Wednesday, February 28, 2018

4 Effective Tips to Create Customers for Life with the Perfect Onboard Messaging Sequence

The very beginning of any relationship is awkward.

Do you think your customers feel that way about the beginning of their relationship with you?

Because if they do, that’s bad. It’s a severe threat to your business!

It’s kind of like being on time for a party. Everyone’s feeling things out, sizing up the room, and trying to find a cozy place to gel while the party gets going. At least, that’s if things go smoothly.

Other times it’s more like those middle school dance parties where there are too many chaperones, and no one knows what to do.

So you stand around awkwardly until your mom picks you up.

As the saying goes, the “seeds of churn are planted early.“ Your customer onboarding experience will determine the overall quality and longevity of your business relationship.

But how do you create the perfect onboarding experience?

And better yet, how do you make it seem like you’re not overly market-ey?

Because a relationship should feel natural. It should be guidance and friendship instead of skywriting that says BUY NOW.

I know you get what I’m saying because you’ve probably been on both sides of that coin.

So I want to knuckle down in this post and show you how to avoid the early missteps and build bridges that will last a lifetime.

Your brand will flourish, your business will grow, and you might even feel a little more fulfillment in the connections you make.

I’m going to show you how to build the perfect onboard messaging sequence.

But first, let’s talk about why you should even pay attention to your onboarding in the first place.

Why you should care about your onboarding experience

Onboarding is a broad term.

It’s not a single instance you can point to and say “this is onboarding,” because it’s describing an entire process.

It’s the journey a customer takes from the first click to their first success.

GrooveHQ conveys it well with a simple graph:

They’ve turned “first click” into “acquisition,” but the point is the same.

We’re specifically focusing on the beginning of the customer relationship, and we’re not just doing to call it a “sales thing.”

Anyone can do this and do it well.

One of the other terms you’ll hear thrown around when talking about onboarding is the concept of “churn.”

You’ve already heard me mention it, but I want to dig a little deeper before we progress.

Churn is synonymous with problems.

Let’s compare it to noticing one week into a new relationship that your girlfriend is hiding her phone.

The seeds of doubt – or of churn – are planted early.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

This isn’t a new concept either.

The most significant problems usually start early in the process, and the same is true for customer relationships.

Where onboarding plays such a vital role is that the opposite of everything I just said is also true.

Seeds of churn can be planted early, but so are the seeds of success, as this anecdote from Kahuna Accounting conveys.

In just 12 months, they went from $0 to $480k annually.

How did they accomplish that?

They focused on their onboarding experience!

I’ll talk a little more about the specifics of what they did in a minute, but I want to wrap up our discussion about onboarding first.

According to Tallyfy, your onboarding experience should seek to answer two questions:

  1. Have you successfully introduced your new client to your business and addressed all their questions and concerns early on?
  2. Have you gathered information on your client so you have insight into what products and services would benefit them?

Let’s unwrap these two thoughts by looking at what AppCues did with their client Canva’s onboarding sequence.

How do they go about introducing themselves and addressing concerns?

For starters, they looked for growth opportunities and provided the organization with a way to gather data.

As you’ll see in the image below, there’s a link to a quick two-minute survey that they send in the welcome email.

I want to repeat that: they put it in the welcome email.

Why? Because they wanted to know if they were doing everything they could to satisfy their new customers.

Once their data confirmed that Canva knew their user base and provided for their needs, they decided to start forming hypotheses and experimenting.

They revamped their onboarding sequence so that customers would see this upon arrival:

What were the results? They had a 10% increase in activation for this particular project type.

So you see that finding the right approach to take your client from acquisition to success is the onboarding sequence.

You’ll address their concerns and find new ways to benefit them.

I want to make one final point about customer onboarding, in case there’s any doubt in your mind about its importance.

Way back in 2000, Harvard Business School published a fascinating study that revealed one very telling fact:

In the long term, it’s more profitable to retain old customers than win new ones.

This is old-school knowledge, but it’s relevant nonetheless.

