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E-Learning Websites | How To Build Online Course Platform 2020?

By June 4, 2020December 18th, 202014 Comments

Half of the world is currently practicing so-called social distancing. Even when we’re all sitting at home, we still need to live a life. We need to work. We need to study. That why more and more e-learning websites come into the scene.

In the past few years, the worldwide e-learning market has been showing stable growth. The e-learning market size is set to exceed USD 375 billion by 2026, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. Moreover, the approximate annual revenue of Udemy is $28M in comparison to Coursera — $140M and Udacity $67.5M.

It’s unsurprising that online course platforms like Udemy, Coursera or EdX come to take a piece of that sweet pie. But if you want to build a successful e-learning website, a combination of ideas with a reliable learning management system will turn your business into a billion-dollar brand name.

So, how to create an online learning platform that could succeed? What models and must-have features are there? How much does it cost to make an educational website for learning new skills? In this article, we will answer all the questions and beyond.

Read also: How to build a telemedicine app?

Current online learning trends

Nowadays, E-learning is becoming one of the most promising software development markets. Mobiles are getting more affordable. Internet connectivity is also getting faster and more available. Because of the increasing demand for e-learning, many companies are shifting their cores to providing custom eLearning services.

e-learning market

Additionally, the internet is full of advice about what to do during quarantine time now. The crisis opens a door for the e-learning sector that millions of people choose to learn online via e-learning websites like Udemy. Adults can work as well as gain new knowledge. Their children will be better to join the class online. Moreover, some companies have created their own training platform to equip skills of importance for employees.

In other words, building skills with online courses is a cost-saving strategy people use these days. So that, EdTech platforms for language learning as well as MOOCs report are enjoying an increased number of users. This has caused an increasing number of people using an e-learning platform for online learning, video tutoring, video conferencing, etc.

But the e-learning industry is still facing challenges such as quality of learning materials, community, and support.

common concern in e-learning
Concerns about choosing online education in the U.S. 2019 by Statista

Advantages of building an e-learning website

Does your company really need e-learning system development? Learners seem busy at work and have limited attention to learning. So, if there is an open-source learning platform that do not occupy too much time, they are always eager to learn.

Here are the top four advantages of an online learning website!

  • Save time – As a business owner, you have to spend time looking for trainers, resources, or venue. Instead, you develop a course and send out the link to a course.
  • Reduce cost – Another benefit of e-learning is the cost-effectiveness. You can reduce a lot of travel expenses for employees and instructors or external learning materials.
  • Improve productivity – Instead of traditional training methods, online education platforms allow users to learn anywhere, anytime with the focused, key information that meets their needs.
  • Increase employee retention – One of the biggest problems companies face – employee turnover can now be eased with the e-learning approach. Not only increasing performance, but e-learning also add more quality in their life.

Types of website for eLearning

At AgileTech, depending on the needs of the customer, we will create an e-learning website considering the type of content they want to deliver. In general, students like fun and engaging courses online through videos, interactive slides, and even games. While companies need remote training software for learning new skills. So the first thing you need to keep in mind is the type of site.

Online learning platforms 

Here learners can take courses they like independently. These courses are similar to offline classes: users study remotely through video, image, text, audio, and PDF files.

In addition, administrators can track progress and issue a certificate upon course completion. The most popular online course platform are:

E-learning marketplaces 

These platforms allow learners to have online one-to-one classes with educators. Students can choose the teacher they need along with the course. They can also offer different subjects.

Moreover, E-learning marketplaces support many platforms including quizzes, elements of gamification, educational videos, and more depending on the subject. So that learners don’t feel overwhelmed with many tasks.

Must-have features for e-learning website

Even when e-learning offers many benefits, it also presents challenges. If you don’t create an e-learning site with adequate flexibility, it is hard to keep people motivated and use your website as a helpful aid for their studies.

In order to do that, you should understand your target customers and their needs:

  • Ease to use – One of the biggest problems of educational websites is that you can’t make them focus on studying more than entertaining content. In most cases, you need to create content that catches users to use it right away.
  • Necessity – If you create sites for free online education, let’s define the scopes first. How do you find people that need it in their work? How to help improve their professional skills and progress up the career ladder?
  • Marketing – Push notifications and ads on social media are also a good idea. If you do it in the right place and time, it yields positive results.

Not only the uniqueness is valuable in the market of e-learning systems, but the quality of the core function is also important. If you want to deal with the content of an e-learning website, a dedicated development team‘s aids will make the platform most useful for customers, since the team provides deep understanding of the target through role-playing techniques and intensive business analyses.

So here’re the features list that any e-learning website need to succeed:

  • Authorization and user profiles
  • Search system
  • Dashboard
  • Course creation
  • Course descriptions
  • Payment
  • Push notifications
  • Admin panel

1. Authorization and user profiles

First, every modern platform should provide users with a quick and easy sign-up. The most popular way is using email/ phone number with a password. Or signing via social accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google is quite convenient.

On the e-learning website like Udemy or Coursera, there are two basic types of users:

Learners’ profile

  • User information
  • Profile setting
  • Wishlist
  • Active and completed courses
  • Achievements like certificates, credits, points, etc.

