Why Your Online School Business Needs A Branded App to Scale

In the competitive eLearning market, having your branded mobile app is not just a necessity; it’s become a “must.” With 89% of smartphone users downloading mobile apps, 50% download them for learning. This means you cannot just settle for an online teaching website and miss the chance to introduce your online school brand to a wider audience. 

In this article, we are about to find out how exactly the branded app is important for your online course business and what advantages it will offer for your business to scale. And if you are looking for a way to get your branded mobile app without much cost and waste of time, we might present the best solution for you. 

What is a branded app?  

A branded app is a mobile application specifically developed and customized for a particular brand. It showcases your logo, distinctive design, your chosen colors, slogan, style, and other branding elements. Many businesses use a branded app to boost customer interaction, give quicker access to their offers, and present a more personalized experience for their customers. 

Let’s take well-known brands like Sephora, Ikea, and McDonald’s as examples. Each of their mobile apps offers unique ways, which helped these huge brands shape brand loyalty, provide the best experience for their clients, and ultimately make more sales.

In this regard, online course business is not an exception. Considering the fact that the online school can always be with the students in the form of a branded app, coaches, creators, and trainers started launching their branded apps. One of the most popular workout training apps is that of Kayla Itsines’.  With the help of her app “Sweat,” Kayla Itsines is able to offer personalized workout programs, nutrition guides, and community support. The users of the app can share their progress and results with her. 

You can establish a brand with your mobile app everyone will recognize one day. But first, let’s see how exactly it is important for online course business. 

Be one step ahead of the competitors 

It’s always the early bird who gets the worm. In point of fact, if you look back at the success stories of giant companies or well-established online schools, you can get the secret to their success - being there early. Thus, if you can anticipate the trends in the online teaching industry and adapt your online course strategies to the current demand, you are most likely to outdo your competitors. 

How do I become the early bird, and how can a branded mobile app help me, you may ask? The thing is that online teaching strategies have started moving more toward

• mobile learning
• bite-sized learning
• microlearning 

As you see, these strategies require a mobile-first approach! In fact, 30% of people having smartphones already use them for on-the-go learning. This is why your courses need to be where your audience is – on their smartphones. 

A branded app helps to reach the mobile audience effectively, as the ease of navigation, interactive features, and the ability to send push notifications about new courses or updates make your courses more convenient for students who are picky about choosing their courses.

Besides the fact that on-the-go learning is the current demand, it has also proved to increase course completion rates and foster better student retention. In this regard, your white-label app becomes the solution to beat the competition and captivate your target audience.  

Reach brand recognition

Your online school’s branded app significantly influences the entire user experience, from attracting and retaining users to retargeting them. When they still know nothing about your online school and your offers, your mobile app acts like that huge street banner, they see every time they pass by, except it is now on your students’ smartphones. 

Once they stumble upon your app on marketplaces like AppStore or Google Play and decide to download it, they move to the next stage of the conversion funnel. In your own app, everything now is under your control, as you refer to it as a direct marketing and branding channel. Let’s break it down. 

• First, we have your logo and visual identity presented within the app, which contributes to brand recognition. When your learners open the app, they see the consistent and distinctive overall design. This visual consistency helps in creating a memorable and easily identifiable brand image.
• The functionality and design of your mobile application also play an important role. The well-designed and user-friendly interface of your app enhances the student experience. And when the students find interacting with your app or purchasing your course from the app intuitive and enjoyable, they will associate the positive experience with your online course brand. In turn, the positive experience contributes to more sales.  
• The next thing is how you communicate in your app. It includes the content, messages, and notifications you share to interact with your students. This kind of coherent communication reinforces your brand image and helps students connect with your brand on a deeper level. 

You have so many opportunities to engage your students in the app. Engaged users are more likely to recommend your courses and offer them to others, which once more fosters your online course brand being recognized. 

As you are free to manage the app the way you want, you can incorporate all your marketing campaigns and promotions here. As your brand gains authority and your students have a positive experience, you will start to see better results for your marketing offers on other channels. That’s how it will make you better known to the market. 

Stronger connection, increased loyalty 

Think about the last time you decided to order something online. What made you choose and buy from one brand over the other? While we never bother to ask ourselves why we prefer that one brand, the connection and experience with that brand tell our subconscious to decide to their benefit. 

The same is true for your students when they browse online courses and training programs and try to decide which fits them best. Your white-label app gives you every chance to connect with your students on a deeper level and win their trust. 

