Ecommerce agencies for education brands

Selling to institutions is procurement

Schools and universities buy on purchase orders, against budgets, with approval chains and payment on terms. They frequently need a quote before an order, they may be tax-exempt, and the person browsing is rarely the person authorised to commit funds.

That is B2B ecommerce with a specific accent: account registration that verifies an institution, quote-to-order flows, purchase order payment, and quite often a requirement to be on an approved supplier framework. Budget cycles also mean demand is seasonal in a way that is completely predictable and should shape stock and staffing.

Selling learning is enrolment

Courses are not products with inventory. They have cohorts, start dates, prerequisites, capacity limits and waiting lists; they may be paid in instalments; and what the customer buys is access, delivered by a learning platform rather than a warehouse.

The store’s job here is the shop front and the payment, with enrolment handed cleanly to whatever system runs the teaching. Trying to make an ecommerce platform do the teaching is the usual mistake.

Accessibility is not optional here

Public-sector education bodies in many jurisdictions have binding accessibility obligations, and suppliers are asked to evidence conformance. Even where the legal duty sits with the institution rather than with you, an accessibility statement and a conformance report are routinely requested during procurement. Ask any agency what standard they build to and whether they have produced such a report before.

Questions worth asking

• Have you built purchase order checkout and quote requests?
• How is institutional tax exemption verified and applied?
• Which learning platform have you integrated, and how is enrolment passed?
• What accessibility conformance can you evidence?
• How are cohorts, capacity and waiting lists handled?