Forem: Evercode Lab

How to organize online training?

Evercode Lab — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:16:50 +0000

An online course is a great way of monetizing your blog or website and increase revenues. There are many easy-to-use systems to organize the course creation process because online education has gained more power and has become an essential part of our society. Let’s critically examine all pros and cons of online training and how to start your own course.

Advantages:

Focusing on your passion
Very low startup costs compared to other online businesses
Generate new leads for your main business

Even though with low startup costs, you should know how to create effective content, choose a marketing strategy, pay for advertising, conduct market research, invest time into building your course.

Select the type of online course:

Masterclass (small classes for advanced students, all types of art and science)
Coaching (usually refers to business, career, relationship, personal success)
Corporate training (employees education)
Mini-course (takes 2 hours or less to work)

Once created, an online course can be used multiple times. The biggest financial advantage is when you worked hard and made a high-quality course, you can use it as long as you want to attract more customers if your content is relevant. After you finished the content, the only thing to be done is the advertising and transmission to the clients. Also, content organization plays an important role in eLearning, whether you are restructuring old information or creating exclusive content from zero, managing your information will make it easier for learners to understand. A well-organized course provides a navigation list, learning goals, and objectives for students.

Time and costs

It depends on how much ready-made materials you have. Even if all content is created, you should include additional costs on marketing, video production, certificate design, landing page, and learning platform fees if you decided to use one. It is also important to engage students and present various kinds of interactions, quizzes, etc. The creation of the course is not that difficult, the hardest thing is the promotion and making your training profitable.
It is a common idea to choose a marketplace to upload your course like Udemy, LearnWorlds, Udacity or Skillshare, Though, in this case, you don’t need to look for the audience but you also can’t choose pricing and marketing.

The next step is announcing the training. However, it’s not necessary to use your own online platform but having established channels (Instagram, Youtube) or social networks is required. A great tool to attract more audience is giving a discount for early registration or other interrelated courses. If you decided not to use an online platform at the initial stages, you can monetize your content by sending videos or email training. There are two possibilities, choosing either public videos that will remain permanently online or exclusive videos with restricted access and one time passwords.
The profitability of the course depends on your resources, industry, marketing strategy, and target audience. You have all chances to change people’s minds by creating online training and sharing your knowledge. Get acquainted with your audience, your course must solve their problems and allow them to learn new skills. The more you gain, the more you can invest in the online business and increase the number of satisfied customers. Evercode Lab has a rich experience in developing educational software projects. Our company can provide you with a full-time development team to launch your website, app, create a marketplace or online platform.

Step-by-step instruction for creating your online school

Evercode Lab — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 12:10:36 +0000

At the moment there are thousands of people eager to learn from the comfort of their homes and looking for experienced teachers. The world is moving towards online educational platforms (e.g. MOOC, Udemy) and new skills are in great demand. There is a lot of non-systematic and false information on the internet, that’s why students are willing to invest in reliable and useful education. You can capitalize on this desire and generate a successful business. Creating an online school is also one of the most profitable investments you can start and generate a stable income. This article will reveal various steps and tips to start your online school.

1. Choose a business model

There are two main business models suitable for the online school setup: the standalone course model and the comprehensive academy model. The first one is focused on a specific course/topic. With the second model, you can cover multiple topics and constantly create new courses. Both options are profitable but the comprehensive academy model is more suitable for a startup and will more likely attract a larger amount of students.

2. Select a learning management system (LMS)

It’s a software application for educational courses that automates the training process and minimizes human error. Choosing an excellent LMS will allow you to track the progress of the students (exam results etc.) and help your business to grow. There are two the most common LMS solutions - an open-source (requires installation and setup) and a cloud-based LMS (no installation required).

3. Create a website

Pay attention to brand identity and customization. If you don’t have an IT background, the best option is to hire a professional software development team that will help you to integrate LMS, eCommerce features (payment, enrollment), and customize your landing pages. Don’t forget to add a great logo to your website. It is also necessary to conduct marketing research as well as being active on social media. These measures will strengthen your brand identity.

