One of the main weaknesses we see in the company websites hovering on the wrong side of this industry’s top 100 highest rankers, is an assumption that if you build a great looking eLearning marketing site, customers and prospects will just flock to it.
eLearning marketing sites can be compelling, immersive gamified marvels, but when it comes to their marketing prowess, they fall down. They don’t deliver the user experience that online lead-nurturing and customer conversions depend on. Educating, rather than selling, is in their DNA. Why? Well, we’re not sure, but we think it might be because lots of online learning companies also have lots of in-house designers and coders. These resources are there to create highly engaging web experiences for learners, so why not use them to create highly engaging web experiences for prospects and customers?
We’ve come up with a theory
Marketing your learning content or services to the workforce comes with an edge: the workforce is essentially paid to use it. Audiences for eLearning content can be effectively corralled. Whether it’s a gentle prod from the HR department or a sugar-coated compliance condition in the job spec, your average audience for eLearning can be coaxed towards engagement. Marketing your content or services to potential customers and prospects via the company website never comes with this advantage.
From the boardroom to the course designers, coders and developers that actually make eLearning, learning professionals understand the importance of compelling interactive content. But they can be less at home with the marketing essentials that underpin a good marketing website. In the L&D business, company websites with great SEO, slick lead magnets and super clear messaging that evokes a real sense of purpose seem to be pretty rare.
Staying the course is tricky
In our experience, L&D marketers usually start out with well-rounded campaign plans, but maintaining momentum can be a real drag. When the inevitable first hurdle comes along the in-house design team draws on the tried and tested fixes they’ve uncovered as course content developers. They try to enhance engagement rather than make sites more findable and useful. They add more where less may well generate more demand.
It doesn’t need to be this way
As it turns out, we’ve become pretty good at helping L&D marketers stick to their guns when everyone around them thinks they know better. So, if you’re embarking on that big new company web idea or if you’re thinking that maybe the company site’s goals and purpose got sidetracked somewhere back yonder and you want to make things right again, check out our well-healed approach to UX.