Find out what MTN Web Store & Training Marketplace Integration is, how it works, and how it helps to enhance the marketing effectiveness of your training business in a wider perspective.
Just right after we've sunset the old I'MTP Service Centre in 2019, we announced that MTN Web Store App will be the replacement of I'MTP Service Centre, and we did it! We know that this has been long awaited by many training providers in Malaysia, but we're sorry to inform you that we have to go stage-by-stage to ensure the total success of this new business model.
What is I'MTP Service Centre and what took us so long for such integration?
Back in the old days, I'MTP Service Centre was a simple private website that allows our I'MTP members to submit their PDF/MS Word course contents in a form of service request so that we can help them to manually transform their contents into HTML and publish them on MTN Training Marketplace. But later, we realized that such heavy, costly, and tedious manual work can no longer help us to sustain longer, especially during the economic disaster like COVID-19. Therefore, here comes the MTN Web Store App, a fully automated PDF-based Content Management System (CMS) has finally came into the picture.
When we started developing MTN Web Store App from ground up in the early 2020, we've to target it on MTN Web Store first and foremost but not MTN Training Marketplace due to the following reasons:
- At that moment, it was the early stage of COVID-19 pandemic when training businesses were severely affected by MCO. So we've to first target it on MTN Web Store because it's not meant only for training business but for other industries as well.
- In order for our CloudWorms PDF Viewers to support wider market segments, we have to rebuild a completely new online marketplace that isn't just for training business.
- We've to ensure the new system works for other marketers from other industries and not just the training business. This is to prevent us from overlooking the needs of other industries while designing the architecture of MTN Web Store and its app.
In what ways the MTN Web Store App replaces the old I'MTP Service Centre?
The table below explains how MTN Web Store App replaces I'MTP Service Centre:
Note that the Course Content Page will be the CloudWorms PDF Viewer by itself whose course outline and other details will be presented on the viewable and downloadable PDF file supplied by the training provider, who is the user of MTN Web Store App.
How the integration helps to enhance the marketing effectiveness for the training courses published as CloudWorms PDF Viewers via MTN Web Store App?
Besides having the MTN Web Store as the brand new online marketplace that helps to promote the PDF contents published by our MTN Web Store App users, the integration with MTN Training Marketplace will act as an additional and extended marketplace for PDF Viewers that have been categorized under Training Category. In other words, if you're a training provider, publishing a training related PDF Viewer allows it to appear on two online marketplaces at the same time, i.e. MTN Web Store and MTN Training Marketplace!
The following describes more other advantages offered by this integration:
- The pages listed in the above table are some of the top performing pages of MTN Training Marketplace in terms of SEO. When many high traffics often come from those pages, that also means your PDF Viewers will also be highly discoverable by our visitors!
- It leads your visitors to learn how to go directly to your Web Store Profile and PDF Viewers for their future training needs rather than going through the training marketplace. This acts as a bridge that introduce your Web Store Profile to the world via the training marketplace.
- Unlike the old courses previously published via I'MTP Service Centre, publishing or unpublishing a PDF Viewer will automatically list or un-list it from the integrated page without the involvement of MTN support personnel.
- Better listing presentation with thumbnail image on Course Category Listing Page.
- As the course content page is the PDF Viewer by itself, your customers will be able to enjoy additional features such as downloadable PDF training brochure, sticky page header browsing experience and so on. In future, we may want to allow your customers to follow your Web Store Profile like many other social media networks do and alert them whenever new courses are available.
You can witness the integration in action by visiting the Business Management Training Courses Page on our MTN Training Marketplace.
But why at the bottom of the Course Category Page and not the top?
Good question -- it is the matter of SEO. Due to the fact that the integration data takes longer time to fetch, putting it at the top of the page will hinder the SEO performance of the Course Category Page. According to Google SEO, all above-the-fold contents must not be blocked by other slow resources and should be visible to the users as fast as possible. If we place the integrated content at the top, this will definitely harm the SEO of the page, which will in turn serve no valuable purpose to the integration.
Moving Forward
As you can see in the table above, we'll continue working on this integration until Phase 3, but this is not the end of it -- this is the nature of our business as a digital marketing service provider. Constant R&D will always be conducted to improve the presentation, usability, and performance of such integration. For example, the integration may be extended to the old Classic I'MTP Company Profiles as listed in the Training Providers Listing Page, where all training related PDF Viewers connected to this particular training company will be listed on their company profile -- but that will be beyond Phase 3.
We believe MTN Web Store is a great start for the future of B2B online marketing and the integration that takes advantage of the popularity of our MTN Training Marketplace, which has been long existed in the market for more than a decade, will definitely give the training providers a good reason to get started with.
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