Retention has been proven time and again to be a cheaper and more profitable route than acquiring new customers.

And if the future of your relationships starts at its’ inception, then I hope you’re paying attention to what comes next.

1. Interview the Right People

To send the right message, you have to know what your audience wants to hear.

And you need to be able to do it across any industry, no matter the pain points.

I want to go back to our example from Kahuna Accounting for a moment, because what they did stands out as an excellent example of this approach.

Sixteen Ventures shared their story in a podcast, but here’s the gist of it:

They started with the assumption that their customers knew more than they did.

So to test that assumption, they interviewed anyone and everyone who was in their targeted niche.

They interviewed the ideal clients.

They questioned the clients you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

They even found thought leaders and bloggers to talk to who would share their experiences.

By going incredibly narrow and capitalizing on their niche, they found that the world seemed to get smaller.

However, the interviews gave them direction. All of their marketing was poured into their findings.

They learned to speak their language and built a customer landing page to push their campaign.

They even wrote a whitepaper based on the information from the interviews.

Strategic ads, guest blogs, and collaborations abounded.

One year later, they’d gone from $0 to $480k. All because of some interviews.

You don’t always have the opportunity to ask questions in person though, and it’s not always about setting up interviews anyways.

Some services, like Shopify, re-engage with their target audience by reminding them of their pocketbook:

You may have set up a store with them, but they know the reason you’re using their platform is that you want to make money.

You can’t make money if your card isn’t connected.

So they use messaging like this to draw you back in.

They build a trust-oriented relationship that is beneficial for you and them, but they don’t lead with that.

They simply remind you that you can make more money. Cool idea, right?

Here’s another example from fashion designer Paul Smith’s brand:

This is a really simple approach, but it falls in line with getting to know your customer better.

By asking newcomers or recent purchasers to set up a profile, they’re not only learning more about who they sell to, but they’re also deepening the impact of their brand.

Interview or no interview, these processes fall under the umbrella of a process called Customer Development.

Customer Development is a method of finding and qualifying the right market for your business. That’s essentially what Kahuna Accounting did.

The idea is to build a product around elements that solve your customers’ needs, then find the right ways to convert customers.

All of this is ideally accomplished while organizing your methods so that your business is scalable, too.

And this is a critical issue too because it’s a process by which you can answer the question “Is what I’m doing truly needed?” before you invest your time and money into an endeavor that will ultimately fail.

But that’s ultimately why interviews are so important, even when we get interview anxiety or feel awkward about it.

It’s a make-or-break situation, not an optional convenience.

I absolutely love CustomerDevLab’s advice for interviews:

  1. Crawl
  2. Walk
  3. Run

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also spot on.

The process of escalating your interviews from partners to family and friends and then finally on to customers makes sense.

It provides a gradual and honest understanding of the environment around your businesses.

I highly recommend it.

If you want more guides and resources for Customer Development, I highly recommend you check out this compilation of 26 resources we put together.

2. Find out where your funnel is leaking

After you’ve done your interviews, it’s time to take a look inside your boat. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

What I mean is that you need to take a long, hard look at your sales funnel and find where people are falling out.

It doesn’t matter if it’s shortly after acquisition or just before the sale, knowing where and why your leads are dropping out will give you the knowledge to fix it.

Do you see the drop off between the first and second stages in the image above?

That shouldn’t happen!

It’s quite apparent that this part of the funnel has the most significant pain points, which means it deserves the most attention.

And before you get carried away and think that a massive drop like that is a failure, it’s not.

That’s an opportunity.

So how can you cash in on an opportunity like this?

It could be a number of things, but I’ll start with the issue we’ve been addressing all along: relationships.

It’s entirely plausible that a drop like this could mean you’re either asking for something too soon or not building enough trust.

Instapage gave some great advice on how you can also focus on relationships to increase conversion rates in your funnel. They recommend:

  • Show people they have a problem.
  • Define success on their terms.
  • Give leads more access to your product.
  • Show your leads more attention and treat them like people
  • Keep your cool through mistakes and churn.

