These days, everything is moving to mobile. Over half of all web traffic takes place on mobile, and that number goes up the younger your audience gets. With smartphone ownership increasing day by day, it’s essential that schools and educational companies keep up with their students. For most, that means creating an educational mobile app.
Whether you’re a public school, online learning platform, EdTech company or beyond, there can be huge benefits to developing mobile apps for iOS and Android. In this piece we’ll cover the specific ways a mobile app can benefit students, schools and educational companies.
1. Live streaming lessons and video archives.
Apps empower teachers to record lesson videos/audio and share them in real-time, so education doesn’t have to revolve around a physical classroom. This grants access to more students, helps ensure that nobody falls behind and makes revisiting old lessons a breeze. A mobile app can be game-changing for students who live abroad, are out sick, or have difficulty attending classes in-person for whatever reason.
A video/audio library of past lessons can also benefit students with different learning styles. Whether you prefer to “binge-watch” lessons or spend weeks on a particularly tough topic, having a mobile library with the whole semester’s lessons can make all the difference in the world. For paid platforms, mobile accessibility is a huge perk for paying customers.
2. Staying up-to-date on school events and news.
Mobile apps can help you keep in touch and build community with your students. Whether advertising seasonal events, showing off fun opportunities or just cancelling class last-minute, sending in-app push notifications are a great way to get your student body’s attention.
Without the power of mobile, schools often resort to old-fashioned mailers, emails or even public access TV channels to get the word out. These methods can be difficult to manage, slow and ultimately ineffective.
3. Providing additional readings & resources.
Sharing articles, texts and other online resources can be a teacher’s worst nightmare. But a native mobile app makes organizing and sharing class resources incredibly simple.
With non-coding solutions like MAZ, you can upload videos, articles, podcasts and more in minutes. These can then be organized in your app by class, semester, teacher, however you like. This replaces cumbersome printouts and online syllabi and makes following along with class plans easier than ever.
4. Partnerships, sponsorships and fundraisers.
There are hundreds of thousands of companies around the world hoping to advertise to students of all kinds. This presents a huge opportunity to you, whether you’re a for-profit business or public education institution.
With a mobile app, you can offer easy advertising space and create revenue with almost no additional work. For public schools, this can be sold to local businesses to help fund events and scholarships. For businesses, this space can be sold for profit in the form of partnerships, long-term sponsorships, or PPC ads. See MAZ’s ad integrations for an easy way to get started making money on mobile.
Mobile advertising holds many advantages over physical ads or even traditional PPC web ads. First, mobile users tend to be much more highly engaged, which advertisers love. Second, mobile apps lend themselves to better data tracking, making ad-targeting more precise than on other platforms. All of this means a better opportunity for you to charge more for ads and create more revenue for what really matters.
5. Monetizing on subscriptions and premium content.
For EdTech businesses, online universities and platforms, subscriptions can be your most powerful monetization tool. In order to get more paying subscribers, you need the right tools to entice and incentivize potential students. That’s where a mobile app comes in.
Mobile apps built on MAZ come with a wealth of subscription tools, including custom student profiles, ‘freemium’ lesson previews/paywalls (metered by time or content amount), ability for students to start lessons on one device and continue elsewhere, etc. The goal of this technology is to create a premium experience that your students will be happy to pay for.
Potential students will be evaluating your school/platform against other competitors. Being able to preview your lessons and explore your mobile app before paying will win over a huge percentage of window shoppers. When it comes to online businesses in 2019, a mobile presence isn’t just a perk, it is a must.
—
As an industry, education often has trouble keeping up with the latest technology. It can be difficult to prioritize among all the pressing needs of students, teachers and administrators. But no matter how big your organization, what your budget is or what your goals are, a mobile app can be an invaluable asset to invest in.
If you’re interested in creating a mobile app or simply want to see how your school or company could benefit, be sure to get in contact with our team at MAZ.
