Introduction
Albert Einstein had once said, “Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.” And this is very much true. Education is one of the most indispensable parts of our lives. Although many find the traditional educational system vague and not up to the mark, no one denies the importance of education. But with changing times and advancements of technology, this sector is changing at a rapid speed.
Also, with this pandemic, where everything came at a standstill, even schools and colleges were shut close. It was then when people understood the need and importance of learning app development.
Going by the latest reports shared by UNESCO, as of March 2020, a close to 1.3 billion global learners were unable to attend any school or university due to this COVID-19 outbreak. And in a situation like this, an app like Udemy came to people’s rescue, where students can sit and learn anything and everything they want to. And not only school and university courses, but students can also take a variety of courses like designing, Maths, communication, digital art, and many more, simultaneously.
And not just students, seeing the popularity of eLearning mobile apps and websites, even business owners are now taking a keen interest in this industry and looking for a renowned eLearning app development company to encash this opportunity. But when you are looking to venture into something new, there are a few questions that most of us have like how to proceed with the process? What would be the cost of the complete eLearning solution? What features must be included?
So, do not worry. Today we are going to answer all these questions and will take down to the whole process of eLearning app development and eLearning website development. But before that, let’s see a few things.
Reasons for the Growing Popularity of eLearning Solutions
With the advancement of technology and more and more people having access to the internet, online learning has become one of the most sought after medium to learn something new and unconventional. There are many eLearning websites and mobile apps available in the market like Udemy, Coursera, FutureLearn, edX, and more that are highly popular and loved by both students and teachers.
Let’s discuss some of the reasons why everyone loves studying from these eLearning websites.
1. Time Flexibility
Websites and mobile apps like Udemy offers time flexibility, i.e, students can learn and study at any time they want to unlike traditional classroom culture that everyone has to be present at the same time. This time flexibility is one of the main reasons which attract so many learners to these platforms as now students can learn at their own leisure and especially for the ones who are into full-time jobs but still have that zeal to learn something new or develop a new skill, apps like these really come handy.
2. Cost-effective
Online courses are comparatively much cheaper than the classroom courses, and this is the reason why these days students prefer learning from such online platforms. Also, for those who travel from a different city, online learning saves their accommodation and travel expenses.
3. Pace of learning
This is something which we all know that no two students have the same pace of learning. Some may grab things much faster than the others but in traditional classroom learning, everyone has to move at the same pace. But websites like Udemy have solved this problem too. Now each student can learn at their own pace as they do not have to wait for the other students. They can even download the courses or restudy the same course as many times they want to.
4. Sign up for Multiple Courses
An app like Udemy allows users to sign up for multiple courses at a time and this really attracts students as they can acquire more than one skill simultaneously and can choose their field of interest accordingly. There is a variety of courses available from Science to Maths to Coding to Digital art and Marketing. One can easily choose their interest and can enroll for a course they want to.
How does Udemy Works?
Udemy, founded in 2009, is one of the most popular eLearning websites and mobile app, having approx. 50 million students and 57,000 trainers that are teaching courses in more than 65 languages. It has a library of more than 40, 000 courses, which students can take as per their interest.
Udemy works on a marketplace business model, i.e. it offers a common platform where buyers and sellers meet, and incase of Udemy, it is the trainers and students that meet on a single mobile learning app or a website. Udemy is just the mediator and does not have any authority or ownership of any of the courses online. While registering into this app, you can choose to be either an instructor or a student and this is how Udemy works.
Going by the statistics, the e-learning market globally was approx. 101 billion U.S. dollars in the year 2019. But now, according to the trade analysts and experts, this market is forecasted to cross over 370 billion U.S. dollars, by the year 2026. And this is the reason why business owners are seeing this industry as a money-making factory and are looking for both website and mobile app development solutions, to enter into this eLearning market.
How to develop an eLearning website like Udemy
Now that you know quite a few things about how the eLearning model works, let’s begin in discussing how to proceed with your eLearning website or eLearning app development process.
To make things easy to understand, we have divided this segment into smaller section.
- The First Step
- Revenue Model
- Business Model
- Features and Functionality
- Development Approach
- Technology Stack
Now let us discuss all the above-mentioned points in detail.
1. The First Step
One of the first things that you want to do when decided to get your elearning app or website developed, is to define a niche or the list of the courses that will be there on your elearning portal. You can choose anything from a wide range whether you want to just focus on academics or want to offer some unconventional skill based courses too.
It is always recommended to have a wide range of courses from every industry and niche as these increases your chances to attract students from various verticals thereby increasing your profits. It is very important of you to know what exactly you want in your learning portal and only then you will be able to explain it to an eLearning app development company so that can execute your idea just the way you want it to be.
