In the previous blogs, we covered the stage-wise challenges in the critical evaluation of the 2022 EdTech user journey series. Education app development companies will need a focused approach to resolve these challenges. A mix of powerful tweaks to the existing workflows and the integration of fresh functionalities will enable them to improve user retention.

However, only a collective effort between EdTech companies and a competent technical partner would help them scale new heights. From integrating new features to their rigorous testing before deployment, the following are the opportunities smart resolutions that will assist EdTech app development companies address every challenge at every stage of the user journey."

The 2023 RoadMap for Education App Development Companies

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Uniformity in Compatibility: Most EdTech app users own multiple devices that operate on different OS platforms. Optimizing the app for consistent performance and seamless compatibility will help EdTech companies garner a larger user base. Also, backward compatibility of the EdTech course on older devices must be a prominent milestone for EdTech app developers in 2023.

Guided Sign-up: Impactful features such as user password strength review, automatic address look-up, and progress on sign-up forms, provide a good structure to the sign-up process. It makes it easy for users to complete the sign-up process quick and without hassles.

Frictionless Sign -up: Removing all optional questions and focusing only on capturing the essential information can greatly change the existing process. It eliminates the rigidity in the sign-up process. Credit card information for example is not essential information to be captured in the sign-up process.

Decluttered UX: Simple but powerful fixes like spacing out navigation icons and including limited text in the sign-up form help improve the UX. The use of modern approaches like modal screens and field-level questions helps keep the user focused and makes the sign-up process less tedious.

Onboarding

Product Tour: Development teams must focus on educating the user by delivering precise and concise information. Little cards that inform the user about the app UI and its functionality will work well. But, developers must focus on keeping the content clear and contextual to help users reach their ‘Aha, so this is how it works!’ moment soon.

Scenario Optimized UI: EdTech app users tend to get vexed by an app that doesn’t let them resume from where they left off. Enhancements to the UI to enable users to resume their course specifically from where they paused makes it easy for them to stay focused. A scenario-optimized UI that ‘remembers’ the last usage state will be a great addition to your 2023 roadmap.

Prevention of UX Intrusion: Simplifying the onboarding stage's user experience is more effective than outfitting the UX with prompts and messages. Hence, EdTech app developers must strive to evaluate current UX processes succinctly to eliminate redundancy and complexity. The detailed evaluation of the UX workflows will help developers understand intrusive workflows and improve them. Sign-up stage questions that cross over into the onboarding stage are a good example of this.

Chatbot Integration: Chatbots serve as a guidance system for users. They enable users to clarify questions during onboarding. They can also double up as a feedback system that can help your app developers improve the EdTech app through the questions filtered from user and chatbot interaction.

Hardware Optimized: All hardware-optimized applications consume less memory and work flawlessly on mobile devices. Hardware optimization is a vital task in which EdTech app companies tend to cut corners. Upon the completion of the app development process, rigorous testing of the app to make it resource-friendly must be a top priority for EdTech app development companies in 2023.

Course Selection

User Schedule Optimization: Currently, app users rely on standard calendar apps to organize their learning journey. The powerful calendar features that highlight dates to match open course slots will add more value to the UX in the course selection stage.

Aligned Career Counselling: Intelligent analytics systems that can capture user behavior and equate them with the behavior of users can extract specific insights. These insights can guide users pursuing similar specializations and career goals to make better course choices. Such an approach also facilitates better learning.

Instructor Competence: Almost all app users prefer meaningful interactions with the instructor before choosing their course. Functionalities to orchestrate user interactions with instructor schedules can enable users to learn about instructor competence easily. This functionality will greatly benefit the HIE and professional market users since their career goals, and subject matter are highly complex.

Course Form and Shape Variation: From course recap to the delivery of condensed snippets and podcasts, there are many possibilities in course variation. Customized user controls to trim and save their course content into a customized video could be a great start. This enhanced control helps the platform garner more course variety.

User Community Integration: Enabling EdTech app users to interact at a community level draws users in and makes the course selection process precise, efficient, and impactful. Even if the course instructor isn’t very responsive, active users can guide other users and help them craft a roadmap for their career progression effectively. To achieve this, EdTech apps must host community forum development features.

Course Consumption

Predictive Course Recommendation: Currently, course recommendation systems work on the user data submitted and the number of hours a student spends on a course. The recommendation system would be more reliable and accurate by introducing a rating system that helps match courses with students pursuing specific domains. The way to do this is to have users who complete the course express how it helped them in their domain-specific goals (such as clearing a government examination). Using an intricate keyword recognition system, the system could match the goal achieved with a specific course to deliver a high success rate for another user.

Intelligent Course Scheduling: An enhancement that can track user activity duration and align it with the amount of time a course requires can be a great upgrade. For example, consider a student who attends a physics course only on Saturdays and Sundays. She could be informed of a classroom session conducted by a renowned professor who also conducts that course only on Saturdays and Sundays. The matching of the domain with instructor and student further enhances the predictive course recommendation feature suggested in the previous point.

Course Podcasts: The biggest advantage of podcasts is the seamless ultra-portability they offer to a user. Podcasts are convenient because individuals can multitask while listening to one. This is a stark contrast to being bound to a desk peeking into a laptop computer watching a course video. Offering course podcasts is an effective means of user retention since the convenience of the same resonates well with the users.

User Exit

Integrity of Transaction: Transparency in operations leads to a harmonious exit process. Hence EdTech app development companies must focus on simple things such as removing user credit card information if they do not want to subscribe to premium features. The transparency of operations helps EdTech apps achieve a good positive reputation that distinguishes them from the competition.

Delivery of Promised Deliverables: Course completion certificates, discounts on functionalities for completing milestones in a course, etc., are some things EdTech apps promise to users. The prompt delivery of these gives the users the incentive to return. Delivering rewards for good participation has a very high chance of winning back the user's interest, transforming them into recurring customers.

Social Media Style Nostalgia: Creating nostalgia about course content could be the most effective among the many approaches to engage the users in the exit stage. Displaying photos with captions to commemorate a milestone is a standard feature on social media platforms. Adopting a similar approach in the EdTech world is also a great idea. A nostalgia-type message highlighting course milestones or the course journey of a user will make them feel valued, prompting a return.

In Conclusion

Some of the solutions mentioned in the blog require a meticulous approach to all aspects of the SDLC lifecycle. This means that it will take a sizeable amount of time and effort to deploy from ideation to design and development. The odds are stacked against education app development companies in this race for user retention.

A close association with a technical partner well-versed in eliminating stage-wise challenges can make the journey easy. At Nalashaa, we have been in the market since the advent of mobile apps. We are aware of how the industry has evolved and what its future trends look like.

Reach out to our mobile app development experts to know how your journey to the new frontiers of EdTech app development can be made easier. Drop us a line at info@nalashaa.com