How to create a new "Education"
This week we restarted the Education project . If in the previous version almost everything was paid, and the courses were published only through the manager (which is understandable, that site was created six years ago), then in the new version users can register and publish the courses on their own and for free. The project has changed not only the approach to business, but also completely updated the design with the platform. In general, in essence, we have made a new project with the same name.
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The previous version of “Education” was created by the founding fathers of hh.ru, in order to occupy the market of business education and all supplementary education in principle. Then, in 2007, this niche was free, and work under the wing of the “big brother” promised sustained high traffic to the interested audience. The project was successfully launched, began to gain a base of courses, but the crisis of 2008 seriously undermined it: those who wanted to pay a sum with a few zeros for publishing the course noticeably diminished.
Almost four years have passed since then, the number of vacancies on hh.ru has doubled that of the pre-crisis spring, but the “Education” from the knockout has not risen. The clients sold his services hard, and what was published usually went as additional options along with large employer packages. At the end of last year, it became clear to us that the project should be either closed or redone.
To begin with, “Education” found a manager, they became a marinaler (Marina Lerner, all coincidences of her surname with “learner” are random), who previously headed the brand management service at hh.ru. For her, it was something akin to horizontal career growth, which has been much talked about lately.
Marina decided that it was useless to change the site without changing the business itself, because even with the new design, the old problems did not disappear. Therefore, she made a willful decision on her new ward - to allow all training companies to publish their courses for free. The most interesting of the free edition of the "Education" will make on the main page of the site to help them gain listeners.
Free course placement drew attention to another anachronism of the old site - the registration of companies and the process of course placement took place only through a live manager. This could be justified for the site in 2007, when each course was placed by our employee manually and cost good money, but now it was inappropriate. Therefore, the second important decision was made - to give all training companies the opportunity to open registration and self-publish courses. At the same time, new users, exactly, like their courses, still undergo moderation, but this is hardly possible to manage without it, because the editors ruthlessly cut off everything that does not relate to the project's theme: spiritual practices, esoterics, etc. will not appear on the site.
The third important change is the new course catalog structure. Now the disciplines, by which all courses are sorted, became 24, not 28, as it was before (the old structure simply copied the professional areas of hh.ru, which, by the way, will soon also come under rework). For example, in the field of information technology, there are already 17 open courses on the site, which, you see, not bad, in the first few days of the new site. Pay attention to them .
Finally, the one without which all the alterations would hardly have been perceived adequately - a new design. His creation was entrusted to our designer Oleg Morev , who worked for several years in the Moscow office of hh.ru, and then moved to Bali and continued to work for us almost from the beach. Oleg described in detail how the process of creating the new “Education” design was going on, I highly recommend that you read it, because this is really impressive work.
By the way, the site is now equally useful for viewing from any device, regardless of the screen resolution:
Like any Internet business, “Education” should also bring money, so Marina could get paid, we could keep this blog, Oleg Morev - not to leave Bali, well, you know :) So, despite the fact that the publication of courses has become free, the site according to the plans of the creators should be more profitable than its predecessor. The money is now taken for the additional attraction of the attention of users, primarily to paid (and free, if the organizers so want) courses. These sites are sold on this site (the central banner is not for sale and is reserved specifically for free courses):
Yes, we also love Coursera, Udemy and edX, but we push off from our realities and existing clients. But the reality is: even those few educational institutions that make online courses are not willing to pay for their promotion. And for the most part potential students are not willing to pay for this content. Perhaps the future is online learning, and we will definitely look this way. But while in Russia we cannot consider this business as the main one.
Briefly and point by point, while without specifics, because at first you want to realize all that is planned:
We will be very grateful for your ideas on website modifications, many of them can be implemented very quickly.
