The tutoring business has always been in demand for decades and students from all over the world have been highly dependent on private tutoring to get good grades in academics. Not just for academics, students prefer joining various institutions and private coaching classes to learn foreign languages or various other skills.

The Shift in Tutoring Business

Private tutors and various coaching institutions were earning good profits for years, however, the sudden shift away from the classes due to COVID-19 impacted the worldwide education market. . There was already a substantial growth of technology in the education niche before COVID-19, but the pandemic witnessed a significant surge. The lockdown and social distancing measures completely shut down the offline mode of tutoring.

The teachers and students had to go online for imparting and receiving an education which led to the rise in demand for online tutoring platforms.  According to the reports, the online tutoring market is projected to reach $350 Billion by 2025 adversely affecting the offline tutoring businesses.

 They faced huge losses as face-to-face instruction in schools was completely dismissed by the authorities. Even after the social distancing regulations were lifted, parents, as well as students, we’re hesitant to attend traditional classrooms in fear of contracting the virus. 

All this has negatively affected the offline tutoring businesses and made it impossible for them to run their business.

How To Overcome the Losses

To endure and persist in the competitive market and in response to the significant demand for online tutoring, offline businesses need to shift online. Offline tutoring businesses can usually be classified into two categories. :-

  1. Tutoring Business with No Online Presence
  2. Businesses with Websites for Showcase

For the first type of category, tutoring businesses have to develop an online tutoring platform that will not only help them to showcase their brand online but also provide them with a platform where students can connect with their teachers for a live session

In this category, businesses have to invest highly in marketing to grow online, as they have no presence on the web previously and they will be entering the industry as newcomers.

In the second category, businesses have a website and have already created their presence on the web. All they need to do is incorporate online tutoring functionality in their website to offer online tutoring features to their students and teachers.

Some of the Main Players in the Online Tutoring Industry are

  • Preply
  • Chegg Tutors
  • TutorMe
  • Skooli

What are Key Features Of Online Tutoring Platform?

Before discussing the development part, let’s talk about the key features of an online tutoring platform:

Video Session Tools

Online Whiteboard: It helps you deliver a classroom-like experience virtually. It allows students and teachers to easily draw sketches, edit content, and share among themselves during live sessions.

Textpad: For the students and teachers to make the notes during the live session and save them for future reference. A TextPad with tools like a highlighter, pen, and many more makes the feature more interesting and fun.

Code Editor: Code editor makes it easy for students to understand programming languages in a fun and engaging way.

Multiple Screen Sharing: Tutors can use this feature to share his/her screen with the students to provide a visual walk-through of a complex concept.

Real-Time Language Translation: This feature saves a huge amount of time for the user and makes the communication process easy for the users who understand different languages.

Time Zone Specific Session Scheduling

It allows users to select their time zone which makes it easy for them to mark availability and book sessions without any confusion.

Reviews and Ratings

To build a transparent and trustworthy platform, it is essential to gain users’ feedback. The feedback given by the users helps future learners to make appropriate decisions on the platform.

Multilingual

It allows the platform to be accessed by a huge user base all over the globe. The feature becomes more relevant if one plans to expand the service across borders that do not have English as their primary language.

Multicurrency

Again to transcend the borders, this feature allows the platform to be used in multiple countries and making the payments in their preferred currencies.

User-Friendly UI/UX

A well-designed UI/UX does not require any complex instructions and is self intuitive. It guides and navigates the users from start to finish without any hassle.

How To Build an Online Platform for Your Tutoring Business?

Businesses can build their platform either from scratch or with ready-made software. Considering the demand and staying ahead of the competition, building a platform with ready-made software is the perfect solution. Although there are several software’s available in the market, the selection of the right software is very important to develop a feature-rich tutoring platform that meets the needs of the business as well as the user.

These factors must be considered when looking for readymade software:-

  • Is the Software Customizable?
  • Is it a White Label Solution?
  • Pre-Integrated Video Conferencing API for Live Sessions
  • Is the Software GDPR Compliant
  • Is there any recurring fee for ownership?
  • Is the solution scalable?

An online tutoring software like “Yo!Coach” allows you to build and launch your tutoring platform within a few weeks. The software not only helps to build a new tutoring platform but also helps the existing websites to incorporate live tutoring functionality that already has a web presence.

Conclusion

“Online” is the present and future of the tutoring business. The industry is evolving and there is a huge opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to enter the business. Businesses already having a loyal customer base when compared to new entrants will have an upper hand to be successful and stay ahead of the competition.