setting up on-line workshops

I really wanted to share this experience with you, as it wasn’t the easiest of things for me to do - so here goes!

I love free motion embroidery (FME), and have been thinking for some time about producing an on-line workshop. In this blog I am going to outline the many many steps I have taken to make this happen.

The designs - this was the easy bit for me, I knew I wanted to be able to FME a selection of mushrooms after we had been camping in Scotland one October, and there were an amazing amount of mushrooms everywhere. I took lots of pics, and then sketched them out in my notebook. These sketches were ok, but they were just sketches, so I downloaded them to my tab, and used Sketchbook App to draw over them and creating a much more professional finish to them.

The Workshop Document - I wanted this to be on brand, so I used the template that is used for my quilting patterns, along with using fonts that are used in my patterns, website and newsletters. I wanted to be able to share photo’s of the designs stitched out and have a handy little notes section.

Course Content - I then wrote the course content, what will the workshop entail, what will you learn, what will you need and what are my handy tips. This bit I found relatively easy coming from an HR background and running workshops and coaching for nearly 30 years.

Then came the difficult bit for me - getting it all onto the website - you may want to grab a coffee at this point as it was a proper tear my hair out moment - well moments…..

I needed to create a workshop page that I could load all of my workshops onto - that was ok and not difficult to do.

I then created a page specifically for the Marvellous Mushrooms page - again not too difficult. I set up pricing here, along with how many candidates I wanted, I added in photo’s, the date and an overview of the workshop.

However I hadn’t sorted out my Cart, and how that worked, so I went into the commerce element and organised how people can pay, Paypal and Credit Card.

When you buy something on-line you receive an email, well this doesn’t happen automatically it all needs setting up, so off I went into the back office to get the “thank you for your purchase” set up. However, I also wanted to send an email with the course details on, so I went back into the back office, set up an automated email for that particular product item, and believe you me that took me an age to figure out how to set up an automated email for that particular workshop - but I did it.

Now, I send out monthly newsletters, so my email format is already set up - but I could not figure out how to set up a download of the actual course content- because who wants to buy a workshop or course without receiving the juicy bits, what they are going to learn? I kept thinking it would go as an attachment, but it doesn’t. I had to create a link to that particular document that I want the candidates to download. Now I have done it I am never going to forget it, as it took me an age to figure it out. This is now scheduled to be sent as soon as the payment is received, so candidates will get the normal receipt email and the course detail email along with instructions.

The next step was to set up another automated email 5 days prior to the workshop with all of the Zoom details, start time, finish time, and a reminder of what they need to hand.

That now brings me onto Zoom - I couldn’t figure out if I should use Zoom or Teams, I opted for Zoom in the end, which is an additional cost of £14 something per month - so that all needed setting up. Which was ok for me to do…… but it was another step I had to research.

I wanted to test what the customer experience is like buying this workshop, which I could do with my website provider - again that was something I had to go and research. I wanted to check that everything worked from looking up the course to adding it to the cart to receiving all of the correct emails and receipts.

My blog is not intended to put anybody off, what I wanted to do is share with you the different steps I had to take to make this happen. For me - it was a huge amount of steps that I broke down into reasonably manageable chunks.

Now - I just need people to sign up to the workshop and we can all have a good time stitching out mushrooms!

Oh hang on - what about the technology required for the workshops and camera angles and all that jazz - well I think that is a blog for another day!