If you’re human, that probably sounds a bit scary.

I know the first time I heard it I was a bit concerned.

You want me to tell people they have a problem but let them decide what success looks like?

I get that reaction! You’re putting so much power into your customer’s hands, but it pays to remember the Trust Equation here:

You’re attempting to build credibility, reliability, and intimacy to gain the unwavering trust of your customer.

Trust is what leads to relationships, and relationships lead to sales and retention. It’s all one big cycle that you have to trust.

Ironic, I know.

So focus on relationships first. And keep in mind that it’s also possible your problems have nothing to do with relationships.

Now, wait.

I just told you that you’re losing leads because of relationships, but then backed off and said you might not be losing leads because of relationships?

I know, it’s confusing. But I’m allowing for the possibility that you’re doing a great job and still have a leaky funnel. That’s entirely possible!

For example, you could be losing up to 53% of your landing page’s visitors just because of long load times.

Instapage recently shared that even a seven-second difference doubles the likelihood that a visitor won’t even stay around long enough to view your offer.

That means your onboarding is dead before it starts!

So the point here is though that ultimately you’ll only know where the holes in your funnel are if you’re paying attention.

And the even bigger truth is that you’ll only ever fix them if you are in tune with your customer relationships.

3. Check in regularly

Once you’ve patched up your funnel, you need to look a little deeper into the regularity of your messaging.

It’s the perfect opportunity to use all those tips on email onboarding you’ve been reading.

You’ll see a lot of elements from SparkPage’s Anatomy of a Perfect Email Onboarding Flow here.

Communication with proper timing and perfect messaging will help push customers through your onboarding experience to their first success.

But that communication is a delicate balancing act that asks one all-important question:

How do you strike the perfect chord of helpful contact without providing too much or too little?

You don’t want to go ghost go on your new client while they’re trying to figure out your service.

You also don’t want to be spammy.

It’s the problem of copywriters and email marketers everywhere.

To help you get an idea of what timely and helpful content looks like, I want to take a leaf out of Grammarly’s book.

If you’re not familiar with Grammarly, it’s an online editorial tool used by millions of writers to help double check for errors before they get called out by Reddit.

I recently started a free trial with them. I then upgraded because I was impressed with the product and the onboarding experience.

Shortly after signing up, I got this friendly and helpful welcome:

They just wanted to let me know what I could immediately expect from their service. I poked around and enjoyed the interface, and even plugged in an article I’d written to test it out.

After a few days of trying their product religiously (I admit I was in love), Grammarly then provided some subtle nudging about the perks of their paid product.

I could get added features that would improve my writing even more?

Uh, yes.

The next day, the conversation continued with them telling me about some of the improvements they had made since they began their editorial journey.

As a member of their target market, they had me. I was enthralled.

Better yet, I was excited when seven days after starting I received a gamified report card of my weekly writing.

I was more productive than 97% of Grammarly writers?

You’ve no idea how proud that made me, even though I didn’t have any inclination about the size of their user base.

They showed me my first success, and it felt great.

So I kept using the free service, and Grammarly kept hitting me up.

They checked in from time to time to make sure I was doing okay.

Of course with a subtle push toward the heightened capabilities of their paid product.

They even sent me an email asking for a review:

Pretty soon I couldn’t help it.

The service was excellent, and I wanted more capabilities to help me improve my writing style, so I pulled out my credit card.

As soon as I signed up for their service, I was ushered to their service team to make sure there were zero issues with my transition.

It was a dream come true.

By staying in touch, anticipating my needs, and following through on the fulfillment, Grammarly created an onboarding experience that I just couldn’t resist.

I still use their services and have even recommended it to some of my other writer friends.

But just think of all the elements that kept me engaged in their brand.
The weekly progress reports kept me excited to write.
Asking for feedback kept them honest.

And immediately hooking me up with support made sure that my movement to a more powerful service went perfectly.

The power of knowing your audience and appropriately timing your messages can take any user from acquisition to success.

