7 Great Tools to Create Your Online Course Website
Creating an online course is one of the best ways for graphic designers to build up a passive stream of income. Not only does it bring in extra cash, but it also helps you create a dedicated group of clients you can market your services and products to later on down the road.
However, creating an online course can be intimidating, especially if you haven’t created one before. It can seem complicated, expensive, and entirely out of your comfort zone.
Luckily, the truth of the matter is it’s not!
Online learning is becoming more and more popular, which means that more and more resources are becoming available online to create them. In fact, it’s entirely possible to create a profitable course for as low as $200.
Ready to build a passive income? Let’s take a look at 7 great tools to create your online course website.
1. Hubspot
One of the most challenging parts of creating an online course is creating enough content and materials to keep your students engaged and eager to learn. HubSpot’s CRM and form builder are great tools to accomplish this. HubSpot is a great resource to centralize learning activity data and incorporate customer education into your content strategy.
When a student signs up for a class or completes a lesson, automate customer education workflows using learning and CRM data to follow up with additional resources like lesson plans, practice assignments, or even a discussion board. You can also use HubSpot’s form to allow your students to provide feedback on lessons they need extra help with so you can improve and tailor your lesson plans.
2. Mailchimp
Arguably your most important asset when creating an online course is your email list. With it, you can set up email sequences, send out newsletters, and keep your customers updated on what’s going on with your courses. Without it, you’ll struggle to reach new or even existing customers.
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email services out there, offering users a simple way to easily set up an email management system for their business. It comes with a free version that can be used to send out emails but you can also opt for a paid version with additional features such as automated email sequences.
3. Launchaco
If you want to convert traffic into paying customers, you’re going to need a landing page. Landing pages are web pages specifically designed for selling products and services and can come in a variety of forms.
Because they’re so valuable, landing pages can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to create. Luckily, you can create one yourself as long as you’re willing to put in a little bit of time and effort.
Launchaco is a neat landing page builder that can be used to create a landing page in under 5 minutes. Currently, it can be used for free for unlimited websites with Launchaco branding or $50/year for custom domains and branding.
4. Apowersoft
In order to sell online courses, you’ll need to have a product to sell. Apowersoft is a web-based online screen recorder that allows you to record your computer screen for free. You can use it an unlimited amount of time, making it an extremely versatile tool for recording your online courses.
On top of that, Apowersoft also offers a host of other products such as a video editing suite and a cross-platform screen recorder at an affordable price. You can even buy their entire product catalog for $59.95 a year, making it one of the best value recording and editing tools around.
5. Beaver Builder
If you want to sell your online courses from a website, Beaver Builder is one of the best options around for building a website. While it is a little pricier than other site builders, with a price tag of $99 for unlimited sites, it’s also extremely user-friendly which means you’ll save on time and effort.
This is great because it means that no coding knowledge is needed to get your website up and running! Using Beaver Builder, you can simply use the drag and drop interface to see changes in real-time as well as edit existing elements.
6. Sellfy
While technically not an online course platform, Sellfy is an e-commerce platform that makes it easy to sell online tutorials as well as other digital products you might offer. This is handy because you can use it to host your products in conjunction with your course website. Or simply sell through your own personalized Sellfy storefront.
Using an e-commerce platform like Sellfy has a few benefits over simply selling through your website or basic platform. Sellfy offers additional features such as discounts, email marketing, and analytic capabilities to allow you to track how well your courses are performing.
7. Slidesgo
Most likely you will be using presentations in your online course. Slidesgo is a Freepik Company project that allows you to create highly customizable Google Slides and PowerPoint presentations for your course videos.
On top of that, you’ll also have access to a wide range of resources such as sets of icons, images, various themes, etc.—all for free.
Not only are these graphic resources available for everyone, but they’re also made by designers with modern trends in mind. Slidesgo gives all the creative freedom you need for editing and modifying your templates through your browser, and it’s easy too. Then there’s Slidesgo School a section on their website where you’ll find plenty of tips and tricks on how to make your presentations more attractive for your audience.
8. Zapier
For instance, if a student visits one of your landing pages you can then create a zap which will automatically sign them up to receive a certain sequence of emails, designed to convert them to purchase that product.
This is extremely valuable since it takes a lot of the hassle out of having to manually interact with your students. By automating processes, you can create an online course business that basically manages itself!
To figure out the best way to set up and use Zapier, take a look at your customer lifecycle. By mapping out your customer lifecycle, you can figure out where your customers are taking action or falling off, and then create zaps to increase positive interactions.
In Conclusion
Creating an online course website doesn’t have to be hard. With so many graphic designers offering their own tutorials, there are a plethora of amazing tools that can help get your own online courses up and running easily and affordably.
