The global pandemic has accelerated technology usage in many fields, and education is no exception. Technology was critical to keep teaching and learning in a new reality. Yes, digitalization in education has proven to be effective, so it will undoubtedly be used further. The only question is – how. We will find answers together in this article.
The growing popularity of e-learning platforms is among the brightest instances of digitized learning. What are they, and, how to create an online tutoring website and why do you need to create one? Let’s discover.
E-Learning Platforms Overview
Between the years 2020 to 2025, the online learning market is expected to reach a 200% increase.
So, whether you are an already established tutoring business that helps teachers and students meet or are just considering kicking off, it is a good idea to create an e-learning platform. And here is why. We give you a list of the key benefits you can bring to your users with a top-notch e-learning platform.
1. Flexibility
Such platforms allow contacting any teacher from any location when a learner needs it. Top tutoring websites have tutors at every beck-and-call of a student so that users can call up homework help even at 3 a.m.
2. No Geographical Limits
Users can choose a tutor from any spot of the world, judging only from their skill set and personal preferences.
3. Accessibility
With the help of such a platform, your users will be able to access the learning materials from any device and any time they want.
So, how to create a tutoring website that will be popular among users? Your goal is to make the learning experience more collaborative and interactive. How to do it and why you should – we will answer in the next section.
What is a Tutoring Website?
A tutoring website is an online platform that unites students and teachers for the learning process.
The pandemic has shown how essential e-learning websites are in education. Platforms such as Masterclass, Google Classroom, Udemy, and others of a kind, are steadily growing. However, all of them have their flaws, so a perfect tutoring website is yet to be developed. Maybe you will be the one to create one?
Online Tutoring Market in 2024
The global tutoring market is expected to reach $201.8B by 2026, according to ReportLinker. Growing population, high need for education, increased number of educational institutions, and rise in admissions around the globe drive fierce competition among students. As a result, tutoring businesses are in more demand than ever before.
However, as we mentioned above, more and more learners choose flexibility and turn to tutoring websites rather than individual teachers.
Now, we will view even more reasons why you should go forward and create a tutoring website.
Why Do You Need Your Own Tutoring Website?
Why should you create a tutoring website?
This section will focus on the benefits your tutoring business can achieve with a learning platform.
Flexibility
Not only your users can get flexibility if you choose to create a tutoring website. You also can! You don’t have to tackle operational issues, such as renting classrooms, providing facilities to your teachers, having to pay the bills, etc. So, you are as flexible as a tutoring business can get with an online tutoring platform.
Scaling Business Geography
All the businesses face the urge to scale at some point in their development. However, if you choose to create a tutoring website, you spare yourself this milestone. Rather than scaling, you go global from the very beginning.
You can work with both teachers and students from all around the world, providing them all with top-notch customer support and flexibility.
Improving the Learning Process
You provide services on-demand, so your customers are interested in either teaching or learning themselves. As a result, the outcomes of the learning process get better. Both teachers and students can have their ranking and should pay attention to maintaining it above average by themselves.
Automation of all Processes
We have already mentioned that you spare yourself the operational headache by adopting a tutoring platform. But also, you can automate the payments, find the best teachers and match them with students, customer support by providing chatbots and video tutorials, etc. We will view the features you can give later in the article.
Analytics and Reporting
The automated platform makes it much easier to provide in-depth analytics and insights on all your business processes. For instance, you can learn how much time people spend on your platform, what triggers them into subscribing, etc.
Ability to Increase the Average Check
Let’s imagine the situation. You have an offline tutoring business, provide facilities to your employees and work with five teachers. Typically, you have to focus on one subject-be it English or Biology. This is a logical approach to the offline tutoring business – you find and work within a niche. But, as a result, you lose a whole lot of students that need tutors in subjects out of your niche or the ones that couldn’t fit in the schedule available.
On the contrary, you can forget about all these limitations, niches, and operational overhead with an online platform.
Improved Working Conditions
If you create a tutoring website, you will have lower operational expenses. Thus, you can provide better working conditions to your employees. For instance, you can cover their insurance, offer gym memberships, and more.
