Things to consider when starting online mentoring platform
Before you launch mentoring platform, there are some necessary steps that you should undertake to create a high-quality product.
Determine your goal
When developing a mentoring program and relevant platform, imagine that you are a mentor or a mentee. What should the platform be to motivate people to register in? It should have simple user experience and attractive user interface. The website or mobile app should have all necessary features to let both mentors and mentees feel comfortable. If you try to discuss all issues with your target audience, it will also help you build a strategy for your future platform - people will tell you what they want to see in the mentoring platform. If you help people achieve their needs, your software will become popular.
Think about fields of activity
Then you must choose the most widespread skills people want to learn. I mean what fields people are willing to learn more. Today IT field is considered to be one of the popular fields, and many people want to know how to code and create software. Also, math, physics, psychology, business - are also the leading fields you should add to your software. A detailed research will help you find out what skills are interesting for people nowadays. Paying more attention to websites for jobs will help you see what positions are in trend, and which one of them your mentoring program software should contain.
Build a right structure
Your mentoring platform should have three main participants. The absence of these participants makes such platform invalid. So take it into account. The first participant is a mentor, of course. The second one is a mentee, consequently. And the last one is mentoring program manager. This is the specialist that will solve any problems that may arise between mentor and mentee, manage their connections, explain rules and so on. Thus, it is some kind of three whales of mentor apps. Keep it in mind.
Mind to match participants
Every student wants to find a good mentor. And if one mentor seems unacceptable for a mentee, it doesn't mean that this mentor is a bad specialist. It just means that mentor has its own approach that is not applicable to everybody. That is why you should consider matching form where each mentee can choose mentor according to his or her needs. Mentors, in turn, add relevant particularities to their profile to let mentees search using these features.
Also, you can offer mentees an opportunity to let admin choose a mentor for them. In case if mentees don't want to choose by themselves. Mentor matching software brings many advantages to mentees, and a special algorithm written by our developers can help implement it.
Elaborate ground rules
Apart from standard terms of the agreement, your mentor matching app should contain necessary guidelines that will help mentors and mentee collaborate in a more fruitful way. These rules will help increase the efficiency of joint work. They should include main communication methods, duration of lessons, schedule, and so on. If you add such rules, it will help mentors and mentees avoid any troubles and unnecessary questions in future.
And the last unspoken rule: don't ignore feedbacks! Even when your platform will gain momentum, it doesn't mean that you should stop upgrading it. Always monitor all feedbacks that will help you improve your service and make it more useful for mentors and mentee collaboration. Create questionnaires to find out what your users want to change and collect all feedbacks. Also, monitor the progress of mentees and offer them rematch mentors if you see that mentees still didn't reach an expected result.
Consider all these steps and you won't fail. And our developers will help you create the product you need. Moreover, they will add basic features that mentoring platform should have. Let's check these features out.
Basic features mentoring platform should include
Your online coaching software should offer the following must-have features:
Matching
An algorithm written by developers help mentees choose a mentor they want by indicated data. A special form will search for mentor automatically and this is what all mentees want to see in your mentor software. Correct matching will guarantee that mentee will be satisfied with teaching and it will bring you a profit.
History
Mentors, mentees and program managers need to always be aware of the progress, how many lessons are passed, total time, connections, rematching and other required information. History feature in software should be included since it will help avoid confusions.
Online forum
A forum for all participants can be a good way for them to discuss what they want to see else in your software, discuss some new topics, share their opinion regarding one or another mentor. Such forum will help you find all weak sides of your mentoring app and eliminate them quickly.
Push notifications
They are necessary since notifications make it possible for mentees not to miss lessons, get results on time and receive other important notifications with the interesting and useful news.
Chat
Online chat form for communicating with program managers and between mentors/mentee.
Communication tools
Apart from built-in chat, you should add the capability for mentors and mentees to communicate in real time via live streaming. Skype API, Facetime and other tools for video calls. In some case, ordinary chat system can be enough, but live streaming should be available.
Search
Search bar with categories and filters allow all participants to find everything they need in your platform.
Rating and reviews
A system of ratings and reviews always remains very important. How good is this mentor? His or her rating will reply to this question. Detailed reviews will help mentees find out whether they can hire this mentor or not.
In-app payment
Mentors will get a salary for their work, and mentees can pay them using payment form in your software that is very convenient.
This is the main way how your mentoring platform can be monetized. An indicated percent of each payment will be withdrawn for using your service and you will be able to get earn on it. Also, you can add advertisement, but it should be limited since the abundance of advertising will make your users refuse to use your software. Keep it in mind.