” which appears BEFORE any page ready to accept payment.

This makes no sense – most people who want to take a course want to ENROLL/BUY and get sent immediately to a shopping cart.

Surely customers aren’t expected to sign up for a WordPress account and THEN sign up all over again to purchase a course are they?

Do I have something set up incorrectly? Any help appreciated.

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 21:03:12
  • Milan
    • WordPress Wizard

    Hello lowercase ,

    Hope you are well today and thanks for asking us. :slight_smile:

    This is how CoursePress Pro should work !! Shouldn’t it ? User needs to be logged in to purchase course. If user is not logged in then prompt for Sign up, once s/he completes sign up, page will be redirected to cart page.

    Are your users not able to see this flow in action ? What’s happening there ? And this if you want flow differently. Would you please tell me step by steep how flow should go ?

    Looking forward to hearing back. :slight_smile:

    Kind Regards,

    Milan

  • lowercase
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hi Milan,

    1. User wants to buy course.

    2. Users pays for course.

    3. User gets details on how to use course.

    The user doesn’t know or care whether or not they need to be logged in before-hand.

    The way things are set up now suggests this is a ‘private’ online store only able to be purchased from by users who are already signed up. That is the complete opposite of how buying a product online should work.

    Just like anything you purchase online. When I know I am paying for something and I choose to buy it – I expect to enter my details to pay for it immediately.

    There is no explanation at all that I won’t be able to do this when I click the BUY BUTTON. No explanation of what I am ‘signing up’ for. And no mention that after I sign up, I will be redirected to a payment page. The whole flow as it is now is incredibly confusing and doesn’t really resemble how things are purchased online in 2016.

    I hope that makes more sense. I want to sell courses online. When someone clicks to buy one, they need to be entering their payment details immediately – not get a random popup asking then to create a username and password.

    It seems to me the process is completely backwards. You should pay for the course and THEN sign up for the site. Imagine buying a product from a regular online store. You buy it, enter your payment details and THEN are asked if you want to create an account with username/password so you can return to the site to log in. That is the logical way to buy online used by every online store ever.

    I hope that makes a bit more sense. Am I missing something or are you intentionally making this process completely backwards from how the rest of the world sells products online?

  • Dimitris Kalliris
    • Support Team Lead

    Hello lowercase,

    I trust you’re well today and don’t mind chiming in! :slight_smile:

    The main difference here between a “normal” ecommerce web flow and CoursePress, is that CP is actually a custom post type that you grant access to it through a user registration process (and payment if applicable) so that user can go through it. So, this user registration is actually obligatory for your users as they can’t have access to a course differently. That’s why our web flow starts by connecting the user to the course platform.

    The one you’ve mentioned is indeed being used by many ecommerce platforms, as you can have either physical products that’s being shipped to an address, or downloadable products like ebooks, videos etc. which are being sent to users email like links to download the content. That doesn’t force user to create an account as it may never use it again, or can’t have any extra service given to him by doing so.

    Having said that, if you wish to alter the whole web flow created by the merging of CoursePress and MarketPress (meaning that a payment should be proccessed from non-logged-in users and then connect them with a WP user through a registration process) should require some coding so I’d propose you to use our Jobs&Pros section to get some custom development (notice that WPMU DEV staff members aren’t part of Jobs&Pros section).

    Warm regards,

    Dimitris

  • lowercase
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Thanks Dimitris and Milan,

    I understand that is how you have it working right now, but in 2016, the on-boarding process to sign up for a course is just wrong.

    Are you saying that you acknowledge this is the wrong way to do things, but it is a limitation of the Custom Post type that is forcing Coursepress Pro to do it this way?

    I am confused as to whether it is not possible because of the Custom Post type use, or not possible because you don’t think it is an issue.

    If the latter, I think we need to change things so it is more in line with how online buying works. If this is not possible, then you need to add something explaining what is happening so the user is informed why they are about to fill out and submit an entire form BEFORE they even get to the shopping cart.

    If I am confused after working as a developer (and online shopper) for more than 15 years, a new visitor is going to find it very confusing.

    Surely it is the best case scenario to just add a user registration/signup as part of the purchase and not as an entirely separate thing. Better yet, make it happen AFTER a user has paid.

    It makes little sense for me to have hundreds of signups in my system to maintain if they don’t even have to follow through and purchase the course at all.

    Does that make sense? I don’t want them in my system if they haven’t paid for a course, which is why things are currently backwards.

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello lowercase,

    Thank you for your detailed insight on this.

    I can understand your point on this. However, this is how the thing was designed from the beginning and it’s not a simple change. It would require some significant changes in plugin’s code.

    I have moved this thread to our “Features and Feedback” forum and if more members of our community will support it our devs will consider implementing such a workflow in a plugin in future.

    Kind regards,

    Adam

  • lowercase
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    I think the most surprising thing is that it was designed like this in the first place.

    This is a highly unusual on-boarding process for a user just looking to buy a course.

    Thanks for the reply though, and I hope some other people out there chime in with similar experiences. Not sure it should ever be an option to make someone sign up to wordpress before they buy a product – especially by choice like seems to be happening here.

    At the very least – you need to allow for some text to explain how people buy a course.

    A simple solution – on the sign up/create username popup just have some text.

    “Please create your username and password below where you will then be taken to the shopping cart to buy this course”.

    Simple.