Post-pandemic reality has made a spike in demand for online education, and this trend will only strengthen. However, education in its current state can’t satisfy the need for accessible and convenient remote learning. Therefore, there is a need for a proper technology solution — an educational platform — that enables quick access to numerous learning materials while fitting the target audience’s unique needs. Furthermore, the online education industry is anticipated to reach $585.48 billion by 2027; isn’t that a significant reason to initiate your own educational project?
This article will reveal the essence of educational website development: platform types, required functionality, and cost.
Varieties of Educational Platforms
Planning to build your own educational website, it’s essential to define what kind of learning services you want to deliver. The types of educational platforms are highly variable, so all users can benefit from them. The most popular solutions are:
Language learning networks
These platforms assist users in acquiring, training, and developing foreign language skills (writing, reading, perceiving, and speaking). The well-known platforms are LinguaTrip, FluentU, and Teach Me.
Educational video platform
These communities focus on learning and perceiving information through visual concepts. This approach proved to be more engaging since videos enable information delivery in a way longreads can’t. Such websites gain momentum due to their effectiveness and better comprehension of the learning materials for both students and tutors. Panopto, Opencast, Echo360 are good examples of how to create educational websites.
Scientific platforms
The increased tendency to run science projects at schools and universities has raised the demand for science websites. Such field-specific communities assist students in sharpening knowledge in science-related matters (e.g., biology, chemistry, mathematics, etc.). Commonly, such communities contain a shedload of helpful information in various formats. Besides, emerging web development technologies enable the creation of interactive science websites, thus boosting the quality and speed of acquiring new knowledge.
Information or how-to networks
How-to communities have been an integral part of the Web for much time. These websites are concretely developed to give people a detailed, expert answer to a specific request. For instance, you’re looking at how to migrate to the cloud, rent a car in Florida, fix the air conditioning, and much more. wikiHow, Instructables, Acme How To, HomeTips give you ideas on building this type of educational platform to make it intuitive and user-centered.
How to Begin Your Own Educational Website
Here are the steps you should comply with to create a custom learning platform and succeed.
- Come up with an outstanding educational project idea and validate it. This involves conducting market analysis, reviewing niche leaders, and defining the target audience to ensure you offer what people are in need of and stand out from the contestants.
- Think of the educational content to add. It should be unique, interesting, and bring value to end-users. You can engage experts in particular fields to provide relevant and high-quality educational materials.
- Contact an IT vendor competent enough to breathe life into your concept and answer all the questions that occur.
- Think of functionality you would like to implement and design concepts. Remember that your platform should include a set of must-have features, such as registration, user management, course searching, payments, admin panel, chat, and video calls.
- Start your own educational network with the MVP version and involve initial users to test your idea. After checking the idea’s viability, you’ll understand what additional features to add to bring a better learners’ experience.
- Choose the most suitable monetization strategy. The widespread ones are per course payment, subscription, and donation).
MVP Features for an Educational Website
Creating a minimum viable product with all the necessary features will satisfy the primary valuable users’ needs. Your educational website should contain features that can solve the main problems of tutors, students, and their parents. For example, provide students with the search feature, user profile, course pages, payments, and calendar. Meanwhile, tutors will need student management and the ability to create tests and courses. Last but not least, parents require features that’ll help them to view the progress dashboard, course catalog, and feedback on various courses.
Educational Website Creation Cost
Now, let’s answer the question many entrepreneurs care about: “How much does it cost to create an educational platform?” The estimate for the product varies from $30,000 to $250,000, or even more. Project requirement, location of IT provider, design, number of features are the key cost drivers to build an educational network.
The development time ranges from 1,095 to 1,250 hours and can approximately cost you (based on the rate of $50/hour):
- Simple education website: $30,000 – $120,000
- Medium complexity learning platform: $120,000 – $200,000
- Complex rich featured educational website: $200,000 – 300,000+
- Discovery phase.
Here you need to analyze the project requirements and business goals and describe product features to your development team.
- UI/UX design creation.
The success of a website also lies in design. First, you must create a UI design that is attractive and eye-catching. And don’t forget about UX design that must quickly resolve user problems. At this stage, the design team creates future product wireframes with all buttons, forms, etc., so that you can understand the user flow. After that, wireframes turn into full-fledged mockups that represent the final design of the website.
- Development.
Development processes are split into sprints (2 weeks each). They allow organizing the development process better. And when the platform is ready, QA engineers test it.
- Testing.
Testing is an essential part of software development. Without QA engineers, you can’t release a bug-free product.
- DevOps services.
Such service is needed to select the right tools and automate the code flow from development to release.
Summing up
It’s a good idea to create an educational website when students, teachers, and others who want to improve their knowledge study at home. However, when developing an educational website, you have to think carefully about what type of site you want and what unique features to add. So, analyze the market, compare development prices in different regions, choose the right team and go ahead with your own solution.