How to Develop a Top Interactive E-Learning Solution

To develop an e-learning solution, first choose the type of platform, then follow three steps. Plan your strategy around your goals, your audience and its skills gaps. Choose an LMS that is user-friendly, mobile-friendly and scalable. Then deliver engaging, interactive courses, with great educators, varied media, gamification, rewards and reviews from your students.

Key takeaways

• Pick the platform type first: a self-paced online learning platform, an e-learning marketplace, or web conferencing software.
• Plan around your goals, your audience and the skills gaps that no competitor fills.
• Choose the LMS carefully, since it is hard to change later: check usability, mobile support, tracking, badges and certificates, e-commerce and scalability.
• Make courses interactive with the right mix of media, gamification, quizzes, rewards, certifications and student reviews.

In recent years, many companies have realized that e-learning is becoming an indispensable tool for their operations. In 2018, Forbes reported that the e-learning market was expected to grow to $325 billion by 2025. When this article was written in 2020, the pandemic was also forcing more people around the globe to learn online. In China, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) counted 327 million online education users in December 2025.

It is no surprise that e-learning platforms and websites are mushrooming, and not all of them meet the necessary standards. Developing an interactive e-learning solution is a challenge for many businesses. It requires proper planning, an insightful strategy and an understanding of the available technologies, whether you build it in-house or with an e-learning development agency. Otherwise, your e-learning solution will not stand out from the crowd, will not add real value for your users, and will create dissatisfied customers.

Based on our experience developing such platforms at QPSoftware, here are the critical steps to create a successful interactive e-learning solution.

What Types of E-Learning Platforms Exist?

Depending on the course structure and on how students interact with it, there are three categories of e-learning solutions.

Online Learning Platforms

On these platforms, students learn independently. They log into the platform to access the course material, and set the pace of their own learning. The administrator can track their progress and issue a certificate when they complete the course, but other than that, students are completely independent.

E-Learning Marketplaces

These platforms are designed to create interaction between students and teachers. Learners choose the class they want and the teacher they prefer, and benefit from one-on-one lessons with a teacher who sets the pace and follows their progress. This format calls for interaction throughout the course, with quizzes, games and other methods to assess the student’s progress.

E-Learning Web Conferencing Software

This software is designed for online group learning. A group of students, often a large one, connects online to follow the lessons, and students can interact with one another. It is useful when many people need to be trained at the same time.

1. Plan Your E-Learning Strategy

Once you have identified the platform that best suits your needs and, most importantly, your users’ needs, it is time to plan your strategy. This is the most critical step in launching your e-learning tool. Although the quality of the design and easy navigation are both essential, at this point in your project you must focus on understanding your audience: their needs and their problems, to create a course that genuinely resonates with them.

Set Up Your Goals

Why does my audience need training? What are the current skills and knowledge of the students? Where do I want to take them with this course?

It takes time and effort to analyze the needs of your audience, but it pays off. This preliminary analysis tells you whether your audience needs the training, and whether it will enhance their skills.

The information you collect becomes your road map to develop the instructional plan, and gives you the insight you need to set the learning objective. As a result, your audience can easily get an overview of the learning program, understand its benefits, and decide if this is what they need.

Identify Skills Gaps

What puts your e-learning platform above the competition largely depends on the quality of your material. You don’t want to provide general information that copies what is already available online: you need to address the gaps in your students’ knowledge and skills.

If you offer information your users are looking for, that none of your competitors provide, you have the advantage you need to stand out from the crowd. You will help students improve their skill sets, which makes your lessons truly valuable.

Know Your Audience

You would never feed steak to a newborn baby, nor give baby formula to an adult. In the same way, an e-learning course is useless unless your audience can digest it.

When you create an e-learning platform around a subject, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. You must understand the makeup of your audience, their expertise and technical capabilities, the additional skills they need to develop, how they will use them, and so on.

If you don’t consider these factors, your lessons may be either too complicated or too basic for your audience. In either case, you will lose your students along the way.

2. Choose the Right Technology

Learning management systems (LMS) help you develop, assign and track online classes and student outcomes.

There are countless LMS options on the market, and choosing the best one can be a daunting task.

At QPSoftware, we have found LearnDash, a WordPress LMS plugin now part of Liquid Web, to be a valuable option for our projects. We used it, for instance, to build the e-learning platforms of Motif and TechTrek. In our experience, LearnDash is a suitable option because it is highly flexible and scalable, and supports good interaction between teachers and students. It is compatible with most WordPress themes, and it integrates with tools that many businesses use, such as WooCommerce, PayPal and Stripe; for Motif, we combined it with BuddyPress.

