Today, website builder platform Duda unveiled Duda University, a training and certification resource for agencies, freelancers, and other web professionals.
The service offers Duda partners the training and certification they need to become better designers, website builders, and so on.
The school targets freelancers (a key component of Duda’s partner base) that want to upgrade their existing skills. Or to develop new ones. It also targets digital agencies and SaaS companies that need a resource to find team members with specific training. The training itself is crowdsourced to members of the Duda partner community.
The company details how the university works and the rationale behind it in a company blog post published today. Here is how the company describes the new service.
“Duda University is a learning experience platform that brings you content straight from the experts. We provide first-hand knowledge from industry insiders, designers, and successful members of the Duda and digital marketing ecosystem via self-paced courses, certifications and live workshops.”
Duda ran a beta program for the University over the summer involving hundreds of web professionals, according to the company. Topics covered included basic skills courses like “fundamentals of web design” focused on using Duda’s platform. The school also offered more business-focused topics. For example, one course is titled, “client management for agency professionals.”
References to Duda University have since been popping up on social media.
Building Lasting Partnerships
The website builder space is fiercely competitive. Nowhere is the competition more fierce than in the battle for channel partners. And given Duda focus on the agency and freelancer space, Duda University makes sense as a tool for solidifying partner relationships. And also to improve their productivity.
We asked Duda CEO Itai Sadan why this is an important initiative for the company.
What does this initiative do for Duda strategically and competitively? Â
“Duda is a professional website builder platform. By having education and certification capabilities through Duda University, we’re helping web pros up their game and be more successful in building their careers and building their businesses. Strategically, we believe the more we support our web pro customers with education and verifiable credentialing, the more deeply we’ll be able to partner with them over the course of their careers.”
What does success look like from this initiative?
“There are a few aspects to success. First, we see success when our agency and SaaS customers do. What that means, in this case, is more people building beautiful, high-performing websites for their customers, using the skills they’ve learned from Duda University.
“Secondly, seeing traction with the certification aspect of Duda University is another success metric. When we see people learning web design and agency skills, successfully completing their certification exam, and then adding their certifications to their LinkedIn profiles, that’s a huge validation that we’re on the right track.”
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