If your onboarding sequence isn’t regular and exciting enough to cause a stir around your brand, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

4. Utilize Chat and Messaging

I want to stay on the topic of communication for one more moment because it doesn’t have to just be via email or in person.

You have the option to engage in real time communication with your leads and customers that can boost retention and keep people happy with your services.

According to Sonar, you can make a strong first impression by utilizing SMS onboarding as a creative way to connect with new clients.

Look at how a service like DrinkEasy does it:

You see how they take the opportunity to get to know their customer and explain their service.

They ask what drinks the client likes, lay out the process, and even ask for a way to personalize the process.

If the customer has any questions or requests, they’re invited to ask.

Once they start to push their product, the conversation continues on the same text chain.

Everything works in context, and it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

They use SMS to share their product findings and a few interesting facts.

You then have the option to buy, pass, or request something else. All via text. No email, no phone calls, and no in-person awkwardness.

Another option that will let you streamline your communication and decrease the number of man hours involved is a Chatbot.

Early versions, like Cleverbot, made people doubt the validity of using tools like this at first.

I didn’t screencap this on Christmas.

But Chatbots aren’t quite the same. Cleverbot actually “learns” from people.

A good Chatbot can provide resources and quick answers in an onboarding process that don’t end up like the example above.

Take Facebook’s bots. They can do some amazing work on their platform.

For example, you can now have a bot crawl for relevant content and actually post it to a Group or Page:

Those same bots can also recommend pieces to your audience by directly tagging them in a comment below the post.

It’s exactly like when you want to share content with a friend, but automated.

And you can also set up pre-scripted bot-to-user messaging like this:

The possibilities are endless, and you can always make updates as you innovate and implement new ideas.

How you would use a tool like SMS or Chatbots in your business is up to you.

The ultimate application is that finding innovative ways to communicate with your customer can yield positive results.

You just have to do the innovating yourself.

Conclusion

So whether you’re in middle school dance mode or are already into the beat, finding ways to sidle into a relationship and optimize your customer onboarding is just a good idea.

Remember that the seeds of churn or success are planted early. Whichever one grows is up to you.

Finding methods to create the perfect onboarding sequence varies greatly by industry and even client to client.

Just because it works for your buddy in Silicon Valley doesn’t mean it will work in your NYC startup.

Speak to knowledgeable people in your industry and bite the customer development bullet.

Search for flexible ways to adapt your onboarding experience.

It’s the best way to keep it productive and stop your funnel from leaking. Plus, it will keep your sales team busy.

Lastly, optimize the way you communicate.

Make your new customer feel valued but not overwhelmed.

You can even consider a new approach like SMS or live chat to create a new spin on your product or service.

Whatever you do, just make sure you get your onboarding right.

How do you create the perfect client onboarding experience?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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Magic Password Revolutionizes WordPress Security

Properly protecting the security of your website has to be number 1 on everybody’s digital checklist. Unfortunately, security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and that weakest link is usually your password.

It’s a fact of digital life, that thanks to the vast number of logins we have to recall, most people use a variation on their “master” password: using “passwordLI” for LinkedIn, “passwordE” for email, “passwordFB” for Facebook. It doesn’t take an AI with advanced machine learning to work out that your WordPress password is “passwordWP”—although worryingly, that AI does exist.

Cue Magic Password…

Magic Password is a revolutionary WordPress plugin that takes a radically different approach to site security by ditching the password altogether!

Password-less authentication has already been pioneered by SaaS like Slack, and Magic Password takes the concept to new heights with its implementation for WordPress. All you need is the smartphone app—which is available for both Android and iOS—and the Magic Password plugin. Both the app, and the plugin are completely free.

Magic Password is one of those rare plugins that’s so useful, you expect WordPress to buy it and build it into the core code.

Once the plugin is installed in your WordPress site, and the app is synced, all you need to do to log into your site is take out your smartphone and scan the Magic code displayed on your login screen. It’s as simple and secure as that; the only person who can access your account is you.

