How to Create e-Learning Platforms Like Udemy or Coursera

    Tuesday, August 4, 202013 min read7168 views
    How to Create e-Learning Platforms Like Udemy or Coursera

    In recent years the surging price of a college education has led many to look for alternative educational platforms that provide a high-quality education at minimal or no cost. This is actually why the tendency to fabricate an e-learning site like Coursera and Udemy has risen in the market at the present time. It is not the traditional subjects we are talking about. With the whole gamut of knowledge around us it is nearly impossible to fence out what is important and what is not.

    The pleasant thing about the different e-learning sites is the way that one can take in anything from that point. From math to programming to stoneware making, a wide range of information is accessible on these stages. The rising fame of e-learning sites unquestionably makes it a good thought for a business. There are several entrepreneurs who are looking for a trusted web app development company to confide in order to manifest their thoughts for business. However, the main inquiry is how to make a site like Udemy, Coursera, and the same? Hereafter we discuss the steps to create an eLearning website like Udemy. Let's begin with learning about the features that every eLearning website like Udemy should have.

    Features that every eLearning website should have

    A.General

    Account creation

    The account creation feature helps the students and instructors for creating their own accounts on the website and customize as per their experience on the platform. It is a must-have feature, as it assists users with managing the different courses they join which helps the students to learn and understand with ease.

    Profile management

    Profile management is another important feature that is needed for eLearning websites like Udemy. The users create a profile with the appropriate information that enables them to manage their details, adding or removing the courses, managing the certificates and following instructors as well.

    Customer support

    Just like any other service, customer support is extremely important for a website. This feature helps the users to contact the service providers whenever students face any kind of issue with the website, like not being able to access their account or upload a course. The 24/7 customer support hence increases the user-friendliness of a website.

    Business collaboration

    Big organizations usually collaborate with the learning websites and introduce courses that are specific to that particular organization. The online education websites like Udemy and Coursera seem to have benefited by using this feature of business collaboration. This way they can train the employees as well as track their progress. This process not only brings revenue but also increases the popularity of the website.

    Necessity

    Everyone needs to grow in their life. Developing an educational app helps people to enhance their professional skills and climb up the career ladder. This ensures a better user retention. eLearning website can become that platform where most of the professionals discuss their problems and needs through forums and communities.

    Ease of use

    Whether you need help in some activities, keep essential information or help to remember significant things in a non - irritating way, the most serious issue of these sites is that you can't hold the learner's attention as though they were sitting in a classroom. It is important to create a habit for online training and that relies upon the convenience of perceiving information. The requirement of good content becomes essential as learners will get the hang of it within a couple of minutes and will utilize it right away.

    B. Student profile features:

    The students, who sign up to the website to begin their learning journey need to have these features in order to have a better experience.

    Search, Category, and filtering

    This feature helps to sort out and manage courses available on the website through filters. With so many courses available on the website, it can be time-consuming to look for every course available. This feature enables learners to find the desired courses through categorizing and filtering.

    Triggers and reminders

    Triggers and reminders are in the form of push notifications. These are the triggers that pop up if you have left your course in between or any course-related updates. However, frustrating it may get, it is vital to bring in a positive result.

    Recommendations

    The recommendation feature ensures that the existing learners will be able to discover courses that are relevant to the ones they have already signed up for. This helps them to advance and refine their skill set.

    Easy payment options for enrollment

    Learners will need a secure payment option as there will be some paid courses as well. For a good eLearning website, it is important that it has integrated payment options that are secure and easy to handle.

    Gamification

    The gaming component was added to ensure that learners do not give up the course. Every course comes with a deadline and if completed on time, the learner nuggets a score that can be later used in the project shop. Here they will be able to change them for advertising certificates in Google or maybe buy a few business literature.

    C. Instructor profile features

    One of the important steps to create an eLearning website like Udemy is to play with the courses provided to the students which would require some important profile features. Let's have a look at those two important instructor profile features.

    Course creation and updates

    This feature enables instructors to create a course for the learners based on their expertise and skills and upload on the website for them to see. Instructors also have the facility to update and re-upload the course at their convenience.

    Dashboard (includes- courses updated list/revenue/performance/insights)

    The dashboard helps instructors to keep necessary tracks of the courses that have been uploaded by them on the profile. It tracks how many users have enrolled for these courses and how much revenue has been generated. It also helps them to track the overall activity on the website.

    The Steps To Build eLearning Website like Udemy

    Creating an Online Presence

    Before starting with the project, one must need a name which should have a domain available for it. There are a lot of domain checkers that are available online, however “.com” is one of the most widely used domains around the world. Once a domain is set, a hosting platform is needed to get started with the online e-learning journey.

    Idea Validation- The Global Market View

    The fleeting demand for a low cost and efficient training system has given rise to some of the most popular e-learning websites like Udemy, Edureka, Coursera etc. However one must look at the numbers in order to validate the idea. With technology such as AI, VR, AR, Big data, and machine learning help with the growth of the e-learning market.

    Choosing the Business Model to Build eLearning Website

    Choosing a business model is again one of the most important things when it comes to determining the way to earn money through the eLearning platform. Features come in handy while determining the potential of the platform. Some of the possible business models of any eLearning website are as follows.

    1. Paid Certificates

    Learners have to pay for such certificates that are platform verified, apart from the course fee. For a continuous channel of revenue, it is important to create tie-ups with different educational organizations that opt for these verified paid certificate courses.

