How to build an eLearning website like Udemy?

The eLearning industry is thriving. According to Orbis Research, the market will grow from 165 billion dollars in 2015 to 275 billion dollars by 2022. In contrast, Forbes predicts that the market will reach over 325 billion dollars by the year 2025. The remarkable progress is due to several critical advantages provided by eLearning over conventional learning:

• Availability – Individuals can access and learn any course from anywhere at any point in time with the help of devices like computers, tablets, and phones via internet connection.
• Profitability – Virtual or online training is much more cost practical because buildings, large managerial and teaching personnel, or other conventional overhead costs are not required. Here, everything works on the internet.
• Flexibility – eLearning enables you to construct courses for any audience, of any complexity and specialization. You do not need to match everybody anymore, indiscriminately. Besides that, online classes are not connected to a fixed time or timetable, unlike learning at schools and colleges. Individuals can learn at their level and suitable time.

A majority of sectors have been profoundly affected by the current COVID-19 crisis and have made them standstill. ELearning, indeed, is among the few sectors in the aftermath of these challenging times, which have revealed brighter pathways for individuals. And now eLearning evolved into MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), which is quite profitable. More than 50 MOOC platforms are available that run in 23 countries around the world. The increasing popularity of websites for eLearning certainly makes it a great business plan.

Furthermore, anyone can penetrate this sector; the critical factor is to provide top-notch educational material to individuals. Also, with relatively small capital investment, this can be achieved. Now’s the time to go about it if you want to build an eLearning platform like Udemy, while the industry is in a stage of massive growth and demand is also not saturated.

Let’s focus on the steps you need to take to build your eLearning website. So have a look.

But, let’s discuss something important!

Majorly there are two types of eLearning solutions, which we’ve described below:

• Synchronous – This is real-time learning where learners and teachers are online and interact with each other simultaneously at the different locations with the delivering and receiving modes like mobile, video conferencing, or by chat. During the session, the learner will interact, express their ideas or queries, and get in-depth solutions to their questions. Due to enhanced technology and internet bandwidth abilities, this type of eLearning is getting popular day by day. In this learner, learn from the sources like; chat, audio/video conferencing, virtual classroom, webinars, or application sharing.

• Asynchronous – It is a pause-and-resume kind of learning where the instructor and students will not be available at the same point in time. In this type of education, blogs, eBooks, discussion forums, or courses were used. In this, students can learn at any time, download the materials given to them, and connect with instructors and some co-learners. Many students typically prefer asynchronous instead of synchronous learning because, at their good time, students may take online courses without impacting their other regular commitments. This learner learns from the sources like; discussion forums & groups, message boards, and self-paced online courses.

Udemy represents both types of eLearning. Udemy works with individual instructors who upload their content on the platform (Asynchronous).

What is Udemy, and how it works?

Udemy is a teaching and eLearning app. Students get such a forum to choose and subscribe to several career-focused courses, educational subjects, vocational courses, and many more. By subscribing to a digital library of over 40K plus udemy courses taught by professionals and experienced academicians, udemy allows you to accomplish your ambitions. Udemy is a flexible forum for eLearning to cultivate new talent, study your chosen topic, and find possibilities to develop your abilities. You can access all udemy courses by any device like Android, IOS, laptop/desktop, and even by TV as well. It operates in 4 steps: the user searches for the program, enrolls by paying for it, learns the ability at their level, and strengthens with a certificate of completion.

• Besides that, if we glance at the numbers:
• Over 50 million students are enrolled in udemy courses.
• Udemy has over 150k+ courses.

The estimated value of udemy is 2 billion dollars.

The figures are more than enough to clarify why you should develop an eLearning application like udemy.

How to Develop an Udemy Clone App?

Any profitable venture begins with an idea. Even Udemy began with thoughts to provide accessible educational opportunities for every student throughout the planet. And this thinking led to the creation of a popular online learning platform by Eren Bali, the founder of Udemy. Let’s move forward and discuss platform type, strategize UI/UX design, core features, tech stack, revenue & business model, and other modules required for app development like Udemy.

1. Platform Type

• You first have to decide over its type to build your eLearning platform. These platforms are implicitly split into four categories, based on the services provided.
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) – In this, many courses from different providers are offered: educators, professors, colleges, public organizations, etc. This model reflects markets such as Amazon or Alibaba, where everyone can sell their services to someone willing to purchase it (training course). Examples of MOOCs are Udemy, edx, audacity, etc. Many industries have niche pages, as well.
• Learning Management System (LMS) – They provide simple functionality to build courses, store them, maintain training profiles, and compile reports on academic success and accomplishments. According to talentedlearning.com, there are over 700 LMS sites in the market, most of which specialize in corporate training, while some of them seem to have advanced features that make it easy for an outside audience to reuse content.
• Open Source LMS – It is the same as the regular LMS; the only difference is that such sites are built based on open-source software. In other words, anyone can create their channel or tailor one of their programs to their content and needs—for Example, Sakai, Open EDX, Litmos, etc.

Modern Learning Management Solutions (MLMS) – These systems rely on student’s experience, using such algorithms to create online courses and training management tools that (in theory) ensure full efficiency of the processes.

2. Strategize UI/UX design

The UI/UX design determines the application’s success. The simplicity and consistency with which the user can navigate the website can help them decide whether they want to continue participating in courses or not. So while designing the UI/UX similar to Udemy. Make sure to remember the points listed below.

