{"id":22251,"date":"2021-10-26T17:12:57","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T11:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.aspiresys.com\/?p=22251"},"modified":"2025-04-29T07:32:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:32:20","slug":"walden-university-increased-100-self-service-registration-achieved-double-digit-growth-upgrading-sfcc-sfra-enhancing-digital-commerce-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/composable-commerce\/salesforce-commerce-cloud\/walden-university-increased-100-self-service-registration-achieved-double-digit-growth-upgrading-sfcc-sfra-enhancing-digital-commerce-site\/","title":{"rendered":"How Walden University increased 100% self-service registration &#038; achieved double-digit growth by upgrading to SFCC- SFRA and enhancing their digital commerce site."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">An impressive number of 6,932,074 students enrolled&nbsp;in&nbsp;at least one online course in 2020 alone,&nbsp;according to the latest&nbsp;Distance Education Research&nbsp;report.&nbsp;Universities&nbsp;and&nbsp;marketers&nbsp;are rapidly discovering that online courses can be an&nbsp;effective way&nbsp;to attract a diverse range of student demographics, from students living at home for the late spring to adults seeking a graduate degree.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s methods for increasing student enrolment revolve around e-commerce optimization and marketing techniques. Take a cue from Walden University, one of the largest online universities in Minneapolis, MN, US, who effectively increased self-service registration by 100% and experienced double-digit growth. If you&#8217;re curious about how to boost enrollment and provide a better online learning experience at your educational institution, keep reading!<\/p>\n<h3><em><strong>Let\u2019s explore in greater depth starting with a video from Wendy Lin, Sr.Director Product Management, Walden University <\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Walden University digitally transforms its business through Salesforce eCommerce\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pGY97CD2gJk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:2,&quot;335551620&quot;:2,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Building a strategic model designed for student success<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Innovation keeps on advancing at a confounding speed,&nbsp;which&nbsp;is&nbsp;significantly altering education in more ways than one.&nbsp;From&nbsp;a&nbsp;value-based point of view, digital technologies have paved the way for highly scalable online education models&nbsp;breaking&nbsp;the &#8220;iron triangle&#8221; of cost, quality, and accessibility. For sure, these&nbsp;models&nbsp;enable&nbsp;universities&nbsp;to rapidly and cost-effectively extend access to high-quality&nbsp;technology, which improves&nbsp;enrollment&nbsp;and encourages retention.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u201cWe first selected the platform,&nbsp;but&nbsp;we didn\u2019t know much going in, later what we learnt is, it is so important to have an&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/b><b><i><span data-contrast=\"none\">implementation partner&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/b><b><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">that truly can be your partner in every step of the way and that\u2019s what&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/b><b><i><span data-contrast=\"none\">Aspire team&nbsp;<\/span><\/i><\/b><b><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">has done for us\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/b><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;<\/span><\/b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Wendy&nbsp;Lin,&nbsp;Sr.Director&nbsp;Product Management, Walden University.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">As part of their continuous learning program, Walden University understood the need for their students to enrol in courses that kept their skills up to date and enable continuous learning. They wanted to offer this&nbsp;most conveniently, by allowing students to enrol online and choose the payment platform of their choice.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Their existing system required students to fill out their information to register themselves and wait for a phone call from an enrolment specialist who would then manually handle the admission process. While the university was able to log a good amount of traffic on their website, they recognized the opportunity to make the most of this traffic by allowing students to complete the process of registration for courses on their own online. This required an upgrade on their existing <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/3vLJzMi\">Salesforce commerce cloud implementation<\/a> in terms of maximising features, enhancing the UX, and the necessary integration with multiple payment platforms.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Aspire&nbsp;Systems- a B2C Commerce Specialist offers best in class solutions for Walden University\u2019s SFRA Implementation<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><i><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u201cI think the process really worked well and especially when it comes to the team trying to solve the issue that the business team has defined as its top priority and your team just worked really well. They&nbsp;incorporated with our daily process seamlessly and collaborated with our internal team to solve for those features, write the story and get them executed. Since mid-2020 I would say your team has delivered a significant amount of stories. The productivity is definitely up&nbsp;and that\u2019s really a showcase of how great the collaboration has been with your team!