Once you have published and priced your course, you can test the checkout flow to see what your student experience will be like!
In this article:
Getting Started
Before you can test your checkout, make sure that you have:
- Integrated with one of our built in payment integrations.
- Set a Course Price
- Published Your Course
- Set Up a Buy Button
- A unique email address to test with
- Optional: a coupon to test your checkout without paying full price
Email Tip
If you don't have a second email address to test with, some platforms like Gmail allow you to create multiple unique email addresses using your main your main address, which is handy for creating test student accounts!
For example, if your email address is email@gmail.com, you can create a new Thinkific user using email+student@gmail.com. Any notifications will also be delivered to your main Gmail inbox.
You can learn more about that here: Get Extra Email Addresses for your Gmail Account
Create a Coupon
On our Basic plan and higher, you can create a 100% off coupon to use for testing your checkout! If you prefer to test out an actual transaction, you can always create a coupon that reduces your course price to a low amount like $1.00. Just make sure you don't attempt a charge under about $0.50 as Stripe has a minimum charge requirement.
Learn more about coupons here: Create a Coupon
Testing Your Checkout
Keep in mind that depending on which payment processor you are using, you may have a different default checkout! These steps will work to test any of them, but if the images look a little different — that's why. Read more about our different built-in checkouts.
Once you have a unique email and a coupon created, you can get started testing!
- Logout of your Thinkific site or access it in a Private Window
- Navigate to your course landing page or any other page where you added a buy button
- Click your buy button
- Fill out your test student details
- Click Sign up
- On the payment page of your checkout, apply any coupon you have created
- Complete the checkout
And you are all set! Once you complete the checkout, you can go to the Course Player where you can check out your lessons from the student perspective.
Two-Step Checkout
Performance Checkout
Looking to run another test? You can always delete your test student and start again!
Customization Options
Your checkout pages are default pages, which means they include sections that cannot be edited, which you can learn more about here: Default Pages
However, you can always edit your colors in your Theme Settings! And if you need to change the image that appears for in your course checkout, you can see how to update that here: Edit Your Course or Bundle Image & Description