Easy step-by-step Guide: Build an online course with Wix

Everyone of us knows something very well. You are not an exception. You already have a skill that many people want. Now you want to make money by teaching others your skill online. But how are you going to setup your online course?

You have a few options. Option number one is to set up your course on the platforms like Udemy and Coursera. This option is relatively easy. The platforms take care of everything for you. Payment, membership, videos hosting, etc. Your only job is to make the videos and upload them to the platforms. The down size is that you pay 15 to 30 percents commission whenever you sell your course. You don’t want that especially when you work hard to sell your course.

Option number two is to build your own website and set up the course yourself. The cheapest option is WordPress. You pay no commission whatsoever. WordPress is awesome for building a blog. But if you want to set up a course with WordPress, you are in trouble. It is not an easy task. 

You are not out of luck. In my opinion this third option is your best bet. That is to setup your course on a website builder like Wix. Besides a small fee per month ($20-$50), you pay nothing else. Plus, the process to setup a course is easy and fast. Assuming you already have the course video content, the setup only takes a few hours. Then you can start selling your course.

No worry if you have zero experience with Wix. I will guide you. Step by step. The instruction is below.

• 1. Process overview
• 2. Setup landing page
• 3. Setup payment plan
• 4. Setup membership
• 5. Structure your course
• 6. Setup course module
• 7. Add Course Video Content
• 8. Display Course Module and Content

1. Process Overview

Before you start working on every detail, I want you to see the big picture. The final product. The process your customers go through to get your course.

The beginning of every online course on the internet is the landing page. The landing page tells your customers everything they need to know about your course. Course objectives, course content, customer reviews, prices etc… And a clear purchase button.  

Your online marketing will bring people to the landing page. They take a look at your landing page and are convinced that your course is exactly what they are looking for. They click the purchase button. 

Now you show your customers the payment plans: one time plan, or recurring plan, or both. Your customers pick one. Before your customers pay, they must create an account on your website. Because the account hides the course from the public. Having the account is the only way to access your course.

Then your customers pay. They can use credit cards or online payment methods like PayPal. After the payment completes, your customers are redirected to the account page. Now they can see the course modules. They click on each module. And the next thing they see is a list of videos for that module.

2. Setup Landing Page

It is time to set up your course. The first step is to set up the course landing page. 

The purpose of the landing page is to draw your visitors’ attention to the page content which delivers the values of your course. Therefore, the landing page should not have any distraction of a normal web page. All menus, header, footer must disappear. The two things that matter the most are the content and the call to action. In the instruction below, I will show you how to create a new page, and get rid of the header and the footer so that the page becomes a landing page. 

Steps to create a landing page:

• 1. Click “Menus & Pages” icon
• 2. Click + Add Page
• 3. Rename the page
• 4. Go to page “Settings”
• 5. Click Page Info, switch on “Hide from menu” option 
• 6. Click Layouts, select “No Header & Footer” option

3. Setup Payment Plan

Assuming you do an excellent job at selling the course. Now your customers want to pay and get the access. Your next step is to set up the payment plans. 

Many times one payment plan doesn’t fit all. Some customers prefer paying once for your course. Other don’t have the cash and like to pay monthly, or weekly. You can create multiple payment plans in Wix so that you can serve many customers. You will find the instruction below. 

Please note that Wix requires a paid subscription before you can accept any payment from your customers. If you are going to buy your subscription, please use my affiliate link here. I will receive a small commission from Wix. I much appreciate your support.

Steps to add payment plan:

• 1. Click “Add Apps icon”
• 2. Type “prices and plans” in Search App bar
• 3. Add Paid Plans by Wix
• 4. Click Manage Plans
• 5. Click Create Plan
• 6. Choose a plan under “Pricing and Duration”
• 7. Fill out plan details (like price, duration, etc.)
• 8. Fill out “Plan Name” under “Plan Info”
• 9. Add what your plan includes
• 10. Fill out “Plan Policy Text” under “Plan Policies”
• 11. Click Save
• 12. Repeat the steps to create more plans 

Sometimes you want to give your customers an extra incentive. You create a payment plan that gives the most value. And you want to highlight that plan so that your customers see it better. Technically it is very simple in Wix. You only need to perform a few steps below. 

Steps to highlight a best value payment plan:

• 1. Click “Settings”
• 2. Select “Settings” menu
• 3. Select a plan under “Highlighted Plan”

4. Setup Membership

The next step is to ask your customers to create an account or membership before they are given the access to your course. The account or membership will make your job of managing the course access much easier. Wix does provide the membership function. Your work is to activate it.

