EdTech is increasingly becoming popular. According to Global Market Insight, the online education industry hit the $250 billion mark in 2020 and is projected to grow to $1 trillion by 2027. Global online education platforms like Udemy sit at the top of the table. With immense funding, wholesome functionality, and simplified UI, the user experience of Udemy is unparalleled. To create an Udemy-like website, you must consider the platform’s market, functionality, and design and identify pitfalls to your own Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). We will explore how to create a website like Udemy.

Reasons to Create an Udemy Like Website

Impressive Market Growth

The market growth for online education is incredible. Fueled by the Global Pandemic, online education has risen to staggering heights. The statistics for the online course marketplace are equally impressive. Udemy alone houses more than 40 million students who have bought one to several units of courses, gained certification and used the platform to advance their careers. The demand for online course platforms has evolved beyond the Global Pandemic. Today, universities and educational institutions have recognized the massive shift from a classroom setup to an online one. On the other hand, students recognize the benefits of gaining world-class certificates within a flexible setting.

The Market Isn’t Saturated

Udemy is the world’s largest Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) platform but houses just over 40 million people. Unlike the social media market that has been usurped by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and TikTok, there is still a large market of learners willing to try out reputable online course platforms. Statistics show that between 2020 and 2027, the growth of the Edtech market will reach 1 trillion. This figure shows over $500 million deficit and demand and an opportunity that an edtech entrepreneur can maximize.

Hedge Funding from Investors

Investors know that the education industry is a gold mine. Fortunately, the online education industry is still largely untapped, and investors are looking for the next-best online course platform. With the demand for entrepreneurs with novel ideas for their MOOCs, the entry point into the edtech industry is relatively easy.

Functionality of a Udemy-Like Website

Market Analysis

If you want to create a website like Coursera or Udemy, the website’s functionality is dependent on the market and your target audience. When starting, you must first carve out a niche for yourself. Offering a robust online training platform that covers all educational areas may be expensive, yet, you will not be able to capture the market because it is controlled by the big guys (Udemy and Coursera). Moreover, Coursera didn’t launch as a full-fledged online learning platform. In 2011, Coursera only offered 3 courses. Today, the platform offers 6,000 courses.

Website Features

Your MOOC must be organized, allowing each user category to access the website without issue. The three categories of MOOC users are Teacher, Student, and Admin.

Admin

The admin is in charge of the activity on the website, from moderation to using an integrated CMS dashboard to create blogs and marketing materials. The admin manually checks the platform to track and remove users who flout the website’s rules or expose the site to security dangers. The admin section should have a dashboard where admins can access valuable insights like the number of students and teachers, conversion metrics, website traffic, and other reports.

An admin section should also have a commission management sub-dashboard where admin’s heads manage the commission of each teacher. Other functionalities of the admin section include a payment module (where they monitor the payment history of teachers and have insights like the total number of teachers paid) and user management.

Teacher

Create a panel for your teachers where they can access their course lists, number of students, conversions, discount details, profiles, and key activities. Push notification can also be instituted to ensure that teachers get instant alerts whenever someone purchases or comments on one of their courses. The teacher dashboard must be robust. Insights can also be presented in graphical forms (pie charts, bar charts, tables, and so on). An important element in the Teacher dashboard is the price management structure. A teacher should be able to change the price of his courses and offer all sorts of discounts. 

Students

When you want to create a website like EDX, Coursera, or Udemy, ensure that the student dashboard should also be robust. The elements it should contain include:

1. Profile
2. Current course and completion rate
3. Past completed courses
4. Certifications
5. Feedback and review
6. Recommended courses
7. Discount offers by teachers

The Cost of Creating a Website Similar to Udemy

The cost of building an Udemy-like website depends on many factors, from the level of robustness of your website, website functionality, the developers, prototyping, marketing, licensing, and content generation. Let’s check these factors:

Prototyping: The prototyping team will charge you to build your idea’s UI/UX structure so that you can send the website out for testing.

Development team: The development team includes the backend, frontend, and database developers. The Tech stack you will consider in this hiring phase includes Backend (Python, JAVA, React, .Net, PHP, and Ruby on Rails); Frontend (Javascript, Bootstrap, Angular, and HTML5, amongst others); Database: MySQL, MongoDB, CouchDB, and Apache.

People often recommend CMS platforms for website building: while CMS might be cheap, it does not facilitate customized functionality, can have dire security errors, and cannot be scaled. It’s a bad idea.

Other expenses: Legal, marketing, engineering, and testing.

Pitfalls You Should Watch Out for When Building an App Like Udemy

Do not overstretch: Do not overstretch your app’s functionality. If you decide on a full-fledged app instead of a niched app, you will be going against a market that is already dominated by the biggest competitors. Find a niche and stick to it.

Zero market survey: Intensive market surveys save you from subjective decisions. Is there a future market or a demand that will encourage scaling? Who is your target audience? What niche will you focus on?

When you want to create an Udemy like website, you must follow the outlined procedure, conduct a market survey, build a prototype, secure essential funding, and launch when you are done building. You might like this blog if you’d like to learn more about the topic.