Small changes needed to shine
Before reading the points below, let me first say that I think the platform is quite developed, but it could be modernized. Just a few changes to modernize it would bring it up to speed with the rest of the marketplace, and perhaps even outpace your competitors.
I hope that the product creator won't be too upset to read my review...
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1. Trainer's Profile Page
I subscribed to this product to support it, and to explore its features. For me, getting people to see the profile and the courses is most important to me. That's because when a non-client searches for me at Google, I'll send them to my profile page.
Leaderjam's profile pages are in this format of a URL: https://app.leaderjam.com/xyz (where "xyz" is your profile). Of course, you can put in a CNAME and get it on your own URL e.g. a subdomain, and that's OK.
The problem is when someone tries to visit the URL and is asked to sign up for Leaderjam. I found that the profile URL does not show my profile unless I'm logged in. For that reason, Google will also not be seeing my profile unless Google is logged in ... and there is no chance that Google will be logged in. So my profile will not be indexed by Google. All the visitors of my profile page at https://app.leaderjam.com/xyz will not be able to see my courses unless they sign up for Leaderjam.
For example, here is some URL I found from some SEO checking:
1. https://app.leaderjam.com/lee-grigsby/
2. https://app.leaderjam.com/rolande-s-sumner/
3. https://app.leaderjam.com/global-risk-alliance/
Let's say the user signs up... it's a 4 step process. (1) Enter name, password, email, and profile photo. (2) Enter company name, set a custom URL, and enter a company photo; (3) Choose the plan that suits you (including a 14 day trial); and (4) Enter your card details.
So, the chances of someone signing up for my courses would be quite poor. Because they won't be able to view my profile and my courses unless they sign up with Leaderjam. And if they want to sign up for an account ... well, they have to subscribe to Leaderjam.
Maybe I have it wrong, maybe I'm mistaken. I hope that I'm mistaken, and I'll be glad to correct this if it's possible. Or, better yet, the team could make some changes so that the profile pages could be viewed without logging in. :-)
Here is my profile page: https://app.leaderjam.com/advocate/
2. Course Page
I found I couldn't view my test course (published) if I wasn't logged in. Same comments as the section above will apply ... Here is my test course: https://app.leaderjam.com/advocate/courses/178/details
3. The AI hub is great!
From the AI hub, you can get it to create an outline for a course. Then, moving forward, you can get it to create the course page, which you will then edit and fill it up with your own content.
4. Many content types supported!
I like the fact that you can have many content types to be added into your library, and then drop them into the lesson as needed. The recognised content types are video, audio, PDF, image, PPT, document, Excel sheet, and article.
5. Live Events Pages
Fortunately, live event pages can be browsed. Here is one example : https://app.leaderjam.com/advocate/events/80/details
Unfortunately, visitors need to sign up for a Leaderjam account to sign up for the live events. Which means that after seeing the event's details, the visitors will have to sign up for a Leaderjam account.
6. There is no free account (that I could find).
I couldn't register a free account for students and attendees. Perhaps I am mistaken, so please tell me how students and attendees can enrol in my courses without creating a paid account with Leaderjam.
7. Creating a course isn't difficult.
Once you're over the basic hurdle, creating a course isn't difficult. It's just that I couldn't wrap my head around the viewing of courses, signing up for an account, etc.
8. Classification system could be enhanced
For this to be a course creation platform that caters to all sorts of course creators, the "classification system" needs to be more flexible. I noticed that the LeaderJam system has 5 main expertise listed (Customer experience; IT & software; Leadership development; Organizational health; Sales performance). Under each expertise there is about 20 sub-expertise topics, e.g. Leadership development would have Leadership; Presence; Innovation; Decision Making; Networking; etc.
I'm sure that this has worked for many years, but I do wonder what would happen if someone wanted to teach a course like, "How to bake cookies" or "The art of collecting rare antiques". They would need to find a sub-expertise within that list...
That's all from me, I hope that I can continue to use the product, and I will change my review if I find the solutions.
Lastly: Thank you for all the effort made by the Leaderjam and Appsumo teams to bring us this deal. Thanks again!
Kevin_LeaderJam
Sep 24, 2024Hi Kevin. Thanks for subscribing to the lifetime deal. And thank you for your review and detailed feedback. I appreciate the warm thoughts, and look forward to hearing more about your journey with LeaderJam! I am addressing all your queries in the order they appear for convenience.
1. When you purchase an AppSumo lifetime deal or subscribe through a normal monthly deal, you are setting up your account as a "white labeled coaching/training organization". You can manage your coaching/training organization--and be the solo coach/trainer--or have a team of coaches/trainers.
The students who sign up to your organization do not need to purchase a subscription. You can manage your students/clients from the “Users” section. You can access this by clicking on the “Manage Programs” button at the top navbar. You can view your subscribed plan details to see how many users can sign up to your organization, and also see other limits like how many courses or live sessions you can conduct.
For clarity, the URL https://app.leaderjam.com/xyz is not your profile URL. It is your organization's URL where the xyz part reflects the organization identifier which can be seen in the examples you mentioned.
You can publish your marketing pages by publishing your profile info. You do that by clicking the “Profile” option under your picture on the top right corner and going to “My Profile Page” to start editing and finally publishing your profile. You can also check out the help guides on how to set up your marketing pages. In case you have more queries on this, please reach out to us, and we will happily help you figure out the features.
2. With regards to Courses, we haven’t enabled sharing courses to the public yet. We are working on it though and will have that up soon.
3. Glad you liked our AI Hub feature. We have created some valuable approaches, and are in the process of innovating new ones that we will make available over the next few months.
4. We did not limit the coaches/trainers on what type of content they can use for their courses--good to hear that. And glad it’s helpful to you.
5. Yes, your virtual events can be shared publicly. Your attendees do need to sign up to your organization to register and access the events. The attendees do not need to buy any subscription plan. They are on-boarded for free, and the total attendees you onboard to your organization depends on the plan you subscribed to. In addition, attendees can pay for the events too as they register--depending on how you set up this function.
6. As mentioned above, your participants are onboarded to your organization for free. You can add participants/users, coaches/trainers, and admins for your organization from the “Users” section by clicking on the “Manage Programs” button on the top navbar. You also have an approval screen where you manage users who are not part of your organization, and see them as they register for your free course/event/training/coaching.
Hope this is helpful. And look forward to hearing more about your journey on LeaderJam!