Heytutor — smart design for online tutoring platform with $30M revenue

To identify the optimal practices in designing edtech websites, we deeply analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of HeyTutor’s main competitors. Our team implemented the best features of competitors’ sites, such as attractive photos, high-quality videos, and large typography, but upgraded everything with our own creative touch.

At the same time, we paid attention to the issues of similar tutoring platforms: insufficient indentation between blocks, monotonous graphic elements, low contrast, poorly used colors, and unclear hierarchy of accents. By acknowledging these flaws, our team drew a project plan and moved to the next step of our design journey — depicting HeyTutor’s archetypical users.

Without a doubt, HeyTutor’s “typical” user is a young person studying or working in school, college, or university. They are passionate about the latest technologies and strive to improve skills and knowledge crucial to their occupation. Because of a busy schedule and active social life, these users need a flexible and convenient platform to study or work without wasting time and energy. Being aware of their worth, these personas prefer learning and teaching at their own pace, so an innovative edtech platform is precisely what the “classic” HeyTutor users need.

Having pointed out all highlighted details of the HeyTutor’s archetypical personas, our team built a user flow map tailored to their wishes and expectations. It helped us ensure that tutees and tutors could easily navigate through the site and achieve their goals while having a fun and productive study time.

To attract the target audience, we created a distinctive and memorable brand identity that would set HeyTutor apart from competitors. Our primary focus was revealing a core platform concept — joyful, fast, and smart studying. Our team wanted to create a visually appealing website, so we incorporated graphic elements such as hand-drawn lines, arrows, varied shapes, and minimalist icons. These details helped break up the monotony of the page, making it more attractive to users while emphasizing key content and information.

To avoid clutter and create an open and effortless design, our team decided to move on with color contrast, differentiating content blocks and emphasizing specific sections. In opposition to the light white & greyish background, we added pastel corn, lavender, mint, sky, and baby pink colors. Through the pleasant color dissimilarity between the “classic” backdrop and diverse playful tones, we brought a touch of vibrancy and life to the design.

At the heart of HeyTutor's mission is the goal of making learning accessible, intuitive, and enjoyable. To reflect this ethos, we presented HeyTutor's logo as an academic cap, which is commonly associated with education and learning. Its color scheme incorporates shades of light and dark purple, which stands for creativity, wisdom, and loyalty, aesthetically matching the logo’s classic book printing font.

The use of purple in the symbol is also consistent with the overall brand identity, which highlights a palette of warm, inviting colors that promote a fun and productive study environment. Overall, the design of the logo and pictorial mark effectively convey HeyTutor’s mission to provide a smart and intuitive online tutoring platform.