Website and LMS development for education

"Education website" can mean very different products. At the briefing stage, we first decide which one you need, because the structure, features, timeline and budget all depend on it.

University or college website

A large information resource in three languages: faculties and departments, degree programs, research, the admissions office, international cooperation, news and events. The main goal is for every audience to find its section quickly and for staff in different departments to update content on their own.

Training center, school or course website

A website that sells learning: subjects and programs, group schedules, teachers, fees, graduate stories, trial lesson sign-up and online payment. For private schools and children's centers, we add information for parents and photos of school life.

Online school and course platform

A product where the learning itself happens on the website: registration, payment, video lessons, assignments, tests, certificates and promo codes. The Jaryq portal works this way. If you plan a course marketplace with many authors, it becomes a portal with several user types.

Corporate LMS

A system for training employees: onboarding, internal policies, assessments and tracking training completion by department and branch. Integration with CRM, ERP and HR systems lets you assign courses automatically, for example when someone joins the company or moves to a new role.

A university website is one of the largest corporate websites: hundreds of pages, dozens of content owners and at least three language versions. That is why we design the structure around audiences rather than the university's org chart. On the Abai University website, the main menu covers the university itself, education, research, international cooperation, applicants, students and alumni, and contacts.

• Admissions section. Majors and degree programs, admission requirements and deadlines, required documents, tuition and grants, answers to common questions, and an application form or a link to online document submission.
• Program catalog. Each program page shows the level (bachelor's, master's, doctoral), language of instruction, duration, courses, faculty and career prospects. Filters help applicants compare programs.
• Faculties and departments. Each unit has its own pages and updates its news and staff lists without going through a central office.
• Research. Research areas, journals, conferences and staff publications.
• International cooperation. Academic mobility programs, exchanges and partner universities; on the Abai University website we built this as a dedicated module.
• News, events and a leadership blog. A news feed filtered by department, an events calendar and a rector's blog.
• Integrations with university systems. Sign-in to personal accounts, online document submission and a link to the academic management system. The Abai University website, for example, is connected to the Univer system.
• Three languages and accessibility. Kazakh, Russian and English versions with separate content, a version for visually impaired users, and a site that works properly on smartphones.

We pay special attention to administration. The control panel separates permissions: a faculty edits its own pages, the press office handles news, and the admissions office manages the applicant section. This keeps the site up to date, and an accidental edit cannot break someone else's section. For ETU, we built a content management system that lets university staff update information on the site quickly.

Once learning moves online, the website turns into a learning platform. We develop LMS (Learning Management System) solutions from scratch or on top of our own LMS platform, which we adapt to each client's needs.

What is usually included

• Courses, modules and lessons: video, text, documents, webinars and homework.
• Testing: question banks, automatic grading, final exams, plus file uploads for teachers to grade manually.
• Roles: student, teacher, curator and administrator, and in the corporate version, a manager who sees training progress across their team.
• Analytics: performance dashboards, course progress and reports for administrators.
• Communication: chats, forums and online conferences.
• Certificates issued after a course or final test, each with a unique number for verification.
• Monetization: course payments via Kaspi and bank acquiring, promo codes, subscriptions and installments; see Kaspi and 1C integration.
• Content protection: lessons open only after payment and sign-in, video protected from simple downloading, and limits on simultaneous logins from one account.

Ready-made platform or your own

To launch an online school, ready-made services and open-source LMS such as Moodle are often enough. Your own platform makes sense when your brand and design matter, when your learning logic is non-standard (a placement test, personal learning paths, mentors), when you need integration with CRM, 1C or university systems, and when monthly fees for a third-party service keep growing. Another route is to launch an MVP with the core features and grow the platform as your student base grows.

• Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University: a corporate university website with a custom design; Russian, Kazakh and English versions; sections on the university's structure, faculties and programs; a program catalog including professional development courses and distance learning; an international cooperation module (exchanges, mobility, partner universities); an admin panel; SEO optimization; and integration with the Univer system, online document submission and personal accounts. Timeline: 80 working days.
• ETU: a corporate university website covering faculties and majors, research and academic life, with a design in the university's brand style, a responsive layout, social media integration and an easy-to-use CMS for staff. Timeline: 40 working days.
• Jaryq: an online learning portal with tests that help choose a field of study, courses with a final test and a certificate, registration and sign-in, payments via Kaspi QR and Halyk, and a promo code system.
• Mentor Me: a platform that takes the process of applying to universities abroad online, with a personal account, a separate education platform and integration with more than 2,000 universities worldwide. Timeline: 90 working days.
• Mukaman: an online financial literacy portal with courses, interactive exercises, self-check tests and quizzes, online mentoring and forums, progress analytics and individual reports for students, and webinars. Timeline: 90 working days.
• Studio Nomad LMS platform: our own learning management system for companies, educational institutions and teachers, with courses built from video lessons, tests, assignments and webinars, automatic and manual grading, chats and forums, performance dashboards, user and certificate management, multiple languages, an API, and CRM and ERP integrations.

