How To Build An E-Learning Website

E-learning is becoming increasingly popular and is already being used successfully in many companies. We understand e-learning as learning supported by digital media. This can be, for example, web-based training, a video course, or an online webinar. 

The global e-learning market is expected to be worth $325 billion by 2025.

The turnover of the e-learning industry in the US and Europe is growing from year to year. Even during the financial crisis of 2007, growth continued. Right now, the e-learning sector is also experiencing an all-time high. Almost any entrepreneur who wants to scale their personal brand simply has to inspect such services. This is a great opportunity to share information and experience in their field. Everyone dreams of finding a new way to monetize their expertise. Online education platforms are one of the most advanced opportunities to do so.

If you are just about to create your e-learning website, find answers to these 6 questions:

What is the goal of your e-learning platform?

What should the participants learn in the online course, seminar, or during training? With what result do they complete the education on your platform?

Creating your e-learning courses will only be as productive as your planning beforehand. By taking the time to do some preparatory work, you address problems before they can arise. 

Summarize all the results from the brainstorming session in a catalog of requirements and expectations. Because you can only develop it successfully if you know what your e-learning platform offers.

“Brainstorming is the nexus of ideas.” — Asa Don Brown

Creating an e-learning course that teaches everything to everyone is a wasted effort. It must be created with a specific purpose and for a specific audience. Before you develop an e-learning platform, inspect your potential trainees.

• How many learners can take part in a course at the same time? Is it a massive online open course? 
• What is the position/role of the trainees? Are they sales representatives, customer service representatives, or HR managers?
• Are there trainees with disabilities that will need more human-centered design?
  
• What are the demographics and characteristics of participants in e-learning? (average age, level of education, geographic location, computer skills, devices used by learners, etc.)
• Have the learners of the e-learning been previously trained in this subject area? How well do you know the topic?

 

Where is your e-learning platform going to be based?

The next thing to think about is how to make your e-learning course accessible to the audience. The easiest and most convenient way to manage the training process and your e-learning online is by using a digital e-learning platform.

Many businesses need a website, but when it comes to creating one, the big question is cost. It can be very expensive to recruit and pay for an in-house web development team. Therefore, outsourcing web design and website development to a third party can be an attractive and cost-effective solution.

The cost of website outsourcing usually depends on 3 different factors that affect the way a designer or programmer works:

• the complexity of the design
• website functionality
• total number of pages on the site
• illustrations

You can learn more about how website costs form in our article or try to estimate the cost by yourself with the help of our project cost calculator. 

E-learning platform for a startup

A startup company may choose to build its e-learning website with a CMS like WordPress. This platform is suitable for the most common and popular types of web resources, including the following: 

• online stores
• small promotional pages
• landing pages
• galleries
• personal websites
• educational resources

71% of small businesses have their own website.

Unfortunately, one third of startups make it to the 10-year mark, with every fifth failing during the first year. Why do startups fail and how to prevent it? Here is an article about it. 

E-learning platform for a growing company

Businesses expand and need more and more custom functions, so an old web platform may become difficult to support and maintain. Here is an example of one of our clients, CG Master Academy, an e-learning company that faced the problem of not being able to implement new features and manage bugs on an aging site. 

The previous version of the website, an open-source CMS, was getting on in years and no longer served this purpose satisfactorily. In addition, the website was not responsive.

During our work on CGMA, we focused on these aspects of their new platform:

• New engaging design
• Data migration to a new platform
• Introducing new features to a new platform

Since we work according to the principle of user-centered design, the focus with CGMA was on the user – in every phase of the project. A principle of user-centered design is to reimagine the platform that you’re working on as you are its user. This is why during our research we came up with an idea of how not only to better the design of the project but also how to develop a new navigation system. 

Another of our clients, Proko, started out as a small one-man company that fully operated on a WordPress platform. 

One of the most interesting challenges in this case study was not only to build a new site but to literally spread its influence to new countries like China. Because Youtube, Google, and many other services are banned in China, our developers had to find new ways of how to make Proko more accessible in that country.

You can learn more about e-learning projects that we’ve worked with on our “Works” page. 

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Make surprises. Learners ignore hackneyed content and methods. Think outside the box! And offer exciting formats and creative preparations for learning content.

Address the target group specifically. Not every format is suitable for every target group. 

Build and maintain excitement. You should tell stories (storytelling) and build a common thread into your e-learning content if you want the longer-term effects of your training.

Build-in interaction. If the learners interact with each other, this is more interesting in the real world and in e-learning. There is an incentive like the quiz.

Awaken emotions. Hard facts are usually quickly forgotten, while the messages that you can understand from your own experience stay in your memory much longer. Convey the content in such a way that the learners can imagine a lot and empathize with the situations.

How does e-learning work? See our reads on e-learning app development:

• How to Create an Educational App and How Much It Costs
• Make It Work: Tips On E-Learning App Development
• 8 E-Learning App Trends Defining Educational App Development
• E-Learning App Design And How To Make It Better
• Can E-Learning Replace Classroom Learning?
• The Evolution Of E-Learning Websites And Platforms

Every e-learning platform has to be unique to appeal to the audience so that people would relate to the website.
Contact us so we can guide you every step of the way.