I work at an online Mandarin learning company as a UX/UI designer. I’m seeking feedback and insights to help enhance our platform and deliver the best experience for our learners.
We launched our product in February with our own teaching materials and manage our tutors to make sure our tutors are well-supported and regularly evaluated. We also keep our pricing fair to ensure a positive experience for both learners and teachers while maintaining great teaching quality.
We’re constantly enhancing our UX/UI and introducing new features to provide better learning resources and a more seamless user experience. Excitingly, we’re also developing AI-powered digital learning materials to give students even more opportunities to practice and improve their language skills.
We’d love to hear from you! Your feedback on our platform’s design, user experience, pricing, or any other suggestions is incredibly valuable to us.
I’d also love to hear about your experiences with learning or teaching Mandarin. What challenges have you encountered along the way? What’s your preferred price range for an online Mandarin lesson per hour? Your insights will help guide the development of the next features we add to our platform.
We’re providing a free trial class for anyone interested.
Feel free to sign up and give it a try! BaoDao Talk
The first thing I saw on the site was “why learning Taiwan Mandarin with us” . It should be “why learn…” or “why you should learn…”
I then I looked towards the top right and saw “你好” with pinyin that looked like two first tones when they should be third tone. I think it’s because of the font and the size, but it still looks like the tones are wrong.
Finally, for me, I would want to know what it is that is actually different about how classes are taught. With the exception of probably less than 1% of Chinese teachers around the world who teach with TPRS, I have seen all Chinese classes (in the US, China, Taiwan, online) taught in pretty much the same way – grammar translation and lots of drills. Some teachers throw in a gamification of the drills, but the game is simply a way to distract from the very real reality that it is still drilling. What I would like to know is: What about the tutors on your platform differ from every other language tutor matching platform out there? How do they teach that makes them different from any other Chinese tutor out there that teaches with traditional characters?
Agree with nz that it’d be worthwhile to have a native English speaker edit all of the copy on your site (a lot could be worded better / be more punchy) – potentially offer a free set of classes to one of your students?
Assuming that it is a typical “find a tutor platform” I’d also consider putting the price on there somewhere.
Lastly, I’d have much bigger call to action buttons for “book a free trial” and keep them consistent throughout the page (I’d convert both “Get Started” and “Send” to be “Book a Free Trial”)
Your cheapest tutors are US$33/hour. Whereas Italki has Taiwan-born Mandarin speakers from US$7-20/hour, many with formal training in teaching chinese.
Your website design is nice, clean, and modern. Unfortunately, your core product is 1:1 tutoring (which happens on Skype, Google Meet, Zoom?). The website might help with attracting first time new users, but if this price is low enough, such as US$5 per trial lesson, like LinusTheTaiwanese, I think a clean website UI doesn’t really matter.
I like the screenshots of your curriculum and how it promotes Taiwanese culture. However, I’m not sure you had to create your own content from scratch? There are several time-tested Taiwanese Mandarin textbooks out there (Modern Chinese, A Course in Contemporary Chinese, and more).
As a student, I used several of these textbooks and they definitely have bits of Taiwanese culture, from memes such as the snobby Taipei-er, to using dating apps in Taiwan, to Taiwan’s love of Japan, to Taiwan-specific phrases such as replying 不會 (bú huì) when someone says thank you, and saying 不好意思 (bù hǎo yì si) to start (any?) conversation with strangers.
I really do think it comes down to price. Maybe you can offer different price tiers? Some price tiers include digital materials, some tiers include AI-add ons, and some don’t? Similar to how airlines offer basic economy and upcharge for luggage, seats, food, etc.
We actually do offer free trial lessons, and I wondered if our website’s UI might not make this clear or obvious enough? ( If so, we’ll review how to improve its visibility.
Our main target audience is learners from the US and Europe, which influences both our teaching materials and pricing structure.
Additionally, as we continue developing AI-powered digital learning materials, and we’re planning to introduce different pricing tiers to better cater to diverse learner needs and budgets in the future.
Your insights are greatly appreciated, and they’ll help us refine our platform further!
You’re totally right! We’ll get a native English speaker to review our website copy and make it clearer and more engaging.
And we offer free trial lessons, but I’m curious if our website’s UI makes this clear and easy to notice?
And your suggestion to standardize the call-to-action buttons makes a lot of sense. We’ll work on making these buttons more prominent and uniform across the page.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.
. It should be “why learn…” or “why you should learn…”