4. Notifications

In order to attract your target audience and keep old clients interested, always share news about upcoming courses, discounts, and referrals. It’s a good business practice to send enrolment emails, subscriptions, and support notifications. Integrate them into LMS and don’t waste time sending notifications manually.

5. Course structure

Create a plan, your courses should be creative and solve customers’ problems. Choose suitable educational goals and pedagogical approach. It will help you to build a loyal audience and get more positive feedbacks from learners. Before launching your website, make sure it is easy to navigate and every part of the course is transparent (enrollment, paying, taking the final exam).

Remember that knowledge is power and successful people will always want to transform themselves. Identify new trends in online education, be innovative, and use every opportunity. An online school is one of the most scalable and flexible business models as well as profitable.
Evercode Lab develops online educational systems, using modern technologies and improving the quality of the study process.

How to scale your business?

Evercode Lab — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 18:30:19 +0000

There are two valuable things that any entrepreneur desires - to have more time and more money. But if you don’t know how to invest and spend money properly when your business is growing, then you are stuck. A successful entrepreneur should be aware not only of launching a startup but of scaling up and growing their business. If the company is wasting time, customers will choose larger competitors.

What is business scaling and why do you need it?

Scalability is about capacity and capability. Does your business have the capacity to grow?
There are two main options: either you expand an existing business unit (e.g. offline store, office, marketplace), or create new ones based on the same principle. The key point is to determine whether your business needs to expand:

stable increase in the number of clients
lack of employees
not enough manufacturing or delivery capacity

If you do not scale your business in this situation, you will soon face a number of problems, the biggest of them is unhappy customers. Here are the top 10 tips on scaling your business:

Improving the sales system. The principle is simple: the better sales are organized, the more products can be sold, thereby increasing profits. Strategize what you need to do double or triple your sales, make a detailed sales growth forecast.
Invest in technology. Scaling a business doesn’t come free, automation can minimize your costs and decrease manual operations. Combine multiple automation systems if possible (sales management, marketing automation, etc.). Don’t forget about the importance of social media.
Expanding and updating the product range. Introduce new products and change outdated to modern ones.
Open new offices, enter the national or international market. However, this option requires more serious investments.
Move your business online by choosing a marketplace or creating your website. You can do it by yourself but the best option is to hire a professional team. Though, if you are on a tight budget, it’s enough to focus on social media and start a blog.
Capture neighboring niches in the market. Create affiliate companies in related industries.
Invest in employees to build a great team. As the business grows, it is necessary to hire more staff and you need to make them understand your business values. Implement the right environment where employees are motivated and rewarded. But don’t hire new staff too early.
Franchising is a type of business growth strategy that means chain stores. However, it is not an equal partership but both sides can succeed. Franchising is widely used to enter the foreign market.
Outsourcing of marketing and direct sales. It is similar to the creation of affiliate companies. Orders are processed at the head office, sales are made by partners, and profits are divided in half.
Don’t take shortcuts and make compromises. When you decided to scale your business, the idea to reach the goal as fast as possible seems very attractive but every action requires time and the quickest way may have a negative impact.

There are many other options to expand the business, in any case scaling means that you need to make tough choices. Having the right strategy, excellent produst, services, and employees doesn’t always guarantee success. Sometimes it is necessary to try outside expertise. Evercode Lab can provide you with the right solutions to expand your business. Going online helps to access more customers and approach the target audience. We offer a full-time software development team to move your business online, launch a website, or a mobile app.

MVP for a marketplace

Evercode Lab — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:30:49 +0000

Many entrepreneurs wish to establish an outstanding business but only a few of them appeared on the market and created a successful company. Even a great startup idea, development and promotion of your business do not guarantee making money right away.
Launching an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) helps to validate your idea with the potential customers taking minimum efforts. Release of a fully-developed product requires a huge amount of time and money. MVP is the first version of your product with only basic features, however, it can be offered to attract your target audience.

Implementing an MVP will provide you with:

the base of potential clients
defining the possible pros and cons
understanding if your product attracts the audience
finding out which features you need to focus on

What’s the key difference between an MVP and a fully-developed product?