What we learned on these projects carries over to new ones: university site structure and integrations from Abai University and ETU, the test, course, payment and certificate flow from Jaryq, personal accounts and external service integrations from Mentor Me, and learning analytics and roles from our own LMS.

For a university, college or training center, the website is the main source of applications during admissions and for courses. That is why we build enrollment drivers into the structure from the start.

• A page for every program and course. People search for a specific major or course rather than an institution's name: "accounting courses in Almaty", "master's in education", "IELTS preparation". A dedicated page with a description, price and sign-up form answers such a query better than a general list.
• A short path to an application. Buttons to book a consultation, a trial lesson or an open day on every program page, plus quick replies via WhatsApp and Telegram.
• Applications go to the CRM. Inquiries from the website, messengers and ads land in one CRM tagged with the source and program, and the manager sees the full history with each applicant. Learn more on the business automation page.
• Schema.org markup. The EducationalOrganization, CollegeOrUniversity and Course types help search engines understand what the organization is and which programs it offers.
• Seasonal landing pages. For an admissions campaign, summer school or intensive course, it is convenient to run separate landing pages for ads.
• Speed and mobile. Applicants and parents mostly open the site on a smartphone, so pages need to load fast even with lots of photos.
• Analytics. You can see which programs and ad channels bring in applications and which only spend the budget.

We handle basic SEO during development, and you can grow the site further with SEO promotion.

1. Brief and discovery. Audiences, programs, admission and learning processes, and existing systems: the university's academic system, CRM, 1C and payment services.
2. Structure and prototype. Sitemap, the applicant's and student's journey, and for an LMS, scenarios for each role.
3. Design. A visual style based on the institution's identity, responsive layouts and personal account interfaces.
4. Development and integrations. Control panel, program catalog, forms, payments, personal accounts, courses and tests, and integrations.
5. Content and testing. Transferring content in three languages and testing forms, payments and course completion on different devices.
6. Launch, training and support. Publishing, analytics, a walkthrough for the staff who will run the site, and 24 months of technical support.

Timelines on our education projects ranged from 40 working days (the ETU website) to 80 working days (the Abai University website) and 90 working days (the Mentor Me and Mukaman platforms). We confirm the exact timeline after the brief and fix it in the contract.

To avoid delays, at the start we will need the structure of your departments and programs, texts and photos, your logo and brand style, a content owner for each section, and for an LMS, a sample course and a description of how learning works.

Cost. A website for a university, college, school or training center starts from 500,000 ₸, like a corporate website. An LMS, online course platform or education portal with personal accounts starts from 800,000 ₸, like other portals and web services. The final price depends on:

• the number of sections, programs and language versions;
• the complexity of personal accounts and user roles;
• integrations with the academic system, CRM, 1C and payment services;
• the amount of content to migrate from the old site;
• non-standard mechanics such as branching tests, learning paths and mentoring.

You can pay in parts: installments with no banks and no markup for up to 12 months, with terms depending on the project. To get a preliminary estimate and submit a request, visit the order a website page, and to compare prices for different types of websites, see our article on website costs in Kazakhstan.

• Experience in education. Websites for two universities, online learning portals, a platform for applying to universities abroad and our own LMS: we know how admissions and the learning process work.
• Website and platform from one team. We can start with a training center website and add an LMS, CRM or mobile app on a shared architecture.
• Our own code without templates. We design the control panel around your processes: programs, courses, news and department permissions.
• Three languages, Kazakh, Russian and English, built into the architecture from day one.
• In-house team: design, development and SEO, with an office in Almaty.
• 24-month warranty and free technical support under the contract.
• Over 70 projects in our portfolio.

If your institution already has an outdated website, we will start with an audit and carry out a redesign, carefully moving over what the site has built up in search: 301 redirects from old URLs, meta tags and program pages.