Using Magic Password to login is really easy. Not as easy as typing a password, but easier than trying to remember a different, secure password each week, and certainly easier than two-factor authentication.

If you’re someone who prefers to access WordPress on a mobile device, then Magic Password is even simpler: simply tap the screen and you’re logged in. Super-easy to do and extra secure when you combine it with your phone’s built-in security features like Face ID or fingerprint scanning.

It’s an incredibly convenient process, but Magic Password’s real benefits come from its contribution to your site’s security measures.

The sad reality is that passwords can, and do get hacked. And we make things easier for hackers because human beings are predictable. Hackers know your password is probably 8 characters plus or minus 2, and that it probably ends in a number.

Magic Password completely rewrites the rules by changing the whole login process: The latest end-to-end encryption means login credentials are all but impossible to hack; With no password to type you aren’t vulnerable to a keylogger attack; Brute-force attacks are blocked thanks to limited login attempts; Magic Password doesn’t rely on database or local file storage, your login credentials aren’t stored anywhere, which means there’s simply nothing to steal.

If hackers were taking aim at your site login, they’ll now find themselves looking at a moving target.

One of the most common points of failure in any security plan is a particular user’s lack of caution. It doesn’t matter how diligent you are, if Darren in marketing insists on using “FutureMrBeyonce” as his password on every single site, sooner or later your details will be compromised. Magic Password can be used by anyone on your team, in fact one of the latest features is the ability to require all subusers to login with Magic Password; so you can be confident that Darren’s optimistic password policy won’t wreck your security.

What’s more, the Magic code generated by the plugin and scanned by the phone app is constantly updated on the backend by the app. If hackers were taking aim at your site login, they’ll now find themselves looking at a moving target. As an added bonus, you won’t have to update your login every week “just in case”.

Magic Password is one of those rare plugins that’s so useful, you expect WordPress to buy it and build it into the core code.

You can download the plugin and the app for free.

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Magic Password –]

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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Announcing the Newest Kissmetrics Connection: Facebook Audiences

Kissmetrics Populations lets you track key segments of your user base. In just a few steps, you can track user activity, marketing performance, and product engagement.

And now we’re making it even better.

With our latest iteration, you can connect a Population to a Facebook Custom Audience for even greater targeting and tracking in Kissmetrics.

Let’s see how it works.

The Facebook Custom Audiences Kissmetrics Populations Connection

Facebook Audiences is an advertising product from Facebook that lets marketers advertise to existing customers. As long as you have email addresses, you can advertise to that group on Facebook through Audiences.

Here’s where Kissmetrics Populations comes in.

If you’re using Kissmetrics and identifying your users by their email, you can turn a Population into an Audience on Facebook that you can then advertise to.

Let’s say you’re an eCommerce company and have created a Population for the one and done buyers – the people that made their first purchase 6 months ago but haven’t made one since. Here’s how that Population may look:

We see that there are 2,983 people in this Population. If we scroll down, we’ll see the users email addresses:

These customers are ripe for a new advertising campaign. We’ll create an advertisement on Facebook that offers them 10% back off their next purchase.

So, with this Population in our hand, we’ll move over in Kissmetrics and click on the Connections tab and Authorize the Facebook connection:

And just like that, you have your new Custom Audience in Facebook. And the best part is that it will automatically update when new people enter the Population, or people leave the Population. So if you get a user who was in this Population and advertise to them and they come back and make a purchase, they’ll automatically be removed from the Population in Kissmetrics, which will update the Custom Audience in Facebook.

3 Populations You Can Create Right Now

Populations are a great fit for eCommerce stores. Here’s 3 Populations you can create right now:

1. The “Browsers”

These are the groups of people who continually visit your eCommerce store, but never actually make a purchase. Keeping track of this Population will help you know how well your site is converting prospects, as well as how many people are just browsing without buying. In many cases, this may indicate how many people are price shopping your store.

