Top 5 Features for an Online Education Platform

For a successful online education platform, it’s imperative that you keep the user experience in mind. During the design and development of your online education platform, don’t forget to prioritize your key users — students, parents, teachers, and even your own team.

Here are five top features to improve the user experience of your online education platform:

1. eCommerce

Make it easy for parents and students to explore, learn about, and purchase your products. Before beginning their educational journey, customers need to trust your brand enough to make a purchase.

Parents and students browsing through your digital courses, offerings and resources will be seeking an intuitive and engaging experience. They will want to dive deep into understanding your educational solutions, with the options to save or share selected products.

Ultimately, parents and students are seeking a frictionless e-commerce experience, from the second they land on your website to the time of registration and purchase. First impressions are strong, but so are the last touches before commitment.

2. Learning

Make it easy for students to successfully achieve their academic goals. Perhaps the most important user experience will be for the students using your educational platform to learn.

The success of your business will depend, in part, on whether you’ve designed the right environment to support their learning. Is it easy for students to navigate your platform? Is it intuitive for them to kickstart virtual classroom or tutoring time with your teachers? Are there features that allow students to engage in real-time collaboration and feedback?

All these elements, and more, will help to facilitate positive academic outcomes for students.

3. Teaching

Make it easy for teachers and tutors to manage online classrooms or tutoring time. It’s often tempting to only prioritize customer-facing features. However, ease of platform use by your talent can go a long way in creating a positive teaching experience.

Make sure your teachers have what they need to begin a virtual classroom or tutoring time with students. Equip them with the platform features or technical resources required to grade work, assess students, and more.

Teachers can then more successfully accomplish their teaching goals. In turn, this will help to increase overall employee retention, plus position your brand attractively for future talent.

4. Parent Portal

Make it easy for parents to check in and view student progress. You’ll earn extra brownie points if you supply a parent portal, particularly if your platform caters to younger grades. You can even explore bonus features such as sending out scheduled email reports from the portal, featuring relevant updates, such as the student’s latest test results or performance highlights.

Parents are often highly curious about their children’s education, and are eager for any insights into progress or future next steps. Features that help parents answer their biggest questions will provide reassurance that your brand is a trusted expert, meeting their family’s needs.

5. Website Management

Lastly, make it easy for your team to manage marketing or educational content on the website.

Your website may feature educational resources or content that aren’t directly controlled by your teachers. For that, you’ll need a quality content management backend for your website. This will allow your team to easily log in, add and manage content, where needed. By prioritizing this user experience as well, you can simplify the steps and shorten the time it takes to launch new products, resources, and messaging.

This will provide a fantastic edge for your marketing and business efforts. 

For more tips like these, download our free guide on how to launch an online education business.

Note: This is the second installment in our How to Launch Your Online Education Business series. Click here to read the first installment, 5 Key Essentials for Your Online Education Business.