This article is also published at https://www.educationtechnologyinsights.com/vp/ez-test-prep/holistic_products_in_an_un-holistic_industry/
Education apps are like dating apps, there is an end goal. A successful app means a deleted app. With a user base that you want to leave, how do you build longevity, brand, and a holistic experience? How do you create a holistic product in an industry where users are meant to leave? The same way Tinder does — a community of success.
“It’s an easy way to separate out the education apps that don’t understand what they are selling. They’re usually explaining how nice the tires are on that Ferrari.”
EZ Prep exists in a very generically saturated market, as do a lot of educational software. There’s a lot of competition, but not a lot of good competition. 8 out of 10 education apps you’ll find on app stores have identical content and questions, purchased years ago from the same source, shoved behind a UI and a free vector image of the same person waving. It’s like purchasing an old out-of-date textbook and carrying it around. It serves the basic purpose needed, but nothing more. It sells convenience but misses the primary problem it’s trying to solve.
We are lucky enough to be in an ‘I want to be’ industry. Like gyms, dating apps, and Ferrari dealerships, our apps are not for the person you currently are, but for the person you want to be. “I’m someone who goes to the gym twice a week.” “I’m someone who drives a cool car.” “I’m someone who studied and became a licensed therapist.” We create an idea and a path to a different definition of yourself. We don’t advertise features but solutions to hurdles. It’s an easy way to separate out the education apps that don’t understand what they are selling. They’re usually explaining how nice the tires are on that Ferrari.
Take gyms for example. You will never see an advertisement for a gym bragging about how many weights they have. That they are constantly adding new weights and have more weights than any other gym. Yet you see app after app describing how many questions they have. How much content they’ve added. But gyms are not selling exercise equipment, or even really exercise. They’re selling an idea of yourself, and more importantly, they’re selling motivation.
It’s important to point out that our first and primary mission will always be to provide extremely high-quality content and study materials in a form that is engaging and easy to understand. It would be a pretty crappy gym without any exercise equipment that worked. But our second goal is to create a community of support and recognition for that to grow in. Studying is hard. Life is busy. It has a way of throwing every possible hurdle in front of you. At the end of the day we’re not really creating education, we’re creating motivation. We’re building a brand and community centered around inspiration. If others can buckle down, study, and pass this exam, why can’t I?
The best part of the education industry is that it’s a naturally supportive community. There’s a ‘we fought in the trenches together’ mentality to studying for these extremely difficult exams and certifications. People enjoy celebrating others’ achievements and commiserating and motivating in their defeats. Which creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem for everyone. We spend a lot of time curating and meeting content creators in their specialties. Interviewing users about what motivates them and where they find it. Finding Facebook and Reddit groups sharing study suggestions and information. Those places that are also building a community of support and success.
Don’t get me wrong, I won’t pretend this is purely altruistic. Users passing their exams is extremely important to us. The best advertisement we could ever hope for is for someone to tell their classmates or coworkers they passed their exam and all of the hard work it had taken. Nobody is going to tell their friend about the app they used to fail their exam. If they succeed, we succeed. If they fail, we fail. That’s why we offer a money-back pass guarantee that comes with a free lifetime subscription until they pass. We’ve seen very few users claim it as our users tend to average a very high pass rate. But if we can offer an incentive to not give up and to keep studying, that’s exactly what we’re here for.
I know the term ‘holistic’ has become overused in the tech industry. It became a marketing buzzword of how this software will solve all of your problems. But our apps are not holistic. They are meant to fit into the whole, to strengthen and promote the whole, and to motivate you to build that whole. But lifting a few weights at the gym won’t achieve much. But what a great community to build your goals around and help create the person you want to be.
EZ Prep will be launching a companion app to all our current education apps this coming January. The EZ Study Helper app will promote, once again, a more holistic user experience. Gamifying and rewarding studying the app will help set aside distraction-free study time. It will help monitor and keep track of your study goals, sync with all of our and other apps’ achievements and statistics, and contain a menagerie of study tools developed directly by the students and industry professionals who will use it.
We will also be launching our full suite of apps on Android in Q1 of 2025 as well. We wanted to make sure we perfected iOS before branching into new markets.
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