March 22, 2013 at 11:06How the new "Education" was created
This week we restarted the Education project . If in the previous version almost everything was paid, and the courses were published only through the manager (as you can understand, that site was created six years ago), then in the new version users can register and publish the courses independently and for free. The project changed not only the approach to business, but also completely updated the design with the platform. In general, in fact, we made a new project with the same name.
The previous version of "Education" was created by the founding fathers of hh.ru to occupy the market of business education and all additional education in principle. Then, in 2007, this niche was free, and work under the wing of the "big brother" promised stable high traffic to an interested audience. The project started successfully, began to gain a base of courses, but the crisis of 2008 seriously crippled it: those wishing to pay an amount with several zeros for the publication of the course were noticeably reduced.
Almost four years have passed since then, the number of vacancies on hh.ru doubled that of the pre-crisis spring, but the “Education” did not rise from the knockout. His services were sold hard to customers, and what was published usually went as additional options along with large employer packages. At the end of last year, it became clear to us that the project must either be closed or redone.
To begin with, “Education” was found a leader, it became marinaler (Marina Lerner, all coincidences of her last name with “learner” are random), before that she headed the brand management service hh.ru. For her, it was something akin to horizontal career growth, which has been talked about a lot lately.
Marina decided that it was useless to change the site without changing the business itself, because even with the new design the old problems did not disappear. Therefore, she made a strong-willed decision on her new ward - to allow all training companies to publish their courses for free. The editors of Education will bring out the most interesting of the free ones to the main page of the site to help them recruit listeners.
Free placement of courses drew attention to another anachronism of the old site - the registration of companies and the process of placement of courses took place only through a live manager. This could be justified for the 2007 site, when each course was posted by our employee manually and cost good money, but now this was already inappropriate. Therefore, the second important decision was made - to give all training companies the opportunity of open registration and self-publication of courses. At the same time, new users, just like their courses, still undergo moderation, but it is unlikely that they can do without it, because the editors mercilessly cut off everything that is not related to the subject of the project: spiritual practices, esoterics and other things will not appear on the site.
A third important change is the new structure of the course catalog. Now the disciplines by which all courses are sorted are 24, not 28, as they were before (the old structure simply copied the hh.ru professional areas, which, incidentally, will also soon be redone). For example, in the field of information technology, the site has 17 open courses, which, you see, is not bad, for the first few days of the new site. Pay attention to them .
Finally, something without which all the alterations would hardly be perceived adequately - a new design. Its creation was entrusted to our designer Oleg Morev , who worked for several years in the Moscow office of hh.ru, and then moved to Bali and continued to work for us almost from the beach. Oleg described in detailAs the process of creating a new design of "Education" took place, I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with it, because it is really an impressive work.
By the way, the site is now equally convenient for viewing from any device, regardless of screen resolution:
Like any Internet business, Education should also bring money so that Marina receives a salary, we could keep this blog, Oleg Morev not to leave Bali, you understand yourself :) So, despite the fact that the publication of courses has become free, the new site according to the plans of the creators should become more profitable than its predecessor. Money is now taken to additionally attract the attention of users, primarily to paid (and free, if the organizers so want) courses. These are the places on the site that are being sold (the central banner is not for sale and is reserved especially for free courses):
Yes, we also love Coursera, Udemy and edX, but we rely on our realities and existing customers. And the reality is this: even those few educational institutions that do online courses are not ready to pay for their promotion. And for the most part, potential students are not ready to pay for this content. Perhaps the future is in online learning, and we will definitely look that way. But while in Russia we cannot consider this business as the main one.
Briefly and point by point, so far without specifics, because at first I want to implement everything that is planned:
We will be very grateful for your ideas on the site improvements, many of them can be implemented very quickly.
Background
The previous version of "Education" was created by the founding fathers of hh.ru to occupy the market of business education and all additional education in principle. Then, in 2007, this niche was free, and work under the wing of the "big brother" promised stable high traffic to an interested audience. The project started successfully, began to gain a base of courses, but the crisis of 2008 seriously crippled it: those wishing to pay an amount with several zeros for the publication of the course were noticeably reduced.
Almost four years have passed since then, the number of vacancies on hh.ru doubled that of the pre-crisis spring, but the “Education” did not rise from the knockout. His services were sold hard to customers, and what was published usually went as additional options along with large employer packages. At the end of last year, it became clear to us that the project must either be closed or redone.
New life with a new leader
To begin with, “Education” was found a leader, it became marinaler (Marina Lerner, all coincidences of her last name with “learner” are random), before that she headed the brand management service hh.ru. For her, it was something akin to horizontal career growth, which has been talked about a lot lately.
Marina decided that it was useless to change the site without changing the business itself, because even with the new design the old problems did not disappear. Therefore, she made a strong-willed decision on her new ward - to allow all training companies to publish their courses for free. The editors of Education will bring out the most interesting of the free ones to the main page of the site to help them recruit listeners.
Free placement of courses drew attention to another anachronism of the old site - the registration of companies and the process of placement of courses took place only through a live manager. This could be justified for the 2007 site, when each course was posted by our employee manually and cost good money, but now this was already inappropriate. Therefore, the second important decision was made - to give all training companies the opportunity of open registration and self-publication of courses. At the same time, new users, just like their courses, still undergo moderation, but it is unlikely that they can do without it, because the editors mercilessly cut off everything that is not related to the subject of the project: spiritual practices, esoterics and other things will not appear on the site.
A third important change is the new structure of the course catalog. Now the disciplines by which all courses are sorted are 24, not 28, as they were before (the old structure simply copied the hh.ru professional areas, which, incidentally, will also soon be redone). For example, in the field of information technology, the site has 17 open courses, which, you see, is not bad, for the first few days of the new site. Pay attention to them .
Finally, something without which all the alterations would hardly be perceived adequately - a new design. Its creation was entrusted to our designer Oleg Morev , who worked for several years in the Moscow office of hh.ru, and then moved to Bali and continued to work for us almost from the beach. Oleg described in detailAs the process of creating a new design of "Education" took place, I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with it, because it is really an impressive work.
By the way, the site is now equally convenient for viewing from any device, regardless of screen resolution:
Where is the money here?
Like any Internet business, Education should also bring money so that Marina receives a salary, we could keep this blog, Oleg Morev not to leave Bali, you understand yourself :) So, despite the fact that the publication of courses has become free, the new site according to the plans of the creators should become more profitable than its predecessor. Money is now taken to additionally attract the attention of users, primarily to paid (and free, if the organizers so want) courses. These are the places on the site that are being sold (the central banner is not for sale and is reserved especially for free courses):
Why we did not make an online learning platform
Yes, we also love Coursera, Udemy and edX, but we rely on our realities and existing customers. And the reality is this: even those few educational institutions that do online courses are not ready to pay for their promotion. And for the most part, potential students are not ready to pay for this content. Perhaps the future is in online learning, and we will definitely look that way. But while in Russia we cannot consider this business as the main one.
Future plans
Briefly and point by point, so far without specifics, because at first I want to implement everything that is planned:
- registration of students for courses directly from the site;
- ratings of training programs and the ability to leave reviews;
- the ability to immediately find the right courses when viewing a vacancy (you can immediately see what skills are missing to get the desired job);
- integration with user profiles and the ability to attach a certificate received at the "Education" for training, to the resume on hh.ru;
- selection of corporate programs: we have a huge audience of HR managers who are responsible not only for staff selection, but also for training in companies. Especially for them, we plan to search for trainers - for companies, the identity of a trainer is usually more important than a program that can always be restructured.
We will be very grateful for your ideas on the site improvements, many of them can be implemented very quickly.