In a crowded market, e-learning service providers can improve sales with a great website. Here are a few tips for designing a website with impact.
The e-learning market sector has been steadily growing in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the trend. Many schools and educational institutions are under pressure to reopen on time. Others are scrambling to prepare students and staff while still maintaining social distancing measures. Often, this means designing hybrid learning environments and supplementing in-class meetings with virtual learning platforms.
Well-placed e-learning companies are already taking advantage of this demand to see concrete gains, but at the same time, greater demand means e-learning is an increasingly crowded market. Both newcomers and incumbent e-learning companies need to up their marketing efforts to get ahead of the pack.
As a digital service, your e-learning website is a reflection of your product; it can help you stand out — or drive potential customers away. To ensure a great first impression (and return visits), tailor your website strategically to create a logical, holistic experience for potential customers. With a little help from Codeverse Creative Director Brittany Martinez, we’ll guide you through six tips for making your e-learning website as impactful as possible.
1. Lead with Your Mission
The “About Us” section of your site is the perfect place to shine a light on your company’s philosophy and values, and signal to your target audience why you’re the right choice. Are you looking to serve a certain community or offer an innovative method? What credentials, accreditations, or stamps of approval can you claim? What about the talent behind your company?
Beyond the types of services you offer, highlight the outcomes you can deliver and why your company is superior to your competitors. Try to showcase how previous projects have improved your services, and incorporate the stories naturally into a biographical format.
2. Offer Quality, Up-to-Date Content
Content marketing is a way to speak to your clientele in a more targeted way. One way to do this is by setting up an e-learning blog. The industry is rapidly evolving, and writing on new topics regularly can establish your expertise and feature careful, relevant product tie-ins. For instance, if you are offering coding courses for children, it might be useful to feature regular blogs that showcase your expertise in children’s’ education and how it might differ from adult programs.
By updating your site with new content relevant to your product — product-specific updates, new industry insights or trends, or thought leadership on e-learning more broadly — you can also help build brand consistency (more on this below). You can transform your site into a dynamic resource that customers will return to again and again.
3. Less Is More
You may be tempted to list all your services and offerings, but it’s often more helpful to list a few representative services that convey what you offer concisely and memorably. Know your most valuable features and highlight them.
Creative Director Brittany Martinez, for instance, always begins with one principle — “How simple can this be?” As she puts it, “the goal is to make things easy to digest for the viewer. Managing appropriate white space and using simple typology will keep the design feeling fresh and legible.”
Good UX engineers know that site design has a direct impact on customer perception and behavior, and a streamlined design keeps your site looking professional and uncluttered. It can even help guide potential customers toward specific pages or goals.
“We keep it simple by maintaining consistent styling across the experience,” Martinez explains. “Users become familiar with how something looks, and the behaviors associated with it — introducing too many colors, sizes, heights, or button styles will only end up confusing users.”
4. Branding Matters
Consistency in your branding, messaging, and interactions with customers can help your company become memorable for the right reasons. According to Martinez, “when a design system is simple, clean, and consistent, the unique personality of the brand has room to shine.” In a crowded market, anything that helps a potential customer remember your product is crucial.
Consistency also helps support the growth and longevity of your company, as studies have shown that customers tend to remember how you said something rather than the specifics of what you said. Having clear guidelines for brand voice and tone helps to ensure that whenever your customers engage with you, they can expect the same quality of service.
It takes time to earn your customers’ trust, but strong branding and a consistent experience go a long way toward helping them feel valued, remembered, and more at ease.
5. Accentuate Your CTA
If customers aren’t sure where to go or how to proceed on your site, you can probably bet they’re going to look for a different service provider. Whether you offer online enrollment or a simple “contact us” button for potential customers, make sure it’s prominently displayed. Make sure your calls to action (CTAs) are visible and not in competition with other design elements.
6. Offer a Demo if You Can
A picture’s worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, but whenever possible, let your product speak for itself. Demos allow potential customers to discover the benefits your services provide in action. They also present an opportunity for you to collect relevant contact information from potential clients.
Using Your Site to Support Educators This Fall — and Beyond
COVID-19 has accelerated digital learning trends, but e-learning has been a growing field for some time. Even prior to the pandemic, estimates forecast that the online education sector would grow to be worth $350 billion by 2025. More recent projections anticipate that the market’s value could reach as high as $375 billion by 2026.
The benefits that distance learning solutions provide will last beyond down-to-the-wire plans for reopening this fall. What might seem like a temporary stopgap measure that provides additional flexibility to instructors and students can, in many cases, be incorporated into ongoing, permanent solutions for making education more accessible.
Schools, parents, and businesses realize this, and many are already vetting vendors for the products they need. In the coming years, pitching your products and services with clarity and impact will be key.
