Advantages of e-learning often include flexibility and convenience for the learner especially if they have other commitments, facilitation of communication between learners, greater adaptability to a learner’s needs, more variety in learning experience with the use of multimedia and the non-verbal presentation of teaching material.

E-learning facilitates knowledge, competence, and process improvement. It helps learners apply contemporary techniques in the real world. It is a knowledge platform that assists in unlocking the potential within each employee of an organisation to achieve performance excellence.

In online learning, the learner chooses when to learn, does so at his/her own pace and is in control of the learning. Therefore, the traditional linear approach with extensive reading of text and numerous slides of information are generally unsuccessful. Since the classroom dynamics are not present, the online approach must engage the learners, have them respond to questions, scenarios and make decisions as they are learning the content. Special links to Web sites or supplementary material make for an enriching experience. Web design companies need to create such websites that should be informative & interactive.

It is a false belief that with course content templates all that is needed is to pour in the content and have a finished product in a few hours. These become the page-turner courses that turn learners off to online learning. The cost-effectiveness of e-learning through web design is a subject of much debate as there is usually much upfront investment that can only be recouped through economies of scale. Web design and software development in particular can be expensive as can systems specifically geared for e-learning. The development of adaptive materials is also much more time-consuming than that of non-adaptive ones.