Building Your Own Course Website and LMS

• Cost Savings: The most apparent advantage of building your course website yourself is cost savings. DIY projects can be budget-friendly, especially if you’re comfortable with web development tools and have some technical skills.
• Full Control: When you build your website, you have complete control over its design, functionality, and content. You can tailor it to your specific needs and make changes whenever you want.
• Learning Experience: Creating your course website can be a valuable learning experience. You’ll gain new skills in web development, content management, and troubleshooting that can benefit you in the long run.

• Time-Consuming: Building a course website and LMS from scratch can be a time-consuming endeavor. If you’re not already skilled in web development and design, you’ll need to invest significant time in learning and implementation.
• Technical Challenges: Web development can be tricky, and if you encounter technical issues, it might be frustrating and disruptive. You may need to spend extra time troubleshooting problems.
• Lack of Design and Marketing Knowhow: Building a website requires technical as well as design and marketing skills. Design skills are needed to develop both a strong visual brand and pages that offer the best user experience. Marketing knowledge is imperative to know how to make it a part of a larger marketing system in order to convert visitors to clients.
• Maintenance Burden: Maintaining your website can be an ongoing commitment. Updates, security patches, and fixing issues can take up valuable time that you might prefer to spend on creating course content.

Outsourcing Your Course Website and LMS

• Professional Quality: When you outsource, you can tap into the expertise of professional web developers and designers as well as marketers, ensuring a high-quality, polished website that reflects positively on your brand.
• Time Savings: By hiring experts, you can save a significant amount of time, resulting in a shorter time to market. A shorter time to market also means that you can start generating sales sooner. You can focus on creating your course content while leaving the technical aspects to the pros.
• Scalability: Outsourced solutions often come with scalable infrastructure, which means your website can handle increased traffic and growth without major hiccups.

• Cost: The primary drawback of outsourcing is the cost. Professional web development services can be expensive, and you’ll need to budget accordingly.
• Less Control: When you outsource, you’ll have less control over the development process. While you can provide input, the final product may not align perfectly with your vision. Selecting an agency that is on your wavelength is important to get the amount of control you need. Writing a detailed brief to express your wishes is a good starting point.
• Dependency: You’ll rely on the expertise of external professionals, which means you may need to wait for their availability for updates or changes.

Making a Choice

• If you have technical skills or are willing to learn.
• If you have a limited budget and time to spare.
• If you want full control over your website’s design and functionality.

• If you lack technical skills and want a professional-quality website.
• If you have the budget to invest in your course’s success.
• If you want to save time and focus on content creation.