When paired together, Thrive Apprentice and ThriveCart create the perfect Course Funnel that performs well (conversions) and provides a seamless user experience.
Let’s dive in and take a look at this updated tutorial and the components of a Thrive Apprentice course funnel that uses ThriveCart for payment, integrations, and protection for our courses.
This updated tutorial serves as a follow-up to a previous tutorial I created for the ThriveCart API integration with Thrive Apprentice.
This video tutorial provides a complete start-to-finish walkthrough of creating your very own course funnel using ThriveCart with Thrive Apprentice (and a bit of Thrive Architect). Below are a few key notes on the highlights from this tutorial.
Access ‘Error’ Pages in Thrive Apprentice
Custom pages can be created, or content sections that appear within the Apprentice courses themselves, when users try and access a course under one of these two circumstances:
- They are logged in but do not have access to the course
- They are not logged in
Either option provides an opportunity for us to give the user an explanation as to why they can’t access the content. Whether that’s an invitation to log in or a redirection to the sales page, both serve as a means for us to show our brand and our dedication to value.
Course Sales Page
Creating a course sales page doesn’t have to be hard! Thrive Architect, part of the very same Thrive Suite that gives us Thrive Apprentice, allows you to import a ready-made sales page from the Thrive Cloud.
You can also import a landing page that I have personally made and make available to those who pick up my Convology Pro Membership (an all-access pass to my courses, workshops, and community) as well as the special ThriveCart Workshop I released which teaches everything you need to get started with ThriveCart.
Confirmation or ‘What’s Next?’ Page
After someone purchases your course, I recommend you give them an immediate insight into what’s to come. When someone purchases one of my courses I send them to a page that reminds them to check their email, provides a link to the community, and tells them how to log in and begin consuming the content in the course.
Contrast that experience with showing them just their invoice or dropping them directly on the course index page. I encourage you to never let your students experience a “what am I supposed to do” moment.
Custom Dashboard
Thrive Architect allows us to easily create a custom dashboard to give our users a centralized place to access our content, the community, resources, support, or whatever else you’d like to expose them to in one centralized place.
My Thrive Apprentice to Master Course goes into great detail on how to create a dashboard that only logged in members can see (no membership plugin required!) and double as a login page as well. I even provide you with a template to download, import, and get started with right away.
Profile / My Account Page
A recent update to Thrive Suite gives us an element that allow users to update their user/profile account information. Linking this in the navigation or from the dashboard, and showing it only to logged in users, is a great way to let users update their information without having to contact you.
I find this is particularly important since the new user registration methods automatically generate a password for the user.
Custom Login Page
We can also create custom login pages using Thrive Suite. The login and registration element can be used either alone on a page or in conjunction with the member dashboard. A common use of this login element is to redirect to the course page.
New User Registration Emails
ThriveCart’s direct API integration with Thrive Apprentice handles the account creation process with finesse. The email used when checking out via ThriveCart is used to create the user’s account on your website. If an account already exists with that email, Thrive Apprentice simply adds access to what was purchased to the same account the user already has with the site.
When a new user is registered, Thrive Apprentice automatically emails the user their username (their email) and their password (automatically generated).
NOTE: Your website sends these emails, so you will need to make sure that you can send transactional emails. I recommend Fluent SMTP (completely 100% free) and integrate with Amazon SES, Sendinblue, or Sendgrid.
Checkout and Checkout Offers Using ThriveCart
Up until this point it may seem like a lot of the process has been handled by Thrive Suite. Well, it has. But none of that matters if the content created isn’t protected. ThriveCart allows us to build funnels with bump offers, upsells, integrate affiliate offers, and because of the API integration with Thrive we can send all of that data to our websites.
ThriveCart’s checkout experience is simple and elegant. I think that’s why I like it so much. It’s not bulky like WooCommerce. It won’t slow down your site.
ThriveCart’s checkout can be embedded directly onto your course sales page or it can be hosted on ThriveCart’s end. I use both, but more and more I’m simply sending users over to the checkout page.