Growing the online educational app: a set of top features and integrations we built during educational marketplace development for a UK-based customer to go global
Short overview
Yulia Vykhovanets
Andrew Topchiy
Time:
Apr 2020 - Feb 2021
Platform:
Web and mobile
Industry:
Tuition, eLearning, Online education
Country:
United Kingdom
Services:
Mobile development, web development, dedicated team, QA testing
Short overview
Team:
![Yulia Vykhovanets]()
Yulia Vykhovanets![Andrew Topchiy]()
Andrew TopchiyTime:
Apr 2020 - Feb 2021
Platform:
Web and mobile
Industry:
Tuition, eLearning, Online education
Country:
United Kingdom
Services:
Mobile development, web development, dedicated team, QA testing
About the client
As founder and CEO, Alex came up with the idea of building an online learning marketplace platform after teaching psychology for 8 years at a school in London. Knowing the inside of the educational system and being unsatisfied with its quality, our customer left his job and committed himself to creating an A-class educational marketplace that provides students with personalized tutoring and carefully hand-picked teachers.
Project idea
Up to date, Tutor House is one of the leading educational marketplaces for finding a talented tutor and holding online or in-person classes in maths, biology, physics, chemistry, law, economics, piano, guitar, art, Spanish, French, English or business studies. Moreover, the online learning marketplace platform is growing rapidly and continuously, expanding its horizons worldwide, as well as the list of services, that includes homeschooling, course revision or retaking.
Story
Story
Alex launched Tutor House 6 years ago and switched the educational marketplace platform to online about in 2017. The reason for turning to Apiko was that his previous in-house team, being heavily focused on the technical part, couldn’t understand and assist Alex with the business side of the project.
His further search for a reliable partner that would have required background, expertise and provide all resources needed for business analysis, management, design and development has led to our team, so we carefully explored the provided requirements, created the scope of work and started the online learning marketplace development process
Challenges & solutions
See the challenges and solutions we’ve offered to our clients during online marketplace development
Perform the backend refactoring to refine the workflow of the educational app and provide users with smooth, hassle-free experience
Run the website audit, source code refactoring and bug fixing sessions
Optimize the website performance, extending its feature set and adding advanced options, to speed up the workflow for better effectiveness
Handle the payment system integration and develop the coupon management system
Integrate the educational marketplace with various tools, such as Hubspot, Stripe, Twilio, Drip and many others to run the email marketing campaigns, enable group chats via whiteboard implementation, meet the requirements, set up push & email notifications and rebuild the booking process to increase conversion rate
Make the bridge between technical and business sides of the project, to give a client the multipurpose perspective and complex understanding of the industry
Starting Point
Here’s the input data, we’ve been provided with:
The backend, which source code required expert assistance and professional refactoring services
Ready to go website, that has been audited for bug fixing and defining weak points to be offset with custom functionality
The list of must-have features and requirements to be investigated and developed by our team
Research & Analysis
For reaching the end-goal, our tech experts took these steps:
Researching and leveraging the most appropriate tools to integrate with the Tutor House and cover needed options
Investigating the input data to get the deeper understanding of the niche, industry standards and upcoming trends
Scaling up the platform architecture and scratching the roadmap of development processes
Having finished the project, our team has achieved the following results:
The tried and tested, refined website structure, without bugs and operational gaps in the functionality
Numerous integrations to provide users with multi-layered, flying performance
Configured and customized email marketing campaign, connected to the platform and heavily tailored to its sales funnel
Main features of the educational marketplace
1
Match me with a tutor
While building an online P2P marketplace platform, we have built-in this option to make it possible for users to submit an application form, complete 3 easy steps, specify their budget, interests, requirements, availability and wait till the best tutor match will contact them.
2
Dashboard views for students and teachers
It’s an undeniable necessity if having classes online, to handle all required data, for coordinating both students and tutors, in one place. That’s why we developed tailor-made dashboards, initially designed for all groups of users and their different needs. Here is the schedule, tutor applications, job posts and other important information to keep the pace and don’t miss out anything.
3
Social sign-up
The more options for sign-up available, the better experience newbies get when visiting the platform for the first time. That’s why we added Google, Facebook and Linkedin for registration through social networks.
4
Search algorithm improvement
Despite the fact all tutors, who joined the platform, have been carefully hand-picked, the customer wanted our team to improve the website search algorithm by response time and reviews to offer you the best candidates first of all.
5
Email nurture campaign + Twilio integration
Email nurture campaigns are a vital part of any successful inbound marketing strategy. These email initiatives turn potential leads into conversions, so it was done through the integrating Tutor House with Twilio - a Cloud communications platform for adding messaging in web and mobile applications. We also used this tool for 2-step phone number verification for sending push notifications to students and tutors regarding their bookings, approvals and upcoming lessons.
6
Trial lesson feature
Sometimes you can feel the synergy with someone or something at first glance, but if it comes to online classes, a 15 minutes trial call is enough as well. Students can choose a tutor by themselves or pick up someone from applicants, who answered their job post and schedule a free demo lesson to make up their mind.
7
Email marketing + Drip integration
To build personal and profitable relationships with the users at scale, we decided on Drip - an Ecommerce Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) platform, and built an integration for organizing customer data, like booked and total lessons, names, trial calls, enquiries, emails, phone numbers etc.
Online whiteboard integration
For pairing the benefits of visual thinking, teaching, and collaboration with the convenience of technology, we integrated Tutor House with the whiteboard, to enable group communication and collaborative activities in different rooms if necessary.
CMS integration
To create the content structures that flex to customer’s needs effortlessly, enable him to write, manage and edit any content types and provide top-notch digital experience without the distraction of CMS complexities, we made the integration with Strapi - one of the most suitable CMS systems for these apps.
Payment gateway integration
For the monetization model we had to choose a reliable and secure payment infrastructure to accept payments and manage the businesses online. Based on our experience, we recommended Stripe to remove financial complexity and deliver fast-advancing experience.
CRM integration
We also made the Hubspot integration to devote email marketing efforts, SEO, SMM, content and advanced analytics in one place for easier automatization and management.
Integrations
We’ve integrated the educational marketplace with the following services
Building a P2P marketplace platform: The outcome
Here’s the case study we shared to demonstrate how our team had helped a customer to provide facilitated training by developing the flying online educational app with seamless performance, intuitive interface and superior functionality. Our tech experts made numerous integrations, including Hubspot, Stripe, Twilio, code refactoring and website audit to deliver a high-impact, future-proof platform for online tutoring. Today, Tutor House offers classes in more than 15 disciplines and areas, accepting only top 20% of applicants to become tutors, that guarantees the top-notch quality of provided classes.
Tutorhouse website