')
Prehistory
The previous version of “Education” was created by the founding fathers of hh.ru, in order to occupy the market of business education and all supplementary education in principle. Then, in 2007, this niche was free, and work under the wing of the “big brother” promised sustained high traffic to the interested audience. The project was successfully launched, began to gain a base of courses, but the crisis of 2008 seriously undermined it: those who wanted to pay a sum with a few zeros for publishing the course noticeably diminished.
Almost four years have passed since then, the number of vacancies on hh.ru has doubled that of the pre-crisis spring, but the “Education” from the knockout has not risen. The clients sold his services hard, and what was published usually went as additional options along with large employer packages. At the end of last year, it became clear to us that the project should be either closed or redone.
New life with a new leader
To begin with, “Education” found a manager, they became a marinaler (Marina Lerner, all coincidences of her surname with “learner” are random), who previously headed the brand management service at hh.ru. For her, it was something akin to horizontal career growth, which has been much talked about lately.
Marina decided that it was useless to change the site without changing the business itself, because even with the new design, the old problems did not disappear. Therefore, she made a willful decision on her new ward - to allow all training companies to publish their courses for free. The most interesting of the free edition of the "Education" will make on the main page of the site to help them gain listeners.
Free course placement drew attention to another anachronism of the old site - the registration of companies and the process of course placement took place only through a live manager. This could be justified for the site in 2007, when each course was placed by our employee manually and cost good money, but now it was inappropriate. Therefore, the second important decision was made - to give all training companies the opportunity to open registration and self-publish courses. At the same time, new users, exactly, like their courses, still undergo moderation, but this is hardly possible to manage without it, because the editors ruthlessly cut off everything that does not relate to the project's theme: spiritual practices, esoterics, etc. will not appear on the site.
The third important change is the new course catalog structure. Now the disciplines, by which all courses are sorted, became 24, not 28, as it was before (the old structure simply copied the professional areas of hh.ru, which, by the way, will soon also come under rework). For example, in the field of information technology, there are already 17 open courses on the site, which, you see, not bad, in the first few days of the new site. Pay attention to them .
Finally, the one without which all the alterations would hardly have been perceived adequately - a new design. His creation was entrusted to our designer Oleg Morev , who worked for several years in the Moscow office of hh.ru, and then moved to Bali and continued to work for us almost from the beach. Oleg described in detail how the process of creating the new “Education” design was going on, I highly recommend that you read it, because this is really impressive work.
By the way, the site is now equally useful for viewing from any device, regardless of the screen resolution:
Where is the money?
Like any Internet business, “Education” should also bring money, so Marina could get paid, we could keep this blog, Oleg Morev - not to leave Bali, well, you know :) So, despite the fact that the publication of courses has become free, the site according to the plans of the creators should be more profitable than its predecessor. The money is now taken for the additional attraction of the attention of users, primarily to paid (and free, if the organizers so want) courses. These sites are sold on this site (the central banner is not for sale and is reserved specifically for free courses):
Why we did not make a platform for online learning
Yes, we also love Coursera, Udemy and edX, but we push off from our realities and existing clients. But the reality is: even those few educational institutions that make online courses are not willing to pay for their promotion. And for the most part potential students are not willing to pay for this content. Perhaps the future is online learning, and we will definitely look this way. But while in Russia we cannot consider this business as the main one.
Future plans
Briefly and point by point, while without specifics, because at first you want to realize all that is planned:
- registration of students for courses directly from the site;
- ratings of training programs and the ability to leave reviews;
- the ability to immediately find suitable courses when viewing a vacancy (it’s immediately obvious what skills are not enough to get the desired job);
- integration with user profiles and the ability to attach a certificate obtained in the "Education" for training, to the resume on hh.ru;
- selection of corporate programs: we have a huge audience of HR managers who are responsible not only for the selection of personnel, but also for training in companies. Especially for them, we plan to do a search for coaches - for companies, the coach’s personality is usually more important than a program that can always be rebuilt.
We will be very grateful for your ideas on website modifications, many of them can be implemented very quickly.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/173839/
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