With the growth and development in educational technology, online teaching platforms are growing at a much faster rate. Better flexibility, convenience, comfort, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency are the few benefits that make the online courses platform the new preference of educators and learners. To reach out to the people, tell them about the course services, get enrollers and build your business, making an online course website plays a significant role. Let us discuss the main features that educators must work upon to make an effective course website.
Features Of An Online Course Website
1) A Mini-Course
For how to sell courses online, making a course portal or website is very important. Before purchasing any online course, the learners want to get a basic idea of the academic structure and services offered. To do so, a mini-course feature should be included on your course website. Add a few sample video lectures, video presentations, picture cards, reading PDFs, and quizzes. Give free access to this mini-course to the audience. This will help people know the effectiveness of your course and the sales will be maximized too.
2) Payment Procedure
Another feature to make an effective online course website is adding easy payment procedures. When the course is online, the payment will be online too. There will be payments in cash or cheque modes. After deciding to get admission to your course, students want to register and pay the course fees. Therefore include a variety of online payment options. Payments can be in the form of
- Debit cards/ credit cards
- Net banking
- Unified payments interface service
- Mobile wallet
This will help potential customers to get enrolled in your course easily. Give digital receipts for security and safety purposes. This will ensure that the admissions have been made successfully.
3) Communication
An online course-selling website is formed so that you can appear on the search engines and reach out to the target audience better. One of the main features to be included on an online course website is communication. While visiting an educational site, students come across many new things and systems that they don’t have a proper idea about. They face doubts and confusion. To serve the best to the website visitors, including some communication methods can be very helpful.
- Forums: it is a kind of an online discussion where the website holders or the helping assistant interact or answer a group of learners on the website. These are suitable for asynchronous conversations. This can be included on the website as a communication tool.
- Calling: calls are more clear and precise as compared to messages. You can add a few contact numbers that the target audience can use. Add the timings at which they can call you to get the doubts and queries answered.
- Instant messaging: not all prefer doing calls. In such cases, instant messaging helps. Here the audience can connect and interact with the course teachers in real-time. The exchange of messages helps the website visitors get their doubts solved.
4) Blogs
Another feature to be included on an online course website is a blog section. You can write blogs on your online course such as benefits offered, the quality of your course study material, the teaching staff, advantages of the course certificate,e and more. With the help of your blogs, you can reach out to the target audience more quickly.
Insert the trending and most searched keywords in your blogs so that you can be on the search engines and increase traffic to the website organically. Other than this, blogs can be posted for students already enrolled in your course too. Publish blogs on topics like study tips, study hacks for online learners, etc. You can also write blogs on reviews of experienced students. By reading these blogs, more people will be interested in purchasing your course.
 5) Student Information Management
To make an effective online course website, focus on student information management. This can include the records of personal details of the enrolled students, test records, results, digital report cards, and certificate download options. This will help the students to have self-service to the academic procedures and results. The course website will become more informative, resourceful, and significant for the learners.
Conclusion
With the growth and development in science and technology, online teaching platforms are growing rapidly. For better online course selling, making a course website is an important step. By reading the above-mentioned information we can make out the essential features of an online course website. The online course creators must focus on these top five features and include the same on their course website.