• Simple and consistent – When it comes to attracting users, complex architecture, despite being appealing, does not do much. Students and teachers will be the key contributors to your website. So if the eLearning layout is simple, it will be quite practical and useful for them, with easy navigation systems, pointers and an easy to understand interface. Make sure the website design, colors, logos, and themes must be consistent.
• Visual design – Visual design refers to images, illustrations, and animations you will use to make your application unique, fun, and a bit enjoyable to the audience.
• Typography – Typography is a vital part of the visual design. It doesn’t matter whether your website is well designed to ensure that your website’s typography is appealing rather than just readable. And don’t forget that the text your website contains becomes a part of the SEO activity.

3. Business Model

• Paid Certificates – In addition to the course costs, users pay for certificates validated by the approved platform in different countries. The establishment of links with other universities and educational organizations and the provision of validated paid credentials to learners would ensure that you have a steady revenue channel.
• Subscription-based – Under this model, on a quarterly and annual basis, the app user buys a paid subscription to the website. They will have unrestricted access to the website and from all its courses until they have purchased a membership. That way, to access all the data on the website, the user would have to pay a tiny sum of money.
• Affiliate – In the affiliate model, the courses may have integrated ties for different books or resources that the users may need to progress in that course. Your website can receive income from it until the user follows the connexion to the e-commerce portal and makes a purchase.
• Paid Courses – Now let’s discuss the paid course model, from which your website will gain significant profits. If the student buys a paid course, half of the money goes to the teacher who published the time, and the remaining portion goes to the website owner.

4. Core Features

Just like the udemy app, your application should also contain:

• Various Course Offerings – Provide various courses on the page with easy categorizations. For instance, udemy offers 15 main courses from web development to engineering and vocational training and over 15 sub-main courses of each course. You can categorize by main courses and add the list of courses into the sub-category tab.
• No compulsory enrolling – Let your user surf through the list of courses without any eligibility or perquisites.
• Instant access – Provide every learner instant access to the course like video, templates, guidelines, sheets with instant downloadable options.
• Live streaming – Enable live streaming of lectures with API integration of Zoom and google sheet.
• Customer support – Provide 24*7 customer support services to assist the visitor, prospect, and users with an issue they face.

Well, let’s move forward and discuss the general features that would benefit both learners and instructors.

Learners Features

• Dashboard – All of the platform’s courses can be accessed by learners and guests with the- of Dashboard. It will be like a news feed on Facebook, where visitors or prospects would review the courses based on their preferences, patterns, and categories. The application will cover
• Search and filters – Since a wide variety of courses and learners could quickly sort and find the course of their choice. Therefore provide search options including categories and filtering options for that, though. You can add filters like sort by price, oldest or newest, etc.
• Course reviews and details – With this feature, do provide reviews and ratings with a summary of the course. This would assist students in choosing whether or not the course is a better match for them. Besides that, ratings and feedback will assist other students in making appropriate decisions.
• Access for a lifetime – That will be unfortunate if the course students paid for that doesn’t allow unlimited access for a lifetime to the lesson’s videos. As learners can learn concerning their speed and intensity without limiting access, they are willing to intervene for even more. Besides, you could also provide them with options for offline video downloads.
• Cart – Much like a shopping cart, where students can see their number of courses enrolled and place an order to complete the course.
• Certificates – The study material and certificates are also affixed to the course. Offer additional separate windows with downloadable options to hold certificates, questionnaires, and all the study materials.
• Recommendations – With this feature, the other relevant courses for which they have enrolled can be found by learners. This will assist them in learning more about a particular skill set.

Instructor Features

• Dashboard – This feature allows instructors to monitor their courses, number of students who have registered for the course, gross revenue, response time, etc.
• Course Development – Include software such as a CMS tool, which would also enable instructors to plan a course based on their abilities and experience and customize it. Enable the course to be readily edited and revised.
• Reports – The instructor can generate and import reports on their course scope, total earnings, response rate, etc. all these by this feature and functionality. Also, this will assist them in creating new modules as well.

Admin Features

• Dashboard – The administrator can see all the number of trainers and instructors, unlimited classes so far, the total number of students, reports, and detailed stats from this feature. It is possible to access every new notification or email via the Dashboard quickly.
• CRM – This module allows the administrator to record all instructors and learners with their detailed data, total expenses, earnings, vouchers, discounts used, etc.
• Payment – To monitor the entire payment history like total payment sent and received and the instructors’ payment module that will help them see whether the fees are paid properly or not.
• Customer Support and service – The administrator can view both companies and suggestions received. This will allow them to help clients with problems, if any.
• CMS – Send alerts and emails, build blogs and videos, modify web and app content, social media interaction, and much more to engage more users.
• Sales – In this, the administrator can control the entire courses, their response time, total earnings, c challenging course, and even better planning reports.

5. Tech Stack

Let’s move forward and discuss the tech stack you need to develop a top-notch eLearning website.

• Frontend – JavaScript, Bootstrap, CSS3, Vue JS, Angular JS, React JS.
• Framework – CakePHP, ASP.NET, NodeJS, Laravel.
• Plugins – CMS, CRM, Sales, and report.
• Database – MySQL, MongoDB.
• Payment Gateway – Paypal, Stripe, net banking.
• Cloud Storage – CloudFare, AWS.

Conclusion

Since eLearning has become a prominent part of the education industry, it takes extensive preparations and analysis to create a unique and esteemed eLearning website. If you want to jump out among all the current big players like Udemy and others, you must offer an excellent outcome to your audience and community.

With far more than decades of experience in application development for different active global customers, we have the expertise for our valued customers in strategy execution, development, and apps maintenance. We will turn your vision of creating an excellent web or mobile app for eLearning into practice.

Connect with us, and our team will reach you very soon.

For further information, visit our website www.matellio.com.

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