Many people think that an MVP it’s just a poorly made product but actually, it consists of the most necessary features (UI/UX and standard design) and can effectively solve basic customers’ problems. Apart from the lower price, the biggest advantage of an MVP is that it allows saving time and money for a fully-featured product. And it demonstrates the entire idea and helps to get feedback from the target audience.

How to create an online marketplace MVP?

Make market research whether you are starting a local business or want to move forward on the national market, you should find out your competitors and examine their offer.
Focus on the following questions:

how many companies are on the market, their size etc.
who represents their audience (gender, age, income, preferences)
how to meet customers and vendors expectations Therefore, you need to create a unique offer and keep in mind that new competitors will constantly appear on the market.

What would an MVP look like for an ecommerce startup?

Pay attention to integral elements: Search, Email, Payments, Web Hosting, Mobile-friendly website, etc. Choose the most essential tools among them to build into the MVP. Identify the uniqueness of your offer and keep it in mind all the time. In order to launch an MVP, make your target audience as narrow as possible, create your niche market. After the success of an MVP, add more features and expand your product to other markets.
Though, a marketplace consists of two sides - for buyers and for sellers, during the creation of your MVP you can concentrate just on one side and create a single-player mode to approve the idea of your business.
An MVP is one of the most significant steps to get a full-fledged marketplace.

Key points while creating your online marketplace MVP:

Don’t spend too much, wait to get some feedback from customers.
Tighten the focus since you have a limited set of features and resources.
Interact with your customers, think about how you can make their lives better.

MVP or in case of marketplaces, Minimum Viable Platform doesn’t provide multiple solutions but it should solve the biggest problem of your clients. If you are not an expert, you can simply create landing pages or try available marketplace software.

Startup development: team, cost, time

Evercode Lab — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 13:49:41 +0000

There are several different approaches to startup development you can choose from. Every startup aims to implement a well-defined strategy and present an innovative product to investors. But before attracting the investors, a startup needs to pass through many specific stages. In this article, we will focus on the most important parts of startup development that will take your business to the next level.

Team

Choosing a dedicated team is a huge factor in a company’s success. Team structure depends on your business type, goals and prospects. Hiring a full-time team is more productive and cost-effective than looking for individual freelancers. Let's discuss three common team structures:

The functional team is based on job specialization. Team members are grouped according to their skills and knowledge. It’s the most popular and effective structure but the isolation of different departments and lack of communication between them may decrease the company’s productivity.
The cross-functional product team can be ideal for startups and consists of individuals doing independent tasks in order to reach the same goal. In this case, team members can easily share ideas, though they work differently and perform different tasks, it can be complicated to come to an agreement.
Hybrid team is a combination of both structures.

However, there is no ideal team structure and as the startup grows it should be switched and modified if you realize that the chosen structure can no longer move your business forward. An entrepreneur should be flexible enough and open to experiments when needed.

Cost

It is hard to estimate startup cost but necessary to get your company off the ground according to your financial plan. Costs may vary depending on your industry (brick-and-mortar businesses, online businesses) but there are basic unavoidable expenses that happen before you launch the startup and ongoing expenses. One-time expenses: incorporation fees, logo design, website design, rent, tech equipment, office equipment. Ongoing expenses: rent, taxes, legal services, loan payments, insurance payments, marketing costs, utilities, employee salaries.
The second step is to estimate the exact cost of each expense, some of them are easily calculated (taxes, rent, licenses), others are less defined (salaries, marketing costs). You can use a LivePlan software to estimate your expenses, assets and financial model.

Time

According to the statistics, 60% of startups don’t survive the first five years. Creating a startup can happen really quickly. Turning it into a real business — requires a lot of time and work. First of all, focus on Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and define the timeline to build it. Based on startups.com survey it takes at least 3-4 years to transform a startup into a real business. Make sure to focus on every startup stage and pay attention to the details. A well-developed business plan will help you to present the idea to investors and potential partners. Describe carefully what should be achieved, what is the uniqueness of your offer? Keep safe all documents related to your startup. Whether you are a professional entrepreneur or just started a business, concentrate on strategy, management and prioritization.
Evercode Lab has worked with many startups representing various industries (medicine, education, e-commerce, blockchain). We can provide you with a full-time development team based on your company’s needs and goals.