Increase Conversions
Well-designed and smartly developed platforms are in demand in any industry. And tutoring websites are no exception. Creating a user-friendly website will increase your user conversion and allow you to earn even more.
Brand Improvement
Websites presuppose clear branding (e.g., brand colors, tone of voice, design patterns, etc.) All these factors contribute to brand awareness in the market. This, in turn, allows you to develop your brand even further.
Withstanding COVID-19 Impact
When the pandemic first started, social distancing was of the essence. Also, many businesses struggled to pay their rent, having no customers. If you create a tutoring website, you will be able to mitigate both these issues.
SaaS Platform or Custom Website? How to Create a Tutoring Website?
How to create an online tutoring website? Struggle whether to adopt an out-of-box solution or invest in a custom website? In this section, you will find the pros and cons of both these options.
SaaS Platform
We will not lie to you, telling you that it is impossible to have a somewhat successful business using a ready-made SaaS solution. However, if you use the ready-made templates, you risk becoming one of the millions of similar learning platforms. And you want to be unique and authentic.
It is way more challenging to implement the desired functionality and a certain quality of services with out-of-box solutions. So, it is a good idea to create a custom tutoring website.
Custom Website
Custom websites are more profitable for your business. And here is why. Implementation of custom solutions provides you with the flexibility to choose the exact features you need. You get to choose your partner to work with based on your budget, timeline, and needs. So, it is a good idea to consider developing a custom website.
However, there are some critical aspects you have to take into consideration when you create a tutoring website. So, how to make a tutoring website successfully? Let’s discover together.
Things to Consider Before Creating a Tutoring Website
1. Focus on the needs of your target audience and the overall market
You should clearly analyze the market, as well as your competitors. Who are they? What marketing and sales strategies do they use?
2. Try to implement fresh ideas
If you want to create a tutoring website successfully, you need to provide unique value. Fresh ideas will convince more and more customers to choose your product over others.
3. Assess your project needs
You need to clearly understand how many tutors you need to find to kick your project off. This number should be able to meet the needs of new business horizons.
4. Work on onboarding
Onboarding is of prime importance. You have to educate your users. Without this stage, building a loyal user network is impossible. If you fail to communicate clearly who you are and what you do with your product, your potential customer will find someone else.
The successful onboarding part comprises three main aspects: the homepage, smooth onboarding itself, and core value experience.
Now, let’s take a look at some critical features you should implement to make a tutoring website useful?
Online Tutoring Website Features [Must Have 2024]
How to make a tutoring website successful? Implement the features that will cover all the critical needs of your customers. In this section, we will focus on the top six features that will make your platform stand out.
Video Chats
Quality video calls are primarily important when it comes to online learning platforms. So, you have to ensure a sound technical basis for the video calls, making them accessible, understandable, and easy to use.
Homeworks
Your platform should help the learners hand their assignments in easily. At the same time, the teachers should be able to grade them as well as assign new ones, set deadlines, etc.
Online Testing
Continuing with evaluating students’ knowledge, the platform should help their users run tests, preferably with measures that prevent cheating. For instance, you can set the impossibility of turning off the camera during the tests.
Reviews and Analytics
We have already mentioned that implementing a learning platform allows you to get analytics on your business processes. However, you can offer some analytics to your customers too. For instance, you can assign your users – both teachers and learners a rating that will help others choose whether or not they want to work with them.
Creating Template Courses
One more important feature of an online tutoring website is the ability to use ready-made templates. It is very convenient for teachers that don’t have to spend extra time designing a PPT or thinking about how to present the information. Instead, they will focus on the content of the lesson itself.
Business Process Automation
With the help of the platform, you can automate critical business processes such as payments, assigning rankings, finding the best teacher/student match, and more.
Now, let’s dive into a more technical side of the process. How to start tutoring business online – what steps should you take?