Add member area to your site:

• 1. Click Add icon
• 2. Select Members menu
• 3. Click Add to Site

5. Structure Your Course  

By now you have setup a solid structure to support the payment and the access to your course. The next step is to organize and add the course content. 

The best organization for your course content is to divide it into multiple modules. Each module has one or more video lessons related to the topic of that module. In the future if you want to add more content to your course, you can do so with ease.

Another benefit of the module structure is that you can give out a trial version of your course. For example, your course price is 1000$. It’s a lot of money. People hesitate to buy because they have not tasted it. You can solve this issue by selling 100$ access to the first module of the course. If the customers enjoy it and want more, they can pay the remaining 900$ and have access to every module.

6. Setup Course Module

The next step is to activate Dev Mode for your site. The Dev Mode enables Wix Database function on your site. Then you use the database to organize your course content.

Enable Dev Mode

• 1. Select Dev Mode menu
• 2. Click Turn on Dev Mode

Wix database is a set of many collections. Each collection is like an excel sheet. Each collection has many rows and columns. To organize your course, you create one collection for each module. The instruction is below.

Create a collection for each module

• 1. Click “Content Manager” icon
• 2. Click Create New Collection
• 3. Name the new collection Module 1
• 4. Select “Custom Use” for “What’s this collection for?”
• 5. Click Set Custom Permissions
• 6. Select “Site Member” for “Who can read content from this collection?”
• 7. Select “Admin” for “Who can create content for this collection?”
• 8. Select “Admin” for “Who can update content from this collection?”
• 9. Select “Admin” for “Who can delete content from this collection?”
• 10. Click “Set & Create Collection”

Each row in the collection is one lesson. Each column of the row is a piece of your lesson. For example, each lesson in my example has four pieces of information: the title, the video, the lesson in text, and the download note. Then I create one column (or field) for each piece. Your lesson structure may be different from mine. That is okay. You simply change the fields and field types to fit your requirement. 

Create the collection structure

• 1. Add another Field, and name it “Video Url”
• 2. Select Field Type “URL” 
• 3. Add another Field, and name it “Lesson”
• 4. Select Field Type “Rich Text” 
• 5. Add another Field, and name it “Download Note”
• 6. Select Field Type “Document”

7. Add Course Video Content

The next step is to add the lesson content to your course module. In the below instruction, the Youtube videos are public. Everyone can see them without paying on Youtube. If you decide to use Youtube or Vimeo to host your videos, remember to keep them private.

Steps to add new video content. Repeat the steps if you want to add more lesson.

• 1. Click “New Item”
• 2. Enter lesson title to “Title” Field
• 3. Enter video url
• 4. Type lesson text to “Lesson” Field
• 5. Click Download Note Field, click Add icon to add a PDF file
• 6. Click Sync SandBox to Live

8. Display Course Module and Content

You are so close to complete your setup. The final steps is to setup a web page for each course module.

You create a course module web page just like you create other web page in Wix. However, you must specify the permissions to see the web page. The permissions only allow paid members to access your course. You can even specify which payment plan is allowed to view which module.

Create new page for each module, and Add permission

• 1. Click Menus & Pages icon
• 2. Select Member Pages
• 3. Click “+ Add a New Page”
• 4. Name the page as module 1
• 5.  Click the module page “Settings”
• 6. Click “Permissions” tab
• 7. Select “Members Only” for Who can view this page?
• 8. Select “Only selected members or paying customers”
• 9. Select payment plans that have access to the modules under “Select from your Paid Plants”  

In Wix, the function of a dataset is to connect the web page with the database. You need a dataset on each page to display the course module. 

Add module dataset

• 1. Click Content Manager
• 2. Select “Add Content Elements” menu
• 3. Click Dataset
• 4. Choose “Module 1”

The repeater takes the content from the dataset and display it nicely on the screen. The below instruction shows you how to add a repeater, resize it, and add lesson elements like videos, notes, texts.

Add a Course Repeater

• 1. Click Add icon
• 2. Select “Lists & Grids”
• 3. Select a list repeater
• 4. Click “Connect to Data” button
• 5. Select “Module 1 dataset” under Connect a dataset
• 6. Relocate the repeater
• 7. Resize item area
• 8. Delete all elements in the repeater

Add content elements to each item of the repeater

• 1. Add a lesson title
• 2. Add a video player
• 3. Add a lesson text
• 4. Add download file note 

Conclusion

This post is aimed to give you the fastest way to setup your online course. Then start selling and grow your online business. I hope you get a lot of values from it. Let me know in the comment below if you have any question.