Keep in mind that you will have to have that person’s email address before you can move them to a custom audience in Facebook. In many cases, a person will give you their email address for signing up for an email newsletter. You can promote something like “10% off your first purchase when you sign up for our newsletter” and you’ll probably get a barrage of new emails to your list. Once you have that, you can then track the browsers and advertise to them on Facebook.

2. Customers That Haven’t Purchased After X Amount of Days

Since most eCommerce stores don’t have a recurring revenue model, they need customers coming back to purchase. Many stores incentivize this through loyalty programs. With Populations, you can track how many customers haven’t purchased from you after a certain amount of time. Then you’ll connect that Population to Facebook and advertise to those customers to win them back and earn a repurchase.

3. Lost Loyalists

Loyal customers are great. They keep your business alive and thriving. So needless to say, you don’t want to lose them. But, it’s inevitable that some of your loyal customers will be moving some of their purchases to other stores. That’s why you’ll want to keep track of how many of these “lost loyalists” you’ve had over the months.

Log in to Start Using Populations

If you’re a Kissmetrics customer, you can login and start using the new Populations Facebook integration. If you have any questions, you can reach out to our support team and we’ll be more than happy to help you.

If you aren’t a Kissmetrics customer but would like to learn more, you can request a demo.

Don’t Miss Out on other Connections

Connections go beyond Facebook.

If you use Slack, you can use our Populations connection to stay on top of all your Populations without having to logging into Facebook.

Our HubSpot connection will enrich any customer profile in Hubspot with data from Kissmetrics.

And we have many more connections coming. Stay tuned to this blog for future product announcements.

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9 Best Online Video Libraries To Teach Yourself Design & Development

With free tutorials you can teach yourself almost anything online. But premium video libraries are often much more detailed with pro-level instructors.

These videos are very helpful when you’re just getting into web design or development. There’s so much to learn in both areas and it can be super confusing if you’re new to frontend code, backend code, or general UI/UX design.

Below are our picks for the best online video libraries for teaching yourself how to make websites. Granted some libraries excel in certain subjects but overall this list should have something for everyone.

1. Code School

Code School has been around for years and it’s one of the few sites devoted to web dev languages.

Many of their videos are accessible free of charge but the larger paths cost money. It’s all rolled into one monthly subscription which makes it great for anyone who wants to progress through these lessons one after another.

If you look at the paths page you’ll find lessons on basically everything.

From basic frontend HTML/CSS/JS code all the way to Python and even Android/iOS programming for mobile apps.

Code School is a solid place to start for any aspiring programmer since their teaching materials are fantastic for learning the ropes (and a bit more!)

2. Codecademy

Another viable online coding library is Codecademy which follows a very similar structure.

With Codecademy you can sign up for free and get access to a few smaller courses on demand. But for their full library they charge based on paths or specific courses.

One thing I like about Codecademy is their attention to detail in their ‘intensive’ program. You can learn about that here but basically the intensive program lets you connect with professional developers who review your code and help guide you along the way.

This is the next best thing to a real mentorship and you can do it all from the comfort of your home office.

Topics range from basic HTML to more advanced JavaScript and TypeScript along with database engines like SQLite. Check out the main catalog page to see everything they’ve got to offer.

3. TutsPlus

The awesome folks at Envato have a massive repository of tutorials in their TutsPlus website.

Most of the written tutorials are totally free and you can view those just by searching the site. However they also have a monthly subscription for pro access to video courses on practically every subject under the sun.

You can learn Illustrator graphics, photo editing, icon design, Android programming and backend development all from the TutsPlus video library.

These videos are listed under courses and the team releases new ones every month. With a subscription you get access to all these courses including the newest ones and oldest ones. That’s what makes TutsPlus one of the better choices for self-learning in the design/dev space.

Recently Envato combined the TutsPlus subscription with their Elements library too. So along with 1000+ HD video courses you also get access to free design assets. Pretty sweet!

4. Lynda

When you think of sites to learn stuff online Lynda has to be one of the first brands to come to mind.

They have video courses on absolutely everything from Microsoft Office to IT/database management and programming. You can learn graphic design, web design, and basically every single program in the Adobe Creative Suite on Lynda.