2. Revenue Model
Now that you have decided your niche, it is time to decide how are you going to earn with this project. If you are planning to have an Udemy clone app, then Udemy earns in two ways:
A) Subscriptions
This model works on either a monthly or yearly subscription. Whenever any user opts for a subscription-based service, he or she gets unlimited access to the website and the courses available on that website for that particular time period. This way user does not have to pay for the individual courses, and they find this model quite affordable too.
B) Affiliates
Also, an eLearning portal earns from the affiliate links too. In every course, there are some affiliate links to the books or any other tools required and when the user buys the same from the link mentioned, the company makes money.
3. Business Model
When the concept of eLearning started, these web portals were more focussed on offering free courses, but when big universities started collaborating with them, websites like Udemy started monetizing their apps and websites.
Let’s see various business models and how they monetize their websites.
A) Paid certificates
Most of these online learning websites and apps offer free courses to their student, however, if any of those students want to do a certified program in the same course, they will have to pay a certain amount. These certificates are from the renowned universities that are affiliated with these websites. This is one of the most common ways of how websites and apps like Udemy earn. If you are also looking to have something like this, then you must approach various universities for affiliation.
B) Corporate eLearning
There are many companies in the market that ask their employees to go through special training and learning websites like Udemy offers such employee training programs and in return, corporate pays a huge amount to them. As per the figures stated by Forbes, a similar eLearning website named Coursera earned approx. $140 million in the year 2018 and the major contribution was from corporate learning. One of the big giants, adobe paid $150,000 to Coursera for providing machine-learning courses to its employees.
C) Paid Courses
Not all courses on these websites are for free. Some of the courses or the ones with specializations require students to pay a certain amount of money. So, not the complete amount that a user pays goes to the eLearning website, only a section of it goes to these sites and a major part goes to the trainer who has designed the course. You can hire eLearning app developers and website developers who have expertise in creating models like these.
4. Features and Functionality
Now coming to the most important part of the eLearning app development process. Your eLearning app or website must have all the necessary features that are required, and you must reach out to a proficient education app development company that can help you in integrating all the features seamlessly.
Here is a list of some of the features that are a must-have to make your eLearning app development a successful venture.
For Students
Course Recommendations
These days there are a lot of technologies available that can be integrated into your eLearning solutions. You must ask your eLearning app developers and website developers to make use of technologies like Artificial Intelligence. This will recommend the other available courses to the students based on their previously taken courses or the kind of courses they are interested in. This is a great feature as students can take multiple courses they like based on the recommendations.
Filters
Having an option to filter various courses makes it easy for students to find the course of their choice. Categorizing each course is important if you want your learners to love your app or website.
Teachers Profile
To develop websites like Udemy, you would want to have expert trainers to design outstanding courses and deliver them to your students. Students must be able to have a look at their trainer’s profile to ensure whether or not they are qualified to deliver. This is a crucial part of eLearning website development.
Dashboard
Giving students a dashboard where they can keep track of all their online activity is a great option. You can ask your mobile app developers or eLearning website developers to design a creative and interactive dashboard having everything that is required by a student for learning effectively.
General Features
Categorization
Each of your courses must be rightly classified under the relevant category, which makes it quite convenient for both teachers and students.
Variety of Courses
If you are planning to enter into the world of eLearning development, you must focus on offering a large variety of courses from different categories and at different prices. Diversity is one of the prominent driving factors which will give you good returns.
Feedbacks and Reviews
There must be a separate section of feedbacks and reviews. This makes it easy for students to opt for a course.
Easy Registration
Ask your eLearning developers to integrate social media option for login and sign up process. The registration process must be simple and include very few steps.
Payment Integration
Having multiple payment options is always a better choice as students can opt for any of the media they prefer.
Refund Policy
Most eLearning mobile apps and websites offer a money-back guarantee if a student does not like any course. You can also have either a 25 day or a 30-day money-back policy to ensure students the quality of content that your eLearning portal offers.
Multiple Languages
If your eLearning website or app is for global users, you must consider integrating multiple languages option so that users can choose the course in their preferred language.
Customer Support
Customer support is important to maintain a strong and healthy relationship with your users. Be it a teacher or student, you must offer them support for every little query they have.
Push Notification
This is an important feature, which you not miss on. Both students and teachers can get important updates related to discounts, new courses online, any special deal, and lot more with this.
