5 Top Reasons to Hire a BuddyBoss Developer for Your Online E-Learning Platform

I just finished  a call with the third business owner this week needing help with an existing BuddyBoss Web project.  They purchased BuddyBoss Web. They, or someone they hired, worked on the project with no prior experience using BuddyBoss. They ran into some issues they could not overcome. They got stuck and could not proceed.

Their next step was to reach out to an expert BuddyBoss developer team like ours to get the project completed.

BuddyBoss is a popular platform for creating online communities. It's particularly useful when building membership sites and online learning platforms. It enables you to get your learners out of Lone Ranger mode by adding features that get them communicating with each other. It allows you to add social media-like feeds, forums and and member-to-member communication options. It's been proven to enhance the learning experience and keep learners in your programs longer. The improves the chance of their finishing the course stay as loyal fans that recommend you and your courseware to everyone they know.

However, BuddyBoss is not a trivial platform to configure. It's strength is that it has many, many, many features. It's weakness is it has many, many, many features. First time builders typically have difficulty understanding when to use it's many features and how exactly to configure them.

As a long time BuddyBoss developer (I've been using BuddyBoss for over 4 years), I know and appreciate the wealth of features it offers. I've seen it be overwhelming for a first timer and we are happy jumping in to get projects that have "gone off the rails" finished. 

But do it the hard way. Why try and build something like this, spending all that valuable time, and then have to hire a BuddyBoss developer anyway. Here are five top reasons for hiring a BuddyBoss developer from the start. Let me know what you think.

BuddyBoss Developer Reason #1 - You get a better customization.

BuddyBoss is highly customizable, and an expert can help you customize it to fit your specific needs. This customization could include designing a unique theme so the user interface is more to your linking. It could mean adding features that are not native to BuddyBoss, but are offered by a third-party addon that integrates really well with BuddyBoss.  

In any case, when you work with a developer, you can be confident that you will be using BuddyBoss as best you can without all the trial and error that goes into trying to do this yourself.

BuddyBoss Developer Reason #2 - You avoid interacting with technical support which does not offer consulting services.

BuddyBoss support is good. They help you address configuration issues or bugs with the platform. They are NOT a consulting service nor do they claim to be. 

Hiring a BuddyBoss developer can provide you with technical support to troubleshoot issues, but more importantly, they get your site configured to address your specific requirements. With any technical project, you have to research what you do not know. You are stuck Googling a problem to death or just trying all the possible things you can try.

When you work with a developer, you outsource that to other people and use them guide the way. It keeps you from haphazardly treading to uncharted territory, wasting time you don't have and still not getting the best possible solution.

BuddyBoss Developer Reason #3 - You make use of known best practices.

What we have found is that first time builders, even if they do NOT get stuck, end up with the best they could build with their lack of experience. They miss out on known configuration enhancements that take BuddyBoss Web to the next level.

Let me share with you an example. BuddyBoss has 13 components. Eleven of them you can turn off and not use.

What we have found is that few organizations needs all of them. BuddyBoss has built a solution that addresses the needs of a large body of membership site and online course builders, but few will need all of them.

BuddyBoss when you first install it has all their components turned on. They give you a healthy set of navigation menus aimed and making all of the functions available to your learners. We find that this is overwhelming. Your users take their first look and don't know what to do first.

Our recommendation is to drastically simplify the menus. Allow people to slowly get to know what is possible in the community offering them a dashboard. Offer a wizard like initial set of pages, which you can easily build using plain vanilla Wordpress, that steps them through the things they should do first. Then include navigation for other features throughout the site.

This is only one of the best practices we have learned from using the tool for so long. There are many others. Even the most experienced Wordpress website developers will have a difficult time knowing about these until they have started using the platform for a while.

BuddyBoss Developer Reason # 4 - Your customers get a better user experience.

A BuddyBoss developer can help you create a better user experience for your members or customers. On multiple occasions, we have been hired to help out with an already started site. We see very similar issue with these sites. They don't typically have a smooth purchasing journey. The messages learners get sent after they purchase are not as instructive as they need to be. Your learners tend to struggle because the messages and first time login pages don't give all the information they need. 

Working with a developer will make the user experience engaging and interactive with the smarts you get from someone experience working with you.

BuddyBoss Developer Reasons #5 - You get strategic advice.

Hiring a BuddyBoss expert can give you access to expert advice on how to make the most of the platform's features. A first timer will see the BuddyBoss' demo site, which is a good one, and see huge potential. Once you get into the thick of it, it's difficult to identify which of the demo site features you really need. Some might be better offered in a future release.

Any good project benefits from a well defined Minimally Viable Product (MVP). That often time works best so you don't delay releasing the product waiting on features that aren't 100% necessary from the start. Those are also features that may be better designed later after you have had a chance to observe how people use the site.

This kind of advice isn't something you are going to get when you do it yourself or work with a team that is using the platform for the first time.

In conclusion, hiring a BuddyBoss developer can be a game-changer for your online business or community. They can:

• provide you with the technical expertise and support needed to make the most of the platform's features,
• customize your website to fit your specific needs,
• enable you to take advantage of best practices and
• create a better user experience for your members.

So, if you are looking to take your BuddyBoss website to the next level, consider hiring a BuddyBoss developer today.