Educational portals are unique websites in many ways. Unlike standard information based website and ecommerce portals, educational websites have different needs. They need to offer a unique set of services which need to be provided in the right way.
Education is an experience and online portals for education try to replicate the feel of classroom learning. So, a good educational website needs to have a great many features to make it appealable to students.
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So, there needs to a well-defined path for the educational portal development process. Here are some key steps in developing such a website and deploying it such that it works perfectly.
7 Essential Steps for Educational Portal Design and Development
Working Model
The first step of any school education portal will consider how the website can be created for functionality and visual appeal. So, there needs to a thorough research of the market. What kind of connections do potential students have? How do they prefer their teaching – PDF reading and tests or live video lessons? These factors will go into determining a rough overlay of the project’s requirements.
Understanding Project Scaling
Scaling refers to the speed at which your educational portal will grow once it takes off. Now, you can get educational portal development done for your present needs. However, this will mean that when your demand grows, you will either need a new site or have to tweak the web code to grow it. Both of these are major hassles which can be avoided with some foresight. Just plan ahead modestly for the potential portal growth you except and see it implemented.
Creating Service Modules
Service modules refer to the kind of access that students are going to get. For the most part, an educational portal will offer combination courses where certain subjects are clubbed together for professional orientation. At the same time, it is also wise to allow students customize their own learning program. This is important for professional skills and learning because everyone has different needs and a preset program might turn students away. So, the service modules should be kept at the centre of all educational portal design and development with a fair bit of customization possibilities.
CMS Platform
For an educational platform content is more important than anything else. So, you need a strong CMS which can provide students the access they need while also allowing for integration of new courses. Now, since you are probably going to have a number of different methods for imparting education, you need the CMS managed effectively. For example, having a video upload segment with an autotranscript option is a great thing. However, these do not always work properly. So, the developers should also include options like editing the autotranscript or uploading a fresh transcript altogether.
Designs and Aesthetics
As we said before, you need to have an educational environment on your website to really attract students. This is where the design aspect of the website is going to come into play. Generally speaking, the design is meant to be simple, enticing and able to help students concentrate. Again, this will also depend on which level of education you want to offer. For school education portals, designs can vary by a lot. However, higher education educational design and development, you need to have an industry standardized design, color palette and visual aesthetic.
User Experience
Generally speaking, the user experience on websites has to do with how the user interacts with the site itself. For educational portals, this is even more important because your visitors are going to stay there for a long time. So, the website needs to perform well even when it is loading media-heavy pages. This is done by implementing lean coding structures across the website and optimization as per the latest technology.
Another important aspect of an educational portal UX is how well it caters to the needs of the student. For example, user accounts should be prompted with associated courses, paid online workshop sessions, training videos, discussion threads etc. The course progress for their subscribed courses should also be tracked on their account home page interface.
Branding and Recall Solutions
There are many educational portals out there. You need to set yourself apart by offering high-quality material and learning opportunities. Aside from the marketing, you also need simple branding solutions which you can implement as soon as you launch. For example, design vectors will allow your logo to be imprinted across your website as well as on any documents and video you use. This is a good way to promote as well as copyright your material.
Where Can You Get the Best Educational Portal Design and Development Services?
6ixwebsoft offers the best educational portal development services to clients worldwide. Whether you want a school education development module or higher learning or professional training platform, we can offer you the best options for establishing your educational platform. Contact us now!