5. Development Approach
Now coming to the development approach, an eLearning development company offers various development models for you to choose from. Based on your budget and requirements you can select the kind of a solution that fits your vision. These development models are available for both eLearning website development and e-learning app development. Let’s have a look at them:
A) Ready-made Solution
Every education development company have a solution ready with them similar to the most popular website or app that is available in the market. So, if you are looking for Udemy clone app development, all you need to do is purchase that ready-made solution and the company will do a little bit of tweaking here and there, based on your requirements, and will give that solution to you. This is one of the easiest and fastest ways of getting an app developed for your business.
B) Custom eLearning Software Development
This is where you hire your own team of mobile app developers and eLearning website developers and they start making everything from scratch. Making a solution from scratch, just the way you want takes a lot of time and effort and is way costlier than the previous model. But if you are a visionary and want to launch something different in the market, this is the best development approach you must go for.
6. Technology Stack
Now when you are looking to get an app or website just like Udemy, you must wonder what kind of a technology stack they use. The importance of choosing the right technology cannot be overlooked as it is what makes your app. Well, let us see what kind of tools and technologies are required for eLearning platform development.
A) Back-end
Back-end development is the backbone of any app or website. Choosing the right technology is important. There are many server-side programming languages available in the market like Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. Talking about Udemy, earlier it was developed using PHP but seeing the advantages of Python, the company decided to shift its back-end technology. You can also see the comparison between various languages like Python vs. PHP vs. Ruby and then make your choice. Talking about eLearning mobile app development, technologies for iOS, and android platform differs.
B) Front-end
Front-end development, also known as client-side, is what a user sees. It has to be interesting and captivating. Hiring a UI/UX designer for your layouts and graphics is a great option. Some of the popular front-end technology includes JavaScript, AngularJS, HTML5, CSS3, which any eLearning app development company uses. The front end technology for learning iOS app development or Android app development is more or less the same.
C) Third-party tools and integrations
To integrate push notification feature, Payment integration, or any other third party integration mobile app developers mostly make use of technologies like Trello, Dropbox, Slack, Salesforce, Zendesk. There are many more technologies, which you can discuss with your eLearning app development company and select on the basis of your requirements.
How much does eLearning app development costs?
Now, after reading this complete article, this must be the question that is on your minds right now. So, before knowing the answer to this question, you must know that the cost to develop any website solution or mobile app development solution differs based on the various factors like app complexity, the features and functionality of your app or website, the development team working on it, the average hourly cost of eLearning app developers and eLearning website developers, the location of eLearning platform development and many more.
So, if you are planning to develop a website like Udemy, an hourly rate to hire an eLearning website developer may cost you somewhere around $40 – $150, depending upon the location you hire. Also, if you go for a ready-made eLearning solution it will cost you much less than the customized solution.
Considering the above factors, the cost to develop an eLearning app like Udemy will cost you around $15,000 to $35,000, depending upon the features you choose. If you want something extraordinary with customized features the price for that may go beyond this amount.
Now talking about eLearning android app development and iOS app development, the cost to create native apps for both the platforms will be more than the cross-platform app development. The cost to create simple and basic native apps for each platform may fall under $15,000 to $35,000, depending upon the functionality of your app. And if you want to have a cross-platform solution, it would cost you somewhere around $20,000-$50,000, depending upon the type of app you choose. For more complex designs and features, this price may in millions of dollars.
FAQs
1. On which platform should I get my elearning mobile app developed first?
Having an app on both the platforms is important if you want to target more and more users to your elearning mobile app. However, if you are tight on your budget o looking to target just one platform than based on the location you choose to target, you can make your decision. For example, the USA has more number of iOS users, so going for elearning IOS app development is a better option. However, if you are planning to target any Asian country, going for eLearning Android app development is the more feasible option as the maximum people here usees android phones.
2. How to choose the right education app development company?
There are many eLearning app development companies available in the market, but based on the kind of services they offer, and the kind of work they have done in the past you can select the one for your project. Before hiring anyone for your project, you must go through their website, their portfolio, read their customer reviews, ask them about the kind of services they offer, and lot more. All these things will help you in picking up the right development partner for your business.
3. Where can I find the best elearning mobile app developers for my project?
Creating a mobile app is a complicated process and you need a development team that has both experience and expertise in creating even the most complex apps in your domain. Semidot Infotech has been into this business for quite some time not and we have a separate team of mobile app developers that can create apps like Udemy for your business.
4. Is it necessary to have an elearning mobile app for my business?
These days, people prefer using their smartphones more than desktops and laptops. Having a mobile development solution is a great option as it will get you more users and increase your ROI. Mobile apps are a great marketing tool these days and help establish and improve your brand image. Entering into eLearning app development will open up more opportunities for your business and can turn into a profitable venture.