Professionals’ profile

  • Ability to create courses
  • Detailed statistics about the degree they present
online courses coursera

2. Search system

Any e-learning platform has a list of courses. How to prefer users with the most convenient search tool? Basically, a comfortable browsing experience should have:

  • Search box by keyword
  • Categories and subcategories on the main page
  • Courses recommendations like the latest, most popular or based on recent activity
  • Search filters by category, language, price, teacher, etc.
udemy online course learn anything on your schedule

3. Dashboard

The dashboard should provide learners and providers the ability to monitor their progress. For instance, there are some basic features that should be included:

For learners

  • Number of courses
  • The progress status
  • The number of hours spent on course

For providers

  • List of instructor’s courses
  • Performance dashboards (students that enrolled in, ratings, reviews and revenue)

4. Course creation

The course creation is the core feature of any MOOC platform. This tool should be simple and user-friendly for uploading learning materials. For example, you can allow users to add various types of content like video, audio, images, slides, PDFs. Moreover, teachers should be encouraged to create quizzes, assignments, tests, etc.

5. Course descriptions

To engage more learners, the visual representation of the course can be as rich as you like: tests, quizzes, videos, podcasts, interactive textbooks. There is functionality that every online class should have:

  • Description
  • Information about the creators
  • Start and end dates
  • Ratings and reviews
  • Certificates or grades info
  • Feedback and rating system
online classes for Skillshare

6. Payment

Most of the online e-learning website is based on paid courses. Therefore, you should provide users a convenient payment method for students as well as teachers. And when it comes to paying online, you have to keep in mind with security. Some popular methods are:

  • Credit cards
  • Paypal
  • AirPay, MoMo

7. Push notifications

When users learn new skills online, they tend to forget about their assignments.  Notifications and also play as a big motivator that gives users recognition and feedbacks. If you create an eLearning website, you need to integrate push notifications like:

  • Automated emails
  • Pop-up notifications
  • Notifying about the new course

8. Admin panel

Finally, automated reports and progress tracking will help teachers have free time to polish their online courses and build new ones. Besides, it also helps students check statistics, on-going courses, etc.

Read also: How to build a successful online food ordering website?

How to create e-learning websites?

elearning websites, how to build learning website like Udemy or Coursera, agiletech

You’ve already known the essential features for every e-learning platform. Now, let’s move to the most exciting part – the creation of the product that people will love. We will start with basic things like “How to start an online course website?”, “How to understand the target audience?”. Then we will move to the testing process and launch a final product to market.

1. Define your target customer

There are five things you need to handle:

  • Age
  • Interests
  • Gender
  • Social media
  • What sites do they read?
  • Where you can find them?

Then based on that information, you can find out personalized content. Define which courses you’d like to add first to your online education platform. Knowing your target audience well helps you with marketing decisions as well.

Next, take a look at the competitors, study from popular website e-learning. What they are offering? What are their strong and weak points? Which features you can improve through their lessons? Which features you can leverage as a killer differentiator?

Read also: Discover 6 content marketing tools!

2. Great user experience

Actually, e-learning website design is quite a complex thing to do. As a startup owner, you need to provide a user experience that’s smooth and logical. The simpler processes, the more users will engage with your system.

You need to map users’ stories by the template: Type of user -> Their goals -> Some reasons. For example, as a learner, I want to use the site with good design, different content types. So that I can easily study as well as find interest in learning.

3. Mobile friendly

If we’re talking about a multi-course platform, the usual approach is to start with building a learning management website and add mobile apps later. Most people prefer studying at home with a computer, after all. However, any website must be mobile-friendly and adaptable to different screens.

4. Hire a dedicated team

If you can’t do everything on your own, looking for a reliable vendor is a good idea. Your software development team will help you create a test version of your platforms with only essential features. After developing the test version of your online education platform, it’s time to show it to the world.

You’ll need a development team including:

  • Project manager
  • Web designer
  • Frontend developer
  • Backend developer
  • UI/UX designers
  • QA engineers

But how to find the right outsourcing partner? There are 2 options:

  • Select vendors from leading review platforms like Goodfirms.
  • Sort companies by countries, their hourly rates, and read reviews from previous clients.

How much does e-learning web development cost?

The price of e-learning websites development varies greatly. It’s no surprise that every feature you add will increase the budget. The more complicated the platform is, the more time devs will spend working on its functionality. And the more it’s going to cost you.

Lastly, the cost of a website depends on the developer’s hourly rate. It varies from country to country:

  • United States: $50 – $150/hour
  • Western Europe: $40-60/hour
  • Eastern Europe: $25 – $50/hour
  • Vietnam: $10-25$/hour

Based on the set of features listed above, developing a web platform for e-learning should take about three months or above (based on features or complex technologies). So if you hire a development team in Vietnam, the cost of an e-learning website will range from $15,000 to $54,000.

About AgileTech

By providing multiple needs and services, AgileTech is here to ensure your technology project as a successful element of your omnichannel strategy.

We have expert Project Managers along with excellent teams who have delivered the best products to customers in more than 10 countries, namely the U.S, U.K, Germany, France, and Singapore.

As a leading mobile development company in Vietnam, we have huge experiences in many fields including e-commerce, car-sharing platform, health care, Livestream, and many more.

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