• You can make the app personalized for each student’s goals & preferences and provide a better experience for them. It starts with a simple language choice option to help them achieve their personal goals. Let’s say you offer language learning courses on your app, and your student’s goal is upgrading their language level. For this, you can send automated in-app notifications, reminding them of the goal, showing how they made progress, or encouraging them to keep up the good work.  
• Besides sending notifications, you can build loyalty toward your brand by asking your users directly if they like the app's performance or if it is what they expected.  As your app is your space, you can organize it in a way that is efficient for you and your users. For example, you can offer personalized support directly from the app, thus giving you one more touchpoint to connect with your students and deliver a better experience for them. 

On top of that, the effort you put into presenting your brand identity in the mobile app helps you to increase the trust factor. Having observed consistency by interacting with you from different touchpoints, your students start seeing your school as an “authoritative” source they can put their trust in. The way you interact with your students within the app creates a sense of community and belonging where students are satisfied with their experience.  

More interactions with your school, more sales  

In this day and age, businesses are struggling to get their customers’ attention every second. They take any step to keep the customers interacting with their brand more and using their solutions for as long as possible. 

And when it comes to online school business, your white-label app becomes the perfect opportunity for you to retain your students. In fact, smartphone learners complete course material 45% faster than those using a computer. How does that happen? 

The branded app includes the functionality of push notifications. They serve as reminders for your students, and your branded online school always stays on their displays. Remember how Duolingo makes that happen? The green owl appears every time to remind the learners they need to practice, and they have become well-known as an app with unignorable notifications. 

Having your own app, you will be able to provide a similar experience for your learners. All that is left to be done is coming up with a compelling line to grab the learner's attention through all those notifications and bring them back to study. 

The importance of a branded app lies not only in attracting the students to your brand but also in keeping the interaction going. On this matter, your white-label app also offers vast opportunities. This will be more vivid with an eCommerce example. In 2014, the beauty brand L’Oréal launched its app Makeup Genius, which allowed users to try on make-up with the help of augmented reality. It encouraged the customers to use their app. Even if not all of them ended up buying the products, the mobile campaign was successful, as it spread the word about the brand and presented all the interested individuals with a chance to get a brand experience with them. 

The same practice can easily be applied to your online school app. For example, you can come up with various learning challenges and encourage your students to complete the challenge. In their turn, the students can challenge other learners and share their results with you. 

New monetization opportunities 

Besides being the new trend, fostering brand recognition, and building loyalty, your online school’s branded app opens up new ways to generate income. For example, as students always have access to their smartphones (and, consequently, your app), they can make in-app purchases. It may be additional courses, programs, templates, worksheets, or other premium resources you feature on your own app. This way, the students pay for helpful content or advanced modules. 

Uteach will do it for you

Indeed, having your branded app is, of course, great. But isn’t it costly and time-consuming? It’s a huge investment, especially if you are not at a stage where you can allocate the necessary finances. However, you can just trust the process to Uteach and get a white-label solution. 

As we aim to provide the best branded experience for you, we have created the Uteach branded app. Why should you trust the process with our team? 

• Our experts will take care of all the features you need for your business while you are busy creating courses. Unlike traditional app development, where it takes more than 6 months to get your app ready, not to mention about $40.000 of development costs, Uteach ensures you get your preferred app solution within a few weeks. 
• You do not have to fry your brain with questions related to app maintenance and technical issues. Uteach will not let those issues become a monkey on your back. We will take care of getting your app on Google and Apple marketplaces. 
• You are able to establish a unique brand identity with your app. Your logo, brand colors, and other design elements become important players in your brand experience as an online school. 
• The branded app contributes to a strong connection with learners, providing an intuitive platform that aligns with their goals. This strengthens the bond between your brand and students, enhancing learning experiences.

Uteach has already helped hundreds of online educators and companies reinforce their brand identities with a white-label mobile app. One of such companies is Stamina. They made their video tutorials and courses available on the app as well. As a company aiming to help people develop their sales skills on the go, Stamina set an objective to create the most suitable environment for their students. They could successfully achieve their objective with the help of Uteach’s branded mobile app solution. Within just a year, they got more than 1500 enrollments and had a 400% increase in sales. 

Make the next strategic move for your business 

Building brand loyalty through branded apps is the next strategic move for your business. 

Branded app feels like the perfect solution to help you achieve your teaching, marketing, and business goals overall. It makes you always be one step ahead of other creators, strengthens the connection with your students, provides you with a new source of income, and, most importantly, builds loyalty toward your online course brand. 

So, are you ready to make the next move? Find out more about Uteach’s branded app solution for your business. 

If you want to learn more about scaling your business with a branded app and providing the best experience for your students, book a demo, and our experts will help you get started with your white-label solution.