E-learning and LMS blog articles

What are your top priorities when designing your ideal e-learning platform? The usual suspects are exciting features, engaging content, and clever tools. But what about the user experience (UX)? All too often we see e-learning platform admins overlook this crucial factor.

While the UX may not appear as important as other priorities such as developing engaging training materials, a poor UX will have a detrimental effect on the long-term success of your L&D strategy. Why invest in engaging and interactive training materials if a poor UX means your learners struggle to find them thanks to poor platform design and overcomplicated navigation?

Investing in your e-learning platform and content while ignoring the UX is like buying a luxury car with a complicated dashboard that makes it too difficult to drive. To better understand this, let’s explore the hidden impact of UX on your e-learning platform.

What is the UX of an e-learning platform?

The user experience simply refers to the experience that a learner has when interacting with your e-learning platform. Does it give your learners the best opportunity to get what they need from their learning experience?

Some key considerations when evaluating the UX are:

• Navigation – How easy is it to get from point A to point B? How easy is it for learners to find relevant training materials and navigate a course?
• Performance – How responsive and intuitive is your platform?
• Visual design – Is your platform clean and clear of unnecessary clutter? Does it align with your brand so users can recognise it?
• Accessibility – Does your platform cater to everyone?

What are the hidden impacts of a poor UX?

Incomplete learning

Keeping learners engaged and motivated is no mean feat and a poor UX makes it that much harder. If your e-learning platform isn’t easy to navigate, learners struggle to access relevant learning content and waste valuable time in their busy working days, meaning they’re less likely to complete vital learning.

Risk of non-compliance

If incomplete learning is a direct result of poor UX, you can expect a knock-on effect on your compliance training activities. Learners may struggle to complete vital compliance training before regulatory deadlines, not to mention, an inadequate UX could affect the efficacy of your training, resulting in poor knowledge retention. All of these factors put your organisation at risk of non-compliance.

Ineffective onboarding

First impressions are vital when it comes to onboarding new staff and can significantly impact your turnover rates. If your e-learning platform plays a key role in your onboarding process and induction training, a poor UX could leave new starters with a terrible first impression.

The last thing new starters need is to feel overwhelmed and frustrated just from simply using your platform, so getting the UX right is vital if you hope to get the best out of your new employees.

Wasted content

If you’ve spent a great deal of time (and money) on developing engaging and impactful training content, don’t let it go to waste because your learners can’t find it due to poor navigation or access it due to a lack of design responsiveness.

Wasted features

Is your e-learning platform rich in exciting and dynamic features such as discussion boards, gamified courses, leaderboards, and interactive workspaces? These features are key players in creating a virtual learning environment that your learners are eager to utilise and contribute to. The more these features are taken advantage of, the likelihood of learners returning to your platform over and over again will increase – boosting the ROI as a result.

That being said, if your e-learning platform has a poor UX, how do you expect your learners to make the most of the full range of functionality and tools available?

So how do you find out if the UX of your e-learning platform is impacting the success of your e-learning strategy?

Ask your learners

Who better to tell you what the user experience is like than the people using it daily?

When using an e-learning platform such as our Totara Learn solution, you can use features such as surveys to directly ask your users what their bugbears and issues are. Where is the platform falling short and how is it affecting their learning?

Analyse data taken from LMS reports

With the right LMS, all the data you need is at your fingertips with help from LMS reports. Use your reporting functionality to identify weaknesses in your platform UX by looking at data on key areas such as course completion rates, bounce rates, and login behaviour.

Once armed with the results of your user research and data analysis you can begin to make necessary changes.

Choose the right LMS partner

In recent years, the complexity involved in selecting and configuring a Learning Management System that meets the unique UX design needs of your organisation has increased dramatically. This rise in complexity is largely due to the surge in demand for LMS platforms, particularly those that offer extensive configuration and the ability to seamlessly integrate new features and external applications.

Your organisation now faces the challenge of not only choosing the right LMS but also ensuring that it can evolve and scale with your changing needs. This involves making intricate decisions around user interface design, LMS functionality, compatibility with existing systems, and future-proofing the platform for ongoing upgrades and integrations.

Collaborating with an experienced LMS partner is crucial in navigating these complexities. Such a partnership can significantly enhance your learning initiatives by providing expert consultation and support throughout the configuration and deployment of your e-learning solution. An adept LMS partner brings invaluable insights and technical expertise, ensuring that your platform is optimally set up to deliver a superior learning experience, foster learner engagement, and drive organisational growth.

To get an idea of some of the changes you should be making, let’s explore what makes a good e-learning platform UX, according to our LMS UX blog. Make sure your UX has the following:

• An intuitive and user-friendly interface
• Clear content organisation
• Responsive design
• Customisation and personalisation options
• Easily track learner progress with visual aids

Sounds like a lot of work? It doesn’t have to be. We understand that optimising your UX can be a lengthy and costly process which is why we developed our own unique LMX UX designs, all available to our clients at no extra cost.

Developed by our in-house team of experts, our Moodle and Totara platforms deliver an optimised UX experience that you won’t find anywhere else. Visit our dedicated UX page to find out more or get in touch with us today to find out how to set your e-learning platform up for success with a solution from Hubken.