The LMS is not something you can easily change along the way, so consider a few crucial factors before you decide.

What to Consider When Choosing an LMS

The LMS must be user-friendly, and at the same time offer all the features needed for a multidisciplinary e-learning experience.

Once again, you must clearly know your learning objective, the makeup of your audience, and the skills and needs of your L&D team. The LMS must fully support your operations and meet the needs of your audience.

For instance, if your audience may access the courses from a mobile device, the LMS must be mobile-friendly. It must also support the materials and features your teachers need to make the lessons productive and interactive. Otherwise, the LMS itself will hinder the abilities and experience of your staff.

Other important features to consider are tracking options to assess the students’ performance and knowledge acquisition, badges and certificates, e-commerce support, forum integration, and any other feature your L&D staff needs to provide excellent lessons.

Scalability must not be overlooked either. Your e-learning platform may grow exponentially in just a few years, and the LMS must support that growth with more advanced features, and handle increased traffic without slowing down.

3. Deliver Engaging and Interactive Courses

Once the backstage work is set, it is time to focus on creating your e-courses.

People learn online quite differently than when they sit in a classroom. Their attention span is shorter, and looking at a screen can be exhausting after a while. You must therefore provide high-quality lessons that are engaging and interactive.

Count on Great Educators

Credibility and a good reputation make your learning environment valuable and appealing, and these are the qualities that must distinguish your instructors. Partnering with experts in the field and reputable teachers is great for your branding, and your audience will be inspired by quality information delivered with passion and enthusiasm.

Plan Your Content

Planning your content is not limited to preparing the information for the lesson. It includes a strategy on how to serve the information to your audience. Once again, an understanding of your students is critical.

When you design the course, think about the background, expertise and knowledge of your students. These variables determine, for instance, how long the course should be, and what approach you take with the information.

Make sure the material is accessible to your specific audience, and that it leads them to their final goal.

“With the implementation of performance-driven modules by QPSoftware, Motif acquired clear data on where its students’ performance drops, and located their pain points in order to build a better e-learning experience.”

Use the Optimal Delivery Strategy

An essential element of planning your content is how you will engage with the students. When learning online, people may quickly get bored if there is no interaction, and feel lost or discouraged.

To make your content engaging, create the right combination of media, like text, video, audio, slides and infographics. Gamification is another effective way to teach while having fun, and it has proved effective for many successful e-learning platforms: our guide to e-learning gamification techniques explains how to use it.

Interaction is vital for students to feel that they are learning and progressing. Tests, quizzes or one-on-one interaction with the teachers are useful for regular assessments, and make students aware of their achievements and progress toward their final goal.

“By designing a game-based ecosystem, QPSoftware brought the extra motivation that led TechTrek STEAM students to complete their courses, and increased their satisfaction.”

Engage With Your Students

Who doesn’t like to see their achievements recognized? Motivate your students through constant engagement, giving them, so to speak, a virtual pat on the back. You can do this through a reward system as students complete tasks, for instance with badges or a point ranking system.

Most importantly, your e-learning platform will be truly appealing if it includes verified certifications that students can use to advance their career or confirm their skills. Such certifications attract more students and help your business develop.

“Another key point for TechTrek was the development of a community collaboration platform, where students and teachers were able to share their feedback and encouragement for better results.”

Let Your Students Be Your Ambassadors

As the last point of this guide on developing an interactive e-learning solution, let’s talk about your marketing strategy.

Turn your current users into your ambassadors: nothing is more valuable than word of mouth to promote your course. Let your users rate your course and teachers, leave feedback and add reviews. It is a superb way to understand whether your lessons need adjustments, and to attract new users to your platform at the same time.

“In order to improve its conversion rate, Motif implemented a review system for its courses: by using its students’ opinions of the courses, it could gain the trust of its web visitors.”

What Should You Do Next?

Creating a top interactive e-learning solution is a challenging business endeavor. It requires excellent planning skills and a thorough knowledge of your niche. Besides having something good to share, you must organize the material in an appealing and engaging way.

Start with step 1: write down your learning goals, your audience and the skills gaps you will fill, before you compare LMS options. The e-learning market offers great business opportunities that justify these efforts.

Developing an in-house e-learning solution is not easy for many businesses, and it may not bring the best results. At QPSoftware, we have extensive knowledge of how to create e-learning software, and our custom e-learning development in Shanghai can support you at every step. Tell us about your project today, and one of our experts will contact you in the next 24h.

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