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We all know that technology revolutionized plenty of things around us, but who would have thought even education will change. Yes! Edtech has become such a huge thing with plenty of online websites coming our way and helping us learn new things every day. Regardless of age we all have truly become life-long learners.
With the increased demand of learning, edtech platforms have just increased and each of these platforms has their own USP which serves their audience. If you are thinking about how to create an app like Udemy, you are at the right place. In this article, I am going to walk you through a step by step guide on elearning app development.
Table of Content
How to Make an App like Udemy
Market research is essential whenever starting out any new business especially when it is targeted towards e-learning app development. The aim here is to understand the market and users’ needs as based on this data you will find out ways to balance the needs and earn profits.
There are multiple methods of carrying out research for e-learning mobile app development like primary research, secondary research, competitors research, etc. each of these methods has its own advantage. Depending on your needs you can define which method to begin with. Mostly, we tell our clients to start with primary research to have a better understanding of the market and about their competitors’ in brief.
Once you have completed the market research for your elearning app development, you will also know the unique selling point your edtech platform will have over others. In turn, this information will have you stand ahead of the crowd and have your own loyal customers who will choose you over your competition.
Define your Scope
Having your own USP and carrying out thorough market research will help you in this stage. In terms of scope, you can define things like; demographics of your target audience, location of your target market, the list of features you are planning to implement in your product, etc. All these things will help you to create the minimum viable product i.e. MVP as you and your team are efficiently working on elearning app development. Additionally, having clear defined scope and MVP will allow your team to develop an udemy clone app.
Feature Lists
Next up, let’s talk about certain must-have features and for each users for your udemy clone app:
Must Have Features
Having a diverse range of courses on your udemy clone app will help you attract a much wider audience than you anticipate. When curating courses you can focus on first designing a course around one topic and then diversifying it in various ranges of topics.
Bundle up your courses in terms of free or low cost and offer them. You can provide some courses for free or at low cost. During the starting phase as you are still working on elearning app development this method will help you to gain loyal customers.
One of the biggest advantages of edtech platforms is the ability to allow people to learn at their own pace. Even your platform will provide the same. You can focus on providing users life-time access to courses if once purchased to ensure they can learn anytime and anywhere.
Aim to provide customer support 24/7 to ensure users are having an easy onboarding and their problems are resolved on time.
It is essential to have a dashboard for each user login. For learners it will help them have personalized recommendations of courses. Whereas, for instructors, this dashboard will showcase data and statistics of their courses in terms of money earned, how many students are enrolled and learning, and so on.
If you are wondering how to create an app like Udemy, but don’t know where to start with, don’t worry. You are at the right place. We are IT solutions partners for many upcoming companies and have helped them in building complete end-to-end products. Partner with an e-learning app development company like ours and we can help you to stay ahead!
Learners’ Features
It is essential to have this feature in order to allow users to search and filter courses according to their interests and use the edtech platform efficiently. As you are busy investing in elearning app development and building other features, don’t forget these essential features too.
Leverage the power of AI/ML when you are working on udemy clone app development in order to provide users with personalized recommendations according to their area of interests.
You can build a business model such that users can get lifetime access to your courses once they purchase it. Udemy is very well known for this and it has helped them to have a loyal customer base. So, when investing in e-learning app development, focus on how you would like to provide lifetime access to your users in order to profit your business.
Users should be provided with complete course details which can in turn help them to make vital decisions whether to purchase a course or not.
Upon course completion users should be given certificates which they can use in terms of finding jobs or getting that promotion. So, make sure that your certificates are valid and have value.
Instructor Features
Instructors should be provided with a complete set of features or help needed for course creation. This help should be such that it makes instructors tasks easy and helps them to create quality content.
Instructors should be able to create course content which helps them to add tags such that it reaches a large audience.
Instructors should be able to check the data in terms of money earned, number of students purchasing their course, how trendy and up to date their content is and so on. These reports will help instructors to create more quality content.
Admin Features
When invested in e-learning app development don’t forget to connect with CRM. It will help admin to keep track of all learners and instructors. It will also provide details like courses sold, number of earnings, discounts, vouchers, etc. Having all this information handy will help in making business-decisions.
CMS will help admin to stay engaged with learners and instructors with the help of email marketing, newsletters, social media content creation, etc.
Admin can use this feature to know about earnings, profits earned, demanding courses and topics, trending topics, etc. this data in turn will help admin and team make better decisions.
Payment feature will have the data of all the payment sent, received, along with breakdown of each module cost in order for users to make better decisions.
Design an Application
Design has a crucial role to play and over the years with the success of plenty of companies over the years we have seen how it has helped them in their business. Having a good design of your website or application will help you to stand out from your competitors’ too. You can either be an experienced designer who can help you to stay ahead in the team or also partner with elearning app development company like ours. For more than a decade we have helped plenty of startup companies to stay ahead of their competitors and our experienced designers have helped innovate and build user-centric products.
Develop a Udemy Clone App
Once you have designed an application, the next step is to start with e-learning app development. Here’s an answer on how to make an app like Udemy using the latest technology stack, you can develop a product which is reliable, fast, and has great user-experience. Following are the tech-stacks that we mostly recommend to our customers to start with.
| Backend | Frontend | Database |
|---|---|---|
| PHP | JavaScript | MySQL |
| Java | Angular | MSSQL |
| Python | CSS3 | PostgreSQL |
| .NET | Bootstrap | MongoDB |
| Ruby on Rails | HTML5 | Apache CouchDB |
Note: We don’t recommend using a content management system as it is difficult to customize and includes plenty of errors.