    2. Subscription-based

     Learners pay subscription charges on a monthly or yearly basis. They have unlimited access to the website and all the courses after they have paid for the subscription. This enables the learners to pay a minimum amount for accessing all the information on the website.

    3. Affiliate Model

    This model runs on the grounds of integrated links for various study materials to complete the course. The website earns revenue after the learners make a purchase from the link to the e-commerce platform.

    4. Corporate Collaboration

    Big organizations often collaborate with these eLearning websites to train their employees in some specific courses related to their operation, which attracts a lot of revenue and popularity.

    5. Paid Courses

     Paid courses get you some serious revenues that get divided into the trainers and the website owners. When a course is purchased the trainer gets a part of the revenue for uploading the course and the rest goes to the owner.

    Research And Study The Target Audience

    One of the common mistakes that researchers make is to go for the one-size-fits-all approach which seems convenient to get the information out quickly. However, it is important to know the audience's capabilities, existing knowledge, and how they are going to use the knowledge that will be provided to them and their basic demographics. Once this is known, the designers and engineers will get a clear idea of what to incorporate into the plan to create an eLearning website like Udemy.

    Create Great Content

    Post analyzing the why, who, and how of the project, is it important to focus on the content. Content can make or break your website. Hence it is optimal to spend on content development and marketing. Storyboarding your content helps you to map out how text, pictures, and other elements appear on a page. In order to attract customers, the page should be eye-catching, hence placing the elements inappropriate places.

     develop an app

    How To prototyping and Strategize the UI/UX design

    The success rate of the website depends on UI/UX. The users will tend to rejoin the courses from the same website if they can navigate the website with ease and efficiency. The below points can come in handy when you create eLearning websites like Udemy.

    Simplicity And Consistency

    The first important thing to consider while designing the website is how simple and consistent is the design the first thing you have to consider when designing a website like Udemy is the simplicity and consistency of the design. Attractive but simple design won't get you as much business as a simple and elegant platform. The website is built for learners and trainers and it is enough for it to be simple. The consistency comes with the themes, logo, colors as well as the website design, which gives the users a particular sense of trust and continuity and this is the optimal step to create an eLearning website like Udemy.

    The Visual Design

    The visual design makes the website look unique and interesting through images, animations and illustrations that users would want to visit every day. Hence it is very important to choose an appropriate combination of colors so that it looks appealing to the users. However, one should stay away from the stock images as, despite having high quality they can seem unreal which might prevent any visitors from trusting the website.

    Typography to Build eLearning Website

    Typography plays a crucial role in visual design. You have to know what text or font you use so that it is readable as well as visually appealing.it is important to use right keywords so that it becomes a part of the SEO activity as a part of your website.

    Ease Of Loading And Navigation

    The UI/UX design affects the ease of loading and navigation to a great extent. It ensures that the design elements do not affect the loading time of your website. The images used on the website should be compressed with limited animations in order to enable a faster loading time.

    Creation of the Course

    After the prototype is approved, designing of the actual courses begin. It is the stage where you will have to keep tabs on the original learning objective as to why that course is being created. A design method is also needed to meet the requirements of the learners. Some of the popular design models are Gagne's 9 Principles, ADDIE/SAM, and Action Mapping and many more.

    Promotion of the Course (Internally or Externally)

    Promoting and marketing of your course will ensure learners as to why they need that course and How will they find it? And how will your course help them? In order to achieve this, it is important to focus on the benefits the learners will get by investing in the learning journey. Promotion should however be incorporated in the development plan, engaging the audience from scratch. This will give you an insight into learners' interest and save from making a course that nobody wants.

    Use A Multi-Language Approach

    When your website is on an international level, then following a multi-lingual approach becomes a must. Having the option to switch between languages can take your website to levels that you might not have anticipated.

    Technology Stack

    There are some technological combinations that one might need to follow to build the backend or the frontend. Below is the list of the requirements that are needed to create a n eLearning website like Udemy. Let’s find out the tech stack for the same.

    RequirementsTechnology Stack
    FrontendJavascript, Angular.JS, React.JS
    BackendNode
    FrameworkAngular, React, Javascript, Meteor
    DatabaseMySQL, MongoDB
    Payment GatewayPaypal, Stripe
    Cloud storage

    Cloudflare, AWS, Google Cloud


    With the above tech stack, one may also need certain add-ons, third-party tools, and plug-ins that let you add additional functionalities to the website. One should also be extra cautious about the database.

    To create a website like Udemy is not an easy thing to do. It involves a lot of time, money and most important manpower. Below is the team that you will require to create an eLearning website like Udemy.
    • Product manager
    • Developers (Backend and Frontend)
    • Project manager (quite often the role is taken by the product manager)
    • Quality Assurance Engineer
    • Designer
    • Illustrator
    • Technical support
    • Technical writer
    • Web analyst

    Conclusion:

    The average cost to create an eLearning website depends on certain factors like on the developer’s hourly rate, features and developing team mentioned above and can take upto one year to fully develop an eLearning website like Udemy. It may also vary from country to country. The average rate can come up to $35-$150.


    The growth of eLearning websites like Udemy with each passing year will evoke the entrepreneurial spirit in a lot of people, giving rise to more websites like these. The article can come in handy for someone who is thinking about entering the eLearning market. While, researching and analyzing the target audience remains of utmost importance, promoting and marketing the website ensures successful execution of the website.


    Read More: Top 20 Best Educational App Ideas For Institutes In 2020-21

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