How to Create an Online Tutoring Website? RewiSoft Guide
Step 1. Test Your Idea
Firstly, you need a preliminary analysis that will show whether your platform has the potential. You should:
- Carry out a physical survey according to principle ten pains and ten gains;
- Read negative reviews on your competitors. Doing so will help to identify your “don’ts and avoid some mistakes;
- Hold a decomposition of your business plan. How do you plan to monetize? How much time will the free trial take?;
- Try to seek expert advice from more experienced colleagues or a team who has experience in this business field;
- Explain to your partner your vision of the project.
Step 2. Write a Project Plan & Requirements
You need to describe your problems and visions clearly so that your team has a clear idea of what needs to be done. Without precise requirements, your team will not know how to set up an online tutoring website that will help you succeed.
Usually, the document with requirements comprises such aspects as project overview, your needs, and goals, the audience you want to target, your desired features set, recommendations, references, and prohibitions, etc.
Learn more about writing project requirements
Step 3. Select Your Partner
How to tell that a vendor is reliable, you may ask? Here is the checklist of aspects you should consider before signing a contract with a specific provider that can help you create a tutoring website.
- Check the vendors’ portfolio;
- Assess the customer reviews and testimonials;
- Pay attention to the industries they serve.
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We at RewiSoft provide an entire life-cycle of software development services, along with design and testing services.
Step 4. Start With MVP
MVP stands for a minimum viable product. It is a primary working product of the intended complete project, with only the core features. MVP enables testing your idea before it is fully developed. It facilitates easy modification of the product. Features are added and removed, depending on how the clients are responding to the MVP product.
When the MVP becomes a complete product, it will be a working application as it will have been practically tested.
MVP is one of the most popular product development strategies. MVP development companies enable one to come up with a working product that has been practically validated through user interaction.
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Step 5. Start Product Discovery
At this stage, RewiSoft specialists carefully research the market, conduct a competitor analysis, as well as the analysis of your target audience.
Also, during this stage, it is critical to identify business, users, and discovery goals, create user stories and customer journey maps. All these activities help to get through information on the product itself, the market it will operate on, its target audience, etc.
Step 6. Start to Build a UX Design
Before this phase, make sure the goals of your UX redesign are clear. Once you have the necessary information and have identified the changes required, it’s time to begin the tutoring platform UX design.
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The key activities RewiSoft can help you with at this stage are:
- sketching your ideas;
- developing prototypes;
- gathering user input;
- make design decisions.
Based on the concept of the application and its design, we prepared a roadmap to start the UX design process. During this stage, we have created the information architecture and wireframes.
Step 7. Start UI Design
You can continue with the UI redesign when the UX redesign is ready and tested. Consistency is the most critical aspect of the UI redesign stage. RewiSoft experts will ensure that all interface elements on your website will be of the same style, use your brand colors, and pick the fonts that will suit you the most.
Step 8. Do a User Testing
The testing stage allows bringing the prototype to a perfect state. There are three vital stages of testing: interview the focus groups, assessment research, and usability reports.
Learn more about the stages of product design, including testing here.
One of the bright examples of user experience testing is the RewiSoft UX Lab. The user in our lab gets a prototype. Eye-tracking equipment captures how a user acts when interacting with the product. After that, the system displays the information, which allows comparing the data of actual use and analytics. Based on this, the product will be adjusted to boost its usability.
Step 9. Build a Development Process [SDLC]
Project Documentation
During this stage, all the relevant information from the client is collected to develop a product as per expectations and requirements. The team should write technical documentation and choose technical stacks.
At this stage, the team should also define the requirements for functionality (requirements for the admin panel) and user roles (admin and super admin). The team should finalize the estimate and scope of work.
Development
Front-end developers are responsible for the client-side of the application. Back-end developers are accountable for API and database development. DevOps team working on the CI/CD process. QA engineers test all delivered code and write automated tests for developed components.
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Testing
QA engineers test all delivered code and perform manual testing for developed components.
Deployment
After the development and regression testing from the QA team, the tested version of the software is delivered to the users for beta testing.
Integration
The team collects user feedback, fixes all the bugs, and implements some improvements.
