How We Augmented TechSoup’s Existing LMS to Build a Highly Engaging Nonprofit Learning Platform

First-time Users: When users opened the LMS tool for the first time, they felt lost and confused. They found it especially difficult to access the right courses at the right time based on their needs.

Process Documentation: Many potential users were also confused about basic onboarding processes like how to register, or how to buy and access courses.

 UI Element for Choosing Language Options Was Not Accessible: TechSoup’s clients come from a wide range of geographies like countries in Latin America, Europe, and Africa where English is not necessarily the local language. Basic design errors like keeping the language selection option at the bottom of the page (where most users never bother to scroll down) made it difficult for them to onboard users.

Suboptimal UX for Implementing Language Preferences of Returning Users: Furthermore, selecting the language on one page did not automatically reflect the change across the entire website, causing frustration among users. Every time a user returned to the website, she/he had to reset her/his language preferences.

The Design Elements Lacked Simplicity and Ease-of-Use: The vast majority of nonprofit users are hard-pressed to find the time or are fairly new to technology products. The overall design of TechSoup’s LMS tool was not addressing these guidelines. The platform lacked visual appeal and an intuitive experience.

A Logical Basis for Design Was Missing: Lack of basic design hygiene, coupled with suboptimal UI that caused important features to be hidden from clear sight, and the absence of a well-thought-out UX with a proper user flow made it difficult to acquire, engage, and retain users.

Lack of Translations in Local Language: In some cases, the content was not available in the local language (like in the case of Brazil), causing more than 50% of the users to drop out as a result.

Mismatched Local Content Catalog: In other regions, like in the case of Kenya, the course catalog did not match the needs of the local nonprofit workforce. The strategies of nonprofit organizations in Kenya are distinctly different from those of Brazil or Spain. Hence, the content did not entice the local users in Kenya.

Lack of Emphasis on Benefits of the LMS Tool: The content was not structured in a way that communicated its value to the users. Most users found the free content to be too basic – something that would be easily available on other sites like YouTube, and hence, did not return to TechSoup LMS.

Users Were Unable to Make Informed Decisions on Paid Content: The paid content did not have a content summary or video to help users make an informed decision about purchasing the course. While the pricing was communicated, the value wasn’t. Hence, with the launch of paid courses in July 2021, the number of users dropped sharply.

Changes in Content Demand Post-pandemic Were Not Fully Addressed:After COVID-19 hit the world in 2020, the course requirements of organizations across the globe changed dramatically, including those of nonprofits.

Even though old challenges like fundraising and donations continued to be of interest to users, new topics like – managing organization data, working remotely, using remote communication tools within the organization, and cybersecurity – gained prominence.

However, the content structure did not reflect the same and hence, did not resonate with the users.

When compared with other competitors, TechSoup’s LMS tool did not have a robust paywall structure that worked in their favor. They needed a way to entice users with high-quality introductory content and then incentivize them to try out the more advanced content by paying for it.

Value-added offerings like user certification, dashboards, a wide range of pricing plans for individual and institutional users, and plans for onboarding non-unique users, were not available. Along the way, we also discovered that subscription plans needed to be introduced in some markets based on user expectations.

Unreliable payment gateways and offline payment processes in some regions made the payment collection process rather dicey. Furthermore, additional features were required for smooth payment processing, like validating the card details entered by the users to avoid fraud and providing alternative payment options to users in Brazil and Portuguese where issues with credit card failures are rampant.