Their library is a subscription platform so you’d renew monthly for access to all of their content.

Considering how much is here and how much they update I have to say it’s a great choice. However I think their lessons are a bit ‘lighter’ and made to target absolute beginners.

So if you’re starting from scratch learning to build websites Lynda is a wonderful choice. If you already know the basics and want to push a little further I’d say others offer more.

5. PluralsightPluralsight homepage

One of the largest competitors to Lynda is Pluralsight. They recently merged with Digital Tutors making this one of the largest digital video learning libraries on the web.

Originally Pluralsight was meant to be a tech/IT library while Digital Tutors covered more creative design courses. Now it’s just one big library and works on the same model as Lynda.

Their courses include beginner-tier stuff but also go far beyond the basics with difficulty labels for each course. So it’s easy to find beginner level courses or intermediate/advanced levels too.

And these courses delve into plenty of topics like OOP JavaScript or building custom WordPress snippets.

To learn more about course quality and how this all works there’s plenty of reviews you can read. But ultimately it comes down to what sort of education you’re looking for.

I mostly recommend Pluralsight for more technical content like IT, database management, programming, and web development. The library does have all of the creative content from Digital Tutors so that’s awesome. But my impression is that Pluralsight really hits it out of the park with technical content.

Also they offer a free trial so there’s no fee to test out the library before subscribing.

6. Treehouse

Treehouse is one of the newest online teaching resources compared to many others in this list. Yet it’s also one of the best and most revered from past students.

The majority of Treehouse content is aimed towards beginners so it’ll really hold your hand through everything. It’s mostly an online video resource for learning development with very few design courses (if any).

But let me say there’s a ton of great dev courses here.

You can learn frontend, backend, database management, and even app development. This means you could even merge different paths and teach yourself fullstack development all from this one library.

These courses are meant to get you ready for a career in the industry which is perfect for someone educating themselves and hoping to land a stable job.

Have a look at their stories page for testimonials to see if this could be the right choice for you.

7. Udemy

With Udemy it’s really a mixed bag of videos.

The Udemy team don’t necessarily record or teach any of their lessons. Instead this is a user-created library with teachers from all over the world recording their own video courses.

They sell at totally different rates and since they’re all taught in different ways the quality fluctuates a lot. However there are tons of gems in here if you know where to look.

Try searching for anything you want to learn like ‘ruby on rails’ or ‘laravel’. You’ll find plenty of courses at varying skill levels all with different user ratings. Check out the reviews and if they seem good you may pick up a course and give it a shot.

Often times Udemy runs monthly sales on courses so you can usually pick these up at 40% off (or more!) if you keep an eye on pricing.

8. Coursera

Coursera is a little different than all the others in this list.

With most video learning sites you subscribe monthly for full access to courses. Or with something like Udemy you get individual courses at a fixed rate.

Coursera sells access to their courses individually but they work almost like online college courses where you learn from a specific teacher and get real feedback on your work.

In fact, many of the teachers at Coursera are real-world college professors. This means you’re learning from some of the best minds across dozens of categories.

It’s still a newer platform but take a quick browse through their lessons and see what you can find.

9. Khan Academy

Last but certainly not least is the incredible Khan Academy. These video lessons are not up to the same quality as many premium libraries and these videos rarely go into as much depth.

However Khan Academy is totally free to join and their videos are free for life. That’s probably the biggest selling point to get in here are start searching.

So it’s free and great quality. What’s the downside?

Khan doesn’t really have the same volume or level of detail compared to big libraries like TutsPlus, Lynda, or Pluralsight. Instead Khan has mostly introductory content which covers the fundamentals only.

You can find a few in-depth courses here but not as much as other sites. And most of Khan Academy is geared towards traditional learning (math, physics, history) rather than web development.

But if you do a search on the site you can find plenty of videos teaching HTML or JavaScript. Not to mention they have an entire computer programming category so that’s probably worth looking into as well.

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