Maintenance
After the deployment of a product in the production environment comes the maintenance stage. If any issue comes up and needs to be fixed, if something is to be improved – the development team is responsible for all these activities at this stage.
Step 10. QA
After the development process is complete, you need to do a final detailed check of the entire product. Remember that it is better to spend time looking for bugs now than to spend even more time fixing them when the product is already launched.
Step 11. Launch
Now is the time for the market to see your product! The product launch process necessitates meticulous preparation and should be carried out systematically to guarantee that clients accept the product favorably. The following are the significant steps to a successful product launch process:
- Target audience identifying.
- Unique product packaging creation.
- Slogan and timeline creation.
- Competitors analysis.
- Customer onboarding creation.
- Website creation.
- Advertising.
How to create an online tutoring website: How can RewiSoft help?
RewiSoft has long-standing experience helping our customers understand how to make an online tutoring website and bring their vision to life.
Our team of skilled designers, developers, project managers, business analysts, solution architects, and other professionals will help you create a tutoring website as effectively as possible.
More About Our Expertise in Education Industry
For instance, we worked with SmartJen, a sophisticated open-source learning management system, to organize student and educators’ learning processes. The company helps find the ideal target audience fast, create multiple campaign sequences and optimize campaigns to drive even more robust results.
SmartJen empowers students to quickly go through their learning journeys, check results, and track their achievements via a customizable dashboard. Teachers can create and manage students’ lists, groups, and worksheets with assignments, track course completion and compliance. With a collaborative approach, parents are granted access to have control over their children’s learning processes.
SmartJen came to RewiSoft to improve their existing web platform by suggesting new and advanced features to make the user experience more seamless. Furthermore, SmartJen’s existing website was required to be updated and redesigned according to recent design trends and best practices.
Thanks to versatile users and market research, we were equipped with a clear vision of SmartJen’s unique value proposition. Evaluating the problems of the existing platform, we realized how to make customers’ journeys more convenient and smooth and improve user flows.
RewiSoft knows how to create an online tutoring website, as we solve a bunch of different problems for our customers. It costs, though. How much? Let’s find out in the next section.
How Much Does a Custom Tutoring Website Cost?
At RewiSoft, the starting price for developing a Tutoring Website is $30,000.
Like any other field, the prices for design and software changes vary among regions and the cost of living there. Also, the price depends on the seniority level of the task performers, workload, the difficulty of a task, and a range of other factors.
Nevertheless, some general trends describe the salary expectation in each market.
North American professionals are at the top of the market with the highest rates.
Rates in Western Europe are slightly lower than those in North America, though they are still high. Also, you should keep in mind that prices may differ drastically among countries in the region. For instance, rates in Spain are much lower than in Switzerland.
The labor market in Eastern Europe presents an optimal price-quality ratio. It boasts a vast talent pool of over 1M experts, agencies, and companies of all sizes that offer versatile expertise. At the same time, the rates here are lower than in the US and Europe, as the cost of living is also lower.
The design and software development market in Asia is presented primarily by experts from India. The country boasts a large talent pool and the lowest prices worldwide. Although the quality of services there is hampered by the low level of digitalization in the country and cultural mismatch.
Average rates per technology:
Tech stack | Eastern Europe | Western Europe | South America | Asia |
Angular | $35-45/hr | $40-60/hr | $40-45/hr | $25-35/hr |
React.js | $40-50/hr | $50-60/hr | $30-40/hr | $25-40/hr |
PHP | $40-40/hr | $40-50/hr | <$40/hr | <$35/hr |
Node.js | $40-50/hr | $45-65/hr | <40/hr | <40/hr |
Laravel | $40-50/hr | $40-60/hr | <40/hr | <35/hr |
Average rates for design:
Product discovery | UX design | UI design | Usability testing | |
Price per hour | $25-55/hr | <$45/hr | <35/hr | <30/hr |
Summary
How to create an online tutoring website successfully? It requires many stages and comes hand in hand with some challenges.
You need a strong team of designers, developers, sales managers, analysts, and many other professionals to succeed. This path, however, gets more manageable if you partner with a reliable provider.