Trial lessons are a great way to show what your courses have to offer. You'll allow parents or clients to get a better understanding of the content and teaching style without having to commit right away. You're helping them let go of concerns about whether a course is right for them or their child.

This approach is ideal not only for attracting new clients, but also for launching new locations or introducing new types of courses. Trial lessons are the first step to building trust and success.

The Trial Lessons feature is set in the course settings in the Trial tile. Get started by clicking Change.

Step-by-step trial lesson settings

To offer trial lessons, you need to set up the following:

1. Trial type
   
2. Limit type
   
3. Capacity
   
4. Groups included in trial
   

1. Trial type

The first step is to decide whether you want the trial to be free or chargeable. If you choose to make the hours chargeable, the app will automatically use the already set unit price per lesson when calculating the fee per trial lesson.

If you opt for the Interest group option, the client can sign up for the selected group for a trial lesson, but the specific lesson date will be assigned by you. This feature works similarly to the Interest group in course, where the administrator then divides clients into groups with designated dates.

2. Limit type

The Trial Lesson Limit Type is a setting available when you select a free or paid trial lesson that determines how many lessons you want to offer the opportunity to sign up for.
There are three types of limitation:

1. No limitation
   
2. By number of days
   
3. By number of events/lessons
   

No limitation

If you set a no limit, clients will be able to sign up for any upcoming date. The registration form will thus show all available dates as options for the trial lesson.

By number of days

Trial lessons are limited by the number of days a client can see available events to sign up.

Example: The group runs from 6.1. to 30.3. with dates on Mondays and Wednesdays. The limit is set to 10 days. If a client signs up on 12/1, the registration form will show them the option to sign up for a trial lesson on dates from 1/13 to 1/22 inclusive.

By number of events/lessons

If you only want to offer a certain number of upcoming lessons, regardless of the date, you set a limitation by number. The registration form will then only display the number of events you specify.

Capacity

Two options are available for setting the capacity of the events: the current available capacity and extra capacity.

Current available capacity

If you select the current available capacity option, clients can only choose a trial lesson if the group capacity for that event is not filled - the available places from both the main and extra capacity are added together and offered for trial lessons.

Example: Group capacity is 10. Global extra capacity of 1 and group extra capacity of 1 are added to this, giving a total capacity of 12. If 2 clients sign out of the group capacity, there will be 4 vacancies for trial classes - 2 from the extra capacity and 2 released from the group capacity.

Extra capacity

If you select the extra capacity option, clients can only book a trial lesson from the extra capacity, not just from the capacity set on the group. The group capacity is reserved for full registrations, while the extra capacity is for trial lessons.

Example: Group capacity is 10. To this is added a global extra capacity of 1 and a group extra capacity of 1, making a total of 2 extra capacity. Only these 2 places are available for trial lessons, and the group capacity remains intact even if someone cancels out of the lesson.

Idea: The use of additional capacity for trial lessons helps to maintain the capacity reserved for properly enrolled participants. The extra capacity reserved for trial lessons allows for a clear separation of places, making it easier to manage and organise lessons.

Groups included in trial

The final step is to select the groups in which you plan to offer trial lessons. Click Change to see a list of active groups in the appropriate billing periods.

Note:
  If you selected Interest groups in the previous step when selecting the Trial Type, you need to have previously created groups of the Interest type for which you want to activate the Trial Lesson feature.

Tip! You can enable trial lessons at the group level in the Settings tile under Group Properties by selecting the check box. However, if the trial lessons feature is not enabled for the course, this setting will be ignored and a message will be displayed.

What a trial lesson in Zooza looks like

In the registration detail

The moment a client signs up for a trial lesson via the registration form, the registration detail will show the status Trial started. Below it, a list of the steps that will follow is displayed:

1. The date the trial registration was created
   
2. The date on which the trial lesson will take place
   
3. Dates related to sending notifications to register for the course
   

Alert! If you do not have notification automation enabled, information about when notifications are sent will not be displayed. You will only see the actions resulting from the current trial lessons settings on the course.

Warning! Trial lessons have different statuses than standard course registrations:

1. Trial started - Valid from the date of registration to the time of the actual lesson.
   
2. Trial ended - If automatic notifications are set up, a notification with a URL to the pre-populated course registration form will automatically be sent to the client when the lesson is completed.
   
3. Trial won - Occurs after the client has successfully registered for the course.
   
4. Trial lost - Occurs in following cases:
   
1. Attendance form for the term is not filled out and the event has already occurred.
   
2. The client does not respond to automatic notifications about the opportunity to enroll in the course after completing the trial lesson.
   

On the lesson/event

In the client´s profile

Automation settings

1. Information about the possibility to register for the full course with a link to the pre-populated registration form.
   
2. 2 reminders after the number of days you set, if the client has not yet registered.
   
3. Change of status to Trial lost if the client does not respond to the sent link, with an option to inform them of this change.
   
4. You can review and edit all notifications in the Communication section under Message Templates. You can read instructions on how to do this here.
   

Registering for the course after completing the trial lesson

1. client can register himself after receiving an automatic notification
   
2. or you can help them to register directly through the system
   

Client registration

Login by the administrator

1.     In the trial registration details, click on Enroll.
   
   
2. A window will appear with information about the group you can register the client to.
   
   
3. After selecting the group, set the amount you expect to pay for registration and click Continue.  If you have payment templates set up on the group, the application will automatically offer them to you and take you to the payment plan settings.
   
   
   
4. Check the details you have entered and confirm your registration by clicking Continue.
   
   
   
5. Once you have successfully registered for the course, the status of the trial will change to Trial won.
   
   

Warning! After enrolling in the course, the client will receive a new variable symbol. However, for better clarity, the trial and regular registration remain linked, allowing you to easily check them.