\u201d&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;Wendy Lin, Sr.&nbsp;Director Product Management, Walden University.<\/span><\/i><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">As the collaboration between Aspire Systems and Salesforce Commerce Cloud began, we realized that they had made use of only 20-30% of the available Out of the Box features. Aspire saw the opportunity to maximise this and thereby bring in greater flexibility, extendibility, scalability and better extensions to their website. The team&nbsp;upgraded their existing SFCC implementation to SFRA and&nbsp;took advantage of the Page Designer feature to enhance their UX,&nbsp;thereby&nbsp;transforming&nbsp;their e-commerce site into an engaging and visually stunning experience.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Aspire&nbsp;Systems also found an agile and scalable integration solution that could&nbsp;systematize the student admission process&nbsp;and provide a 360-degree view of their constituents, as well as offer insights into their internal practices and operations.&nbsp;With complete backend autonomy, the business unit can now manage online services while offering students an intuitive, excellent user experience.&nbsp;Aspire&nbsp;systems also helped redesign&nbsp;the&nbsp;purchase experience to align with the&nbsp;new vision for their self-checkout admission process by integrating&nbsp;courses from other e-learning websites&nbsp;as well.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Engage &amp;&nbsp;Enroll&nbsp;<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><i><span data-contrast=\"none\">&nbsp;\u201cWith the ecommerce site, the team was able to build our 100% self-service registration process and payment process. And that enabled us to reach an audience that we were probably not able to reach before.&nbsp;We have delivered double-digit growth since we&nbsp;have the site in 2020 and&nbsp;that is something that we are very proud of.\u201d&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;Wendy Lin, Sr.&nbsp;Director Product Management, Walden University.<\/span><\/i><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">With double the site traffic and leads&nbsp;since these enhancements, powered by a streamlined&nbsp;enrolment and admission process,&nbsp;Walden&nbsp;University&nbsp;now possesses&nbsp;a competitive advantage&nbsp;over&nbsp;other universities.&nbsp;Walden&nbsp;University offers students a range of payment options such as PayPal Checkout, PayPal Subscribe, and Free Purchase.&nbsp;Not only does it create&nbsp;a personalized e-learning experience&nbsp;and&nbsp;offer&nbsp;multiple payment gateways, but it also&nbsp;offers&nbsp;prospective students\u2019&nbsp;information about their courses&nbsp;using SEO recommendations&nbsp;and&nbsp;enables the business units to grow sales and improve student engagement.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Act now!<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Universities must&nbsp;evolve&nbsp;to this albeit rapidly&nbsp;changing&nbsp;education model. At the same time, the intensely fierce competition they face in an increasingly technology-driven market is also&nbsp;fueling&nbsp;the need to bring their universities online to compete.&nbsp;<\/span><i><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u201dSo to be able to have all the information at your fingertips, you don\u2019t have to talk to an&nbsp;enrollment&nbsp;specialist and you can enrol anytime you want,&nbsp;not limited to the phone call. So I think that just enables&nbsp;us to compete in the environment that we were not able to before.\u201d \u2013 Wendy<\/span><\/i><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:200,&quot;335559740&quot;:276}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><button style=\"padding: 10px 20px; font-size: 16px;\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/resources.aspiresys.com\/assets\/6177e8917048536eaff2079a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Download our Case Study<\/a><\/button><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An impressive number of 6,932,074 students enrolled&nbsp;in&nbsp;at least one online course in 2020 alone,&nbsp;according to the latest&nbsp;Distance Education Research&nbsp;report.&nbsp;Universities&nbsp;and&nbsp;marketers&nbsp;are rapidly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":34116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4662],"tags":[504,2361,3287,2942,3234,2848,2809],"practice_industry":[4518],"coauthors":[766],"class_list":["post-22251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-salesforce-commerce-cloud","tag-salesforce-commerce-cloud","tag-salesforce-commerce-cloud-implementation-partners","tag-salesforce-e-commerce","tag-salesforce-ecommerce","tag-salesforce-ecommerce-solution","tag-sfcc","tag-sfra","practice_industry-composable-commerce"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34739,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22251\/revisions\/34739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22251"},{"taxonomy":"practice_industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/practice_industry?post=22251"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspiresys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}