WooCommerce Integration for Your Moodle Store: All You Need To Know

Tejas Patil

If you’ve ever managed a WooCommerce-based site, it’s no big deal to be disappointed by the lack of e-commerce features in Moodle. For all its goodness in the game of eLearning, it falls significantly short of what is offered in terms of e-commerce functionality. Besides a basic purchase option coupled with PayPal’s payment processing, you don’t get much else to sell your courses on a Moodle site.

Therefore, it’s obvious to wonder if Moodle can have at least some functionality of WooCommerce. And here’s the good news—it’s possible! You can integrate your Moodle site with a WooCommerce site to leverage the full e-commerce functionality for your eLearning business. Moreover, the Moodle-WooCommerce integration doesn’t even require you to have a lot of technical expertise, thanks to a nifty plugin available for it. 

Which plugin is it, and how can you use it to integrate your Moodle site with WooCommerce? That’s what we’re going to explore in this article. 

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a plugin developed to complement websites designed on WordPress with e-commerce functionality. It is a flexible solution for transforming a normal WordPress website into a fully functional e-commerce store. Today, WordPress with WooCommerce is one of the leading e-commerce platforms helping online stores manage transactions without hassle. It helps set up product pages, manage orders, enable multiple payment gateways, offer sales and discounts, and smoothly operate the store.

Created with a user-friendly interface, WooCommerce is easy to set up and does not require the user to be an IT expert. Even first-time users can get started with it easily and learn their way around its features within a few days.

How Moodle-WooCommerce Integration Works?

The Moodle-WooCommerce integration is made possible with the help of the Edwiser Bridge plugin. It’s a WordPress and WooCommerce plugin that plugs into both WooCommerce and your Moodle site to facilitate seamless and real-time transfer of data between them. It creates WooCommerce product pages for each of your courses listed on the Moodle site, and as someone purchases a course, it also creates a user account for them on the Moodle site with the same login credentials that they used for the WooCommerce site. 

Read: Can I use WooCommerce to sell Moodle™ courses?

Benefits of WooCommerce Integration With Moodle Store

There are several benefits of integrating WooCommerce into your Moodle site. Some major ones among them include:

#1. Better User Experience

The first major advantage is that of user experience. The user experience (UX) offered by WooCommerce is simply much better than the UX of Moodle, as there are thousands of well-designed e-commerce themes available to design a WooCommerce site. Same goes for customization plugins as well. You can design far more eye-catching product pages for your courses and provide a far better checkout experience to students on a WooCommerce site compared to a Moodle site.  

#2. Multiple Payment Options

The Moodle-WooCommerce integration through Edwiser Bridge also opens the gateway for offering multiple payment options. Not only there’s support for multiple payment gateways but also you can accept payments through credit cards, debit cards, Stripe, AliPay, UPI, cryptocurrency, gift vouchers, and many other innovative payment options.

#3. Advanced e-commerce features

Moodle-WooCommerce integration also adds many advanced features to your eLearning site. For instance, you get the opportunity to sell multiple related courses in a bundle. You also get the ability to cross-sell your courses by suggesting them right after someone purchases a related course. Finally, you also get the features to sell your courses to organizations on a subscription-based model or in bulk memberships. All these features can not only provide lucrative learning opportunities to your learners but also increase your course sales.

#4. Better Marketing

Nothing sells without marketing. And when it comes to digital products like online courses, digital marketing is necessary. The integration of WooCommerce with Moodle also opens a plethora of marketing options for your Moodle site. There are hundreds of WordPress plugins available to help you market your courses easily through email marketing, social media marketing, and much more. This is, again, something you can’t get with Moodle alone. 

Read: The Major Advantages and Disadvantages of Using WooCommerce

Integration of WooCommerce With Moodle Store: Prerequisites 

To maintain a hassle-free integration process, certain prerequisites need to be considered. It will help the course creators manage the content on their Moodle courses and generate recurring income.