If you don’t have an in-house development team, you can rely on an e-learning app development company like ours. Our team of expert developers will help you to develop a complete end-to-end product in collaboration with our designers and also help you to launch it. Our developers leverage the power of the latest technology to help you build solutions which will eventually help you to have error-free products.
Test and Launch your Product
Testing is essential before deploying the product. You need to focus on building solutions which are error and bug-free as it speaks about your reputation. While testing make sure that all the features are working properly and are seamless.
Once the product is thoroughly testing your next step is to launch or deploy it and make it stable. Remember to make your product secure using the latest security checks and all the data is securely stored in the database.
If you need help with testing and deployment, worry not. Our team of developers, designers, testers, and deployment can help you. At elearning app development company like ours we have experienced employees with ample knowledge will help you to stay ahead of the competition and build a complete product which appeals to your users. Additionally, our team of marketers can help you market the product with the latest strategies and have a loyal and wider customer base.
Business Model
Marketplace Model
Imagine a Facebook marketplace where there is a buyer and a seller, right? This model works on the similar format where there are instructors and learners and you will earn based on commission.
The commission you take can either change depending on the courses or can be static as you decide and then based on each purchase made from the learner you earn certain money. We recommend having a mix of both. For example: if you are seeing a trendy topic on your platform like how AI/ML is currently, you can keep a bit higher commission rate. When you have a common topic but which appeals to a larger audience you can keep a static commission rate.
The major advantage of this kind of model for e-learning mobile app development is it will help you to have a continuous revenue stream meaning a stable income.
Paid Certification
In this kind of model, you can offer free courses to students and ask them to pay later on for the completion certification. In such scenarios, the number of students who will attend the courses might be more compared to students who actually pay for the certificate. So, this might be difficult for you to have a stable revenue stream compared to the commission-based model. It is good to have this model too, but it is much better to not depend on this type of model if you are looking for a reliable source of income.
Revenue Model
Next up, let’s talk about the revenue model and how it can help you to have a stable source of income. Following are some of the common types of model which you can use in your product:
Subscription Model
This is the most common type of model which you can use to have a loyal customer base and also have a stable stream of income. Even Coursera uses this model in the form of Coursera Plus in which they provide their subscribed users with certain extra features on their platform. You can start with providing users with 1 subscription model similar to Coursera and have extra features like live webinars with experts, chance to have 1-1 conversation with instructors, etc.
Commission-Based Model
Commission based model aka marketplace model is similar to the one we talked about. This commonly used model will help you to have an extra source of income apart from your investors. You can either keep the commission static or dynamic depending on your business model. It is better to have a mix of both to help you gain more revenue, decide this on the basis of your user and businesses’ needs. Here is a quick example of how Udemy works on three tiers:
- If a user has enrolled the course via coupon or instructor’s referral you can charge the commission rate of 3%.
- If the user has enrolled via browsing an application, you can charge from 30-50% of the total fee.
- If users have enrolled through paid marketing ads, you can charge commission of 75%.
Either charge differently as we discussed or you can have a fixed amount of commission for all the enrollments.
Instructor Partnership
Onboard certain instructors and have partnership with them to create a course and share it with their learners. There are certain students who are loyal to certain instructors, this partnership will help your edtech platform to reach quite a good amount of milestones. You can go 2 ways for this partnership:
- Either you charge them for each student who comes via their referral or coupon.
- You can sign a business contract with them and have a pre-fixed amount.
Marketing Strategies
Once the product is launched, but people still don’t know about it then what's the point of having it, right? This is when various marketing strategies can come in handy.
There are plenty of different ways to market your product. But, below I have listed down some of the tried and tested methods which are used over the years to help market edtech platforms like Udemy.
Social Media Marketing
Thanks to the dot com bubble for changing the way we interact with technology today. With the constant innovation today we have plenty of social media platforms which have helped us over the years to connect with our friends and family. Today with social media platforms having a center stage of our life, brands and business have also understood the business of social media marketing.
Market your edtech platform on various social media platforms in order to connect with your audience and reach millions. It is a great place to be for any startup company and make their voice heard and create a loyal customer base.
Look at the social media platform and see how they have built their own community over years. With millions of followers each post is completely branded with their company. Leverage the power of social media platforms and have your own tribe. It will take you a long way.
Affiliate & Influencer Marketing
We all are well-versed with both of these as it is again the most common type of marketing. But, today because of social media we have a thin line of difference between affiliate and influencer marketing. Partner with various influencers on social media and also affiliates who can help you reach a wider audience. You can provide a certain amount of discount if users are signing up via their dedicated code. While onboarding influencers or affiliates make sure they have branding and values which aligns with your company.
If you want to learn about other ways of marketing like search engine optimization and others, you can reach out to us. Our expert and experienced marketers can help you by using the latest marketing strategies and help you reach a wider audience.
Conclusion
Creating an app like Udemy requires a combination of technical expertise, strategic planning, and a deep understanding of the e-learning landscape. By focusing on user experience, incorporating essential features, and adopting a robust development process, you can embark on a journey to provide a world-class e-learning platform for a global audience.
Remember, the key to success lies not just in replicating Udemy's model but in innovating and offering something unique to your users. With dedication and a user-centric approach, you can create an app that not only rivals Udemy but also contributes to the evolution of online education.
