How long do EdTech Websites Take?

A lot of business owners going for an EdTech website are concerned about the time it will take to get it up and running. So, in this article, I will try to give you a clear idea about the time taken to build your EdTech website from the ground up.

The time needed to build your EdTech website

Your EdTech website can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to be ready, depending on its size, content, and desired features. Initially, a lot of time goes into designing different pages and building the structure of the site. Once that is done, it can be quickly replicated in WordPress to create other parts of the site pretty fast.

There are many factors that decide the time needed by your EdTech website. A lot of planning can go into estimating the exact time that it will take and I will share some tricks you can use to minimize the time taken to get it up and running.

What decides how long your EdTech website will take?

The most important factor that decides how long an EdTech website will take is the size of the website. The size of the site basically boils down to how many pages you need to have on the site and how much content it needs to have. Typically, the EdTech websites have pages like the Home page, About page, and various other pages about the different programs that they offer, and different resources that they want to share.

In general, a 10–15-page EdTech website may take 4 to 6 weeks to complete the development. The creation of the courses on the site is a whole different story that may be generated on the go. You can use methods like user-generated content, wherein any subject matter expert can register themselves as instructors and create their own courses on your site. Thus, the content keeps growing in size over the years and has no limits.

But here we are primarily concerned about making the site up and running with all the essential features built in, excluding the course content itself. So just the design, development, and copywriting of a basic EdTech website, excluding the course content can take about 4 to 6 weeks as mentioned above.

Let’s see how long do EdTech websites take depending on the number of pages involved

Another factor that determines how long it takes is, who builds it. If you have a huge budget and you are going for a large agency that is probably charging you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, then they may take even longer. Most huge agencies have dozens of projects running in parallel and each project follows a premium process with many slow-moving steps. So, unless your budget is huge, and your website involves too much complexity that you only trust very premium agencies with, you can go for a small or medium size agency and save some time (and money).

On the other hand, most regular agencies can give you a professional EdTech website built on WordPress in less time. However, go too cheap and you lose out on quality. So, you need to decide what’s optimum for you and set the right balance between saving development time and getting a high-quality website.

The platform on which your site is being developed is another factor that dictates the time. If you want to get your website coded from scratch, then it may take months and months, even up to 6 months to complete a basic 10–20-page website with all the essential features of a Learning Management system. But I recommend using WordPress, which has some amazing LMS Plugins, that function seamlessly and can save you a lot of time.

How do your website features determine how long it takes

It’s kind of obvious that the time taken to build your site also depends on the complexity of the features you need. If you need the most basic website where you just want to upload course videos and your users can consume that, it can be built in a few weeks’ time.

However, you might want to incorporate slightly more advanced features like the ability to take quizzes, download resources, and an automated certificate upon completion. Adding these features will easily take up to 2 – 3 additional weeks.

If you want to include advanced features like automated grading systems for tests, discussion forums for the students, or user-generated content, you must plan in advance for the extra time required.

Features like Drip content and user-generated content can take more time to configure properly and be tested thoroughly. However, these features are beneficial for developing your site and its content over the long run.

How does the time depend on your target audience?

As mentioned earlier, the design of your web pages takes out a major chunk of time that your EdTech website takes. And the design depends a lot on your target audience. For example, a website meant for training corporate working professionals will often have a simpler design, with a simple header and a hero section followed by other information on every page. On the other hand, a site meant for school or college kids might need a more complicated design. You might need to make the design more enticing for these youngsters with attractive infographics, icons, and animations. Thus the time taken to build the website is generally higher in the latter case.

What are the times taken in various stages of building the EdTech website?

As pointed out earlier, the design phase takes a major chunk of time. The design of your website determines the user experience, conversion rate, branding, and reputation of your business. Thus, you must put enough thought into the design of your site. It may take anything from 3-4 weeks to 3-4 months to design all the elements for all the pages on your site.

Once the design is finalized, you need to choose the theme of your site on WordPress and start developing the pages. This will take another 3 – 6 weeks, again depending on the number of pages on your site.

Once the basic structure of your site is ready, all you need is to work on the LMS part. Installing the LMS plugin and setting it up will take a week or two, but uploading the content will take longer. So, you may decide to go ahead with some initial course content and publish your site and start enrolling students. Meanwhile, you can create and upload the remaining content on the go.

How to save some time in building your EdTech website?

Let me point out some cheeky tricks that can help you save a lot of time on your EdTech website development. First and foremost, you should always go with WordPress, as recommended earlier. Custom-coded websites can take too long to build. On the other hand, other no-code platforms like Wix or Squarespace can help you get a good-looking website pretty fast. However, the functionalities are limited as there aren’t nearly as many third-party plugins as WordPress. This even limits your future expansions as your business grows.

Another way to get your website up and running quickly is, to get it developed in stages and plan accordingly. Build some basic pages like Home, About, and some of the programs that you want to offer. And quickly create and launch some course content. As your business starts to click and you start getting enrolments, you can expand gradually and broaden into other areas and keep adding pages.

Even the course content can be launched in stages and you can enable drip content, wherein users need to complete the initial chapters first in order to access the later chapters. In this way, you can launch the first 10 chapters for your top 3 courses, and as students enroll and start learning through your courses, you can create the content for later chapters.

For expert website design advice or more information on pricing, speak to a web design agency today. Alternatively, to explore the costs of a website further, take a look at our web design agency service page where we are open and transparent about our website service pricing and packages.