How to Build your Hyperlocal E-learning Portal

Will it be good enough to say that we are all turning towards a virtual world? Perhaps yes! The lockdown has brought in a new normal. From purchasing essentials online to connecting with colleagues - almost everyone is dependent on the internet. Haven't you noticed, most of the schools these days are also offering online classes – be it kindergarten or high school grade? 

So if you have plans to kickstart your hyperlocal ecommerce business but think that most of the segments such as groceries, pharmacy or FMCG are consumed, then here’s more to explore! How about starting an online learning portal for your locality? 

With such a platform, you can help freelance tutors and coaches to share their expertise with the needy students. It can also help self-employed professionals to make financial gain in these difficult times. Moreover, with an online learning platform, professionals and students do not have to miss their studies. They can continue with their education. You can also provide the scope of learning for corporate professionals since many companies train employees to hone their personal skills. 

Why are hyperlocal e-learning portals gaining popularity?

E-learning portal is not a new concept. With Udemy and the likes of it, they have been in business for a few years now. But nowadays amid the lockdown, online searches for this category have spiked up. Here’s why;

• Students and trainers want to reduce face-to-face interactions
• A large number of professionals are relatively free to pursue a course of their interest
• Virtual classes are convenient and can be taken anytime

So how to build your hyperlocal e-learning portal?

Choosing the right kind of ecommerce platform is the first step towards creating your business. You can also convert your portal into a multi-vendor model where you can invite trainers and experts from different fields and educate students online. 

With an e-learning business, you will not run out of luck! While during this pandemic, people might not buy non-essentials products, but education still needs to go on. 

At present, many students are shifting towards e-learning platforms for most of their requirements. So why not tap this opportunity, by providing them with the best of features on your website? 

StoreHippo online platform is a perfect choice to launch your online education portal. It’s inherent features allow you to create a modern education and tutorial portal. Also, you can create custom flows, interactive sessions with multimedia support and video tutorials. And you can set up your portal like a whiz with the DIY features! 

1. Create attractive and customised frontend 

Yes, you will be running an e-learning portal, but who says it has to be boring? First of all, it is advisable to focus on creating appealing and attractive frontends. By having a theme that is soothing to your user’s eye and yet relevant to your niche can be a good choice. 

But selecting a theme doesn’t cover up for an interesting frontend. You need to make it more customised to enhance user experience. By using custom flows to tweak your processes you can implement different kinds of filters for course search and more. 

Not only this, but custom features also ensure that students can choose their course levels and test levels as and how they progress. Also by offering multimedia support, you boost your students’ learning experience. 

StoreHippo not only provides you choices of designs and themes for your hyperlocal ecommerce portal but also offers the above-mentioned custom features to make online learning a much convenient affair! 

2. Enable learning through an app

Just imagine that each time you want to attend a learning session or have a query and you need to login in from your desktop or laptop! Wouldn’t it be discouraging?

Hence it is very important to get an app for your e-learning portal. This way, users can take online tutorials easily from their smartphones whenever they want. 

StoreHippo mobile-first approach comes as an extremely useful technology to build your website for any screen-size. Thanks to the mobile-first approach, you do not have to duplicate your portal into a mobile-site. 

Instead, you can have a Progressive Web App that can be accessed from the web browser and yet offers a native app-like experience. StoreHippo has pioneered the PWA technology so that you can provide the most optimum experience to your users. Our platform also offers Android and iOS apps for your hyperlocal ecommerce portal without additional coding or cost. 

3. Onboard partners from different geolocations

Sometimes a specific tutor or expert is famous in a special field and is also more popular in the area where he or she is located. You will observe that most students of that area prefer to go by opinions and opt for the same professional expertise as recommended to them by their seniors. Against this, many students who take tutions hesitate to try out new tutors or experts located in other areas about whom they have never heard of. 

You can leverage this customer mindset and onboard partners from different geolocations. This way you would be creating  your online learning portal in the multi-vendor ecommerce format.. By onboarding expertise in different fields and in different locations, you are on your way to becoming one of the most esteemed education providers. 

StoreHippo helps you extend your reach to a greater audience by enabling you to onboard partners from different geolocations. You can empower your partners by providing them enough flexibility at the backend from which they can manage their classes, correspond student communication and have access to test papers and study materials. Every trainer can access his or her dashboard and be an independent part of your portal. 

Further, the multi-tier logins on the hyperlocal ecommerce portal can ensure that tutors can have their secured login access and can keep a track of all the data from the dashboards. 

4. Offer location based packages and discounts

Any business - be it home services or commodity, can only thrive if there are customers at the other end. This requires you to implement vigorous marketing strategies and drive more traffic. 

But wouldn’t it be more advisable to narrow down your audience based on their demands and then offer them lucrative e-learning deals that are more relevant to them? 

Using StoreHippo’s multi-store ecommerce feature, firstly you can create specific sub stores depending upon the course type. Like for instance professionals seeking to learn a particular language can opt for a language course or those wanting to learn digital marketing can check out options for e-learning digital marketing courses. As the admin, you can manage all these sub stores based on location or courses from a single dashboard.

Secondly, you can do very niche and targeted marketing by offering location-based discounts and packages for these sub stores. 

Maybe the demand in every area for a particular course would be less or more. You can gauge the situation and then target your customers by offering them the best deals to create value for money opportunities for your users. 

5. Integrate your e-learning portal with payment gateway channels

Are you aware that when users browse a website what is the next most important thing they check out after the product or service they are looking for? It is the different payment modes! 

When your portal offers more options to make payments and especially customers’ preferred ones, they feel that your brand is genuine and trustworthy. 

To instill a similar feeling of trust amidst your users, it is important to integrate your hyperlocal ecommerce portal with different payment gateway companies.

StoreHippo helps you with third-party integrations which also includes reliable payment gateway providers. You can thus enable your users to make payments through their debit or credit cards or via e-wallets.  

Unlearn conventional methods of teaching and learning with StoreHippo

The concept of hyperlocal is not a new one. Industry players have already made their mark in various segments as far as the commodity market is concerned. But in the service sector, several niches such as an e-learning portal still remain vastly unexplored. 

Thus, with StoreHippo you hold a fantastic chance to grab this opportunity and make the most out of it. Besides the afore-mentioned features, our ecommerce platform also offers;

• Multi-level tests to clear online exams 
• Multi-level logins for students as they pursue further with the courses
• Third-party integrations with payment gateways as well as email service providers to send timely notifications of course reminders, discount offers, etc. 

So are you excited to kickstart your online journey? You can try all these features for your hyperlocal ecommerce portal with our 14-day free trial store. Drop us a line below to get connected!