How we launched Merge Academy
We finally launched Merge Academy — a website where every Ukrainian can learn a new skill. Only the Webflow course is available for now, but with the time, we will add more — front-end development and design courses are next.
By making these posts, I want to share that experience with everyone out there, so people can learn from it (or at least try). Also, I think it’s a great exercise to look back at what we did and see if there was another path we could have taken. So yeah, here’s how we planned and launched a new project in the Merge family.
Last summer, at the annual team meeting, I showed my vision of Merge for the upcoming years. I didn’t want to stop on agency only, and since I love launching new projects, I decided to expand Merge beyond a simple UI UX design and development agency. I envisioned Merge Academy as a place where people from all around the world can learn new skills and receive high-quality education about the latest technologies that will shape the future. I fell in love with this concept and the idea that I would somehow help others contribute to the future of humanity.
For the first version of the Academy, we decided to focus on the Ukrainian market. We started our work in December last year. We broke down everything we needed for the launch into a roadmap, and we started from
Competitor Analysis
As we already knew how to do in-depth competitor analysis from our work as an agency, it was a pretty easy task for us. We looked at programs, prices, course durations, positioning, audience, keywords, types of payments, and much more. Based on gathered data, we determined our strategy, what niche we could occupy, and the portrait of the target audience. As it turned out, courses from agencies like ours have weak marketing and branding. And on the contrary — private online schools have those parts covered, but they cannot guarantee employment after courses or provide outdated knowledge. As a result, many people finish the educational program and then have similar portfolios and find it hard to get a job.
Next, we built a Customer Journey Map — the student’s path from the first contact with the Academy to the final goal — getting a job. We described every step a person would go through and, on top of everything, added operational processes which should be in place for every step.
We then created a roadmap and scope of tasks to launch the first Front-end course with Alex Ratushny — the first-ever front-end developer at Merge.
Getting started
I love setting up processes with the approach that as long as you invest more time in building the process initially, the easier it will be in the future to scale the business. It is also called Systems Mindset. But at the same time, you always should leave room for quick testing of the hypothesis that might come up. I used this approach while working on the Academy, and already some of the investments are paying off.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, we froze everything for two weeks and started thinking about how can we adjust what we did or planned to do. We felt that since people would not be willing to spend a lot of money on education and won’t have the opportunity to take them systematically. At the same time, many Ukrainians have lost their jobs, and Merge Academy would be a great place to acquire a new profession. Initially, we decided to make the Front-end course free of charge. We then changed the strategy to launch a concise educational program for everyone who wants to create websites without knowing the code — and started working on Webflow.Basic course, registration for which is now available. The other advantage of Webflow is that it’s fast and easy to learn, and the speed was also a factor here.
Our approach to education
We wanted to make the lessons pre-recorded. Most people are skeptical about pre-recorded courses, as there is no interaction with the teacher and other students. So we decided to improve the quality of education by checking homework and receiving feedback from the mentor. We do this through the Telegram bot: the students do assignments, send them through the bot, and get the mentor’s feedback. We want to maximize the quality of education without making it a hassle for the teacher, so I think that our approach is a good one. We match students with mentors who are developers with Webflow experience. This way, every student can get valuable feedback and, even more critical — knowledge from people who are building real projects using Webflow.
How we did marketing and stuff
We started preparing the brand strategy and marketing funnels with customer interviews. We were looking for respondents who fit the portrait of our ideal customer and found out their motivation and sources from where they consume information. I will briefly describe marketing activities: advertising in media and Telegram channels, holding an online master class with our curator, IT event calendars, social networks, email marketing, and my network.
Website design and development
Since we are a team of designers and developers in the first place, no wonder we needed to showcase our abilities with a stunning and high-quality website. What a shame it would be teaching others how to create websites when you have an average one.
Merge Academy’s website is built on Remix.js, although we could do the same on Webflow, but we needed more flexibility with animations and layout. We used Ghost for the blog, it has all the SEO settings under the hood, and it can be redesigned without pain. We chose Wayforpay (a local payment gateway) as the payment method. After the initial setup, we launched the website in May.
Processes and operations
We run operational processes with Google Docs for now. We have the Academy DB, which contains lists of students, courses, staff, and mentors. We also have a separate spreadsheet to calculate PNL and the financial side of the business. We will use Pipedrive as CRM in the future, but I’m also open to suggestions here.
To launch Merge Academy, we spent around $22,000. I hope that it will shape into one of the best educational platforms in the world in the future as long as we keep working on it, expanding specializations, and adding more languages.
I’m grateful to everyone in the Merge family for making this happen. Let’s continue working and creating awesome projects.
P.S. If you have any questions regarding this or any other projects I’m involved in, please reach out via Telegram or email pavel [at] merge.rocks.