• Firstly, you need to have a WordPress-based self-hosted site and a Moodle site
• Next, the WooCommerce plugin should be installed on your WordPress site. All other site design and setup activities (i.e., adding the name, logo, installation of theme, designing of demo product pages, etc.) should also be completed, and the site should be in a fully functional state
• The Edwiser Bridge plugin should also be installed before initiating the Moodle-WooCommerce integration
• Finally, the WooCommerce integration functionality is a part of Edwiser Bridge Pro version, so buying the license of Edwiser Bridge Pro is also something that must be done before we begin the integration process.

How to Integrate WooCommerce Site With Moodle Site: Step-by-Step Instructions

The entire process of integrating a Moodle site with a WooCommerce site can be divided into three parts: 

• Installation and activation of Edwiser Bridge plugin
• Connecting WordPress and Moodle sites using the plugin
• WooCommerce integration

The complete process involved in both these steps is outlined below.

Installing and Activating Edwiser Bridge

1. First of all, download or purchase the Edwiser Bridge plugin from its official page. The free version can be downloaded instantly, while for the Pro version, you need to purchase the license key by paying its price. The license key, once purchased, is sent to your registered email address (along with a link to download the Pro extension)
2. After downloading/purchasing the plugin, you need to go to the Admin area of your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Plugins section
3. There, you’ll find the “Upload” button. Click on it
4. Choose the downloaded plugin file and upload your plugin. Once chosen, click the Upload button and wait until it’s finished
5. Lastly, hit the “Activate” button to activate the plugin

Now you’ve completed the installation and activation of the Edwiser Bridge plugin on your Moodle site. The next step is to connect it to your Moodle site. Let’s see how it’s done.

Connecting Your Moodle Site to WordPress Site

6. Once you activate the Edwiser Bridge plugin, it automatically takes you to its Welcome page. There you find a button to skip straightaway to the settings. Click it to land on the Edwiser Bridge settings page
7. There, you’ll find a “Connection Settings” tab. Click on it
8. You’ll be asked for only two things now—your Moodle site URL and a Moodle Access Token. You can enter the site URL easily, as it’s the URL of your Moodle site. For Moodle Access Token, you need to navigate to the Site Administration area of your Moodle site and install the Edwiser Bridge Moodle extension
9. You may be asked to upgrade your Moodle database after it. If it happens, upgrade the database
10. Navigate to ‘New Settings – Edwiser Bridge’ page
11. Click on the “Click Here” button to navigate to the Edwiser Bridge Settings page
12. Check the following checkboxes:

13. Save your changes. Now go to the Web Service Settings page
14. Create a new web service for your WordPress site by entering the necessary details. After you create the service, a URL and access token will be generated and shown to you in a pop-up. Copy them
15. Next, navigate to the WordPress Site Settings page and add your WordPress site there by adding the site URL as well as the access token you generated in the last step

16. Now, you need to enable the two-way synchronization. To do so, navigate to the Sync settings of your Edwiser Bridge Moodle extension and make sure the following checkboxes are enabled:

17. Paste your Access Token in the WordPress Connection Settings page of Edwiser Bridge that you opened in Step #7. Save the changes. You’ll see a success message once your site has been connected

That’s it! Your Moodle site is connected to the WordPress site now. Let’s move to the next part now.

Moodle-WooCommerce Integration

Now we’re ready to go ahead with the Moodle-WooCommerce integration thing. Here are the steps required to do so:

18. When you purchased Edwiser Bridge Pro, you might have received an email with a download link and a license key. Download the WooCommerce Integration plugin from that link, and install it by uploading it from the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard
19. Once installed, activate the plugin. This plugin works as an extension for Edwiser Bridge
20. Now go to the Edwiser Bridge >> Settings >> Licenses tab and enter the license key that you received in your email
21. Click the “Activate License” button

That’s it. Now your Moodle site is connected to WooCommerce, and you’re ready to start creating products for each of your courses. Detailed instructions for the same can be found in this video:

Conclusion

The Moodle-WooCommerce integration can significantly improve the overall user experience of your Moodle site. It can also create new opportunities for you to monetize your course by course bundling, subscription-based selling, or cross-selling. With Edwiser Bridge making this integration super easy, it’s now a no-brainer that you should go for it if you want to grow your eLearning business significantly. Give it a shot and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Also, keep visiting us to learn about more interesting Moodle tips and tricks.