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8 Top Tips to Improve Your Online Course

If you want to improve your online course here’s my top 8 tips for you!

Have you ever heard the phrase, “eat your own dog food” ? Neither had I until this year. Sounds gross at first glance, right?

I prefer to use “ride your own rollercoaster” or “surf your own wave” or any number of things that sounds better, but here we are.

It’s a phrase that developers use to describe being a user and a creator of the same product, which builds a level of empathy that you can only get by being a customer.

The gist is: As creators, we must consume our own product.

The fastest way to make significant improvements that will lead to more completions, positive reviews, and referrals, is to be your own most discerning customer.

Here’s how you can improve your online course like I did.

Have You Taken Your Own Course Lately?

Chances are you’ve interviewed your customers, listened to their feedback, and incorporated it into your sales page, published testimonials and made tweaks to your course. Great! That’s the foundation: Create solutions to real problems that people need help with, and incorporate your real customer feedback as you build your program.

But have you taken your own course lately? Have you given feedback to yourself like your most critical customer?

For a decade, I have been using Visioning to design the life I want and deserve. Now, for the third time, I am beginning the process of writing and refining my Vision for the next five years of my life.

My business is a product of my Visioning work, and not the other way around. I am a Vision expert first, and a consultant second. I’m my own repeat client because I know my program works.

But for the first time, I walked through the process entirely online through my own course platform.

Here’s what I learned by taking my own course

I’ve already noticed things I want to fix. Things such as : “There should be question prompts on the closing slide of each tutorial video… The transitions could be smoother…. “Oh, in that video, I say 2022”…

Now, I wouldn’t notice these tiny details if I didn’t take my own course from end to end. This includes whipping out my credit card to buy it (with a coupon code for 99% off, but still).

I also noticed things I love about the new format – it’s relieving to have a step-by-step process for Visioning that can be completed within an 8-week timeframe. It’s also way more engaging and dynamic to have an online community of elite Visionaries working toward new heights together. Both of my previous Visions I wrote while holing myself up in my living room.

I didn’t want others to have to do it alone. But while I knew how powerful it was to share the Visioning process, getting to experience it myself in the structured way I now have it set up in my online platform, helped me internalize just how powerful it is to have each step laid out, and to be able to share my experience with my community of Visionaries along the way instead of going it alone.

In the past, it also took me far longer than 8 weeks to finalize my last 2 Visions and the roadmaps to make them happen. Knowing that I won’t be dragging the process out this time for myself, reminded me of how powerful it is to know that my own Visioning process now has a specific start and end date. While I tout that timeframe as a feature on my sales page, and my clients talk about the benefit, I can speak to the impact even more effectively now that I’m experiencing it for myself.

User experience can make or break the success of your course

User experience is the collection of metrics on your website or platform that indicate how your users are engaging. These could be any number of different engagement metrics, like how long the user stays on the page, how many modules they complete, and how they rate the course or make referrals.

It also includes speed, ease of accessing the course, and the perceived value for the price. On mobile devices, for example, 53% of users will give up and abandon the website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load (ThinkwithGoogle).

My Top 8 Tips to Improve your Online Course!

1. Have you tried to buy Your Course?

Is it easy to do on any device using most major payment methods? Try checking out with a coupon as well, and make sure you receive all of the confirmation emails. Take time to tighten up your copy, subject lines and design.

2. Experience the Process of Your Online Course

Have you experienced what people see on desktop and mobile throughout the course? Enough people use mobile devices to browse, that Google judges a whole website’s experience based on the mobile experience. Make sure your pages have no errors, buttons are clickable and the checkout flow isn’t glitchy.

3. Regularly Update your content in Your Online Course

Is your content still relevant even after changes in economic and political climates?

4. How Does Your Course Improve People's Lives?

What is the ultimate value of your course? How will people’s lives improve after taking it?

5. Get Honest Feedback

What do people say about it when they’re not incentivized?

6. Provide Great Support Information

Do you have helpful text guiding them through each step, tooltips where needed, and FAQs for common questions?

7. Get Automated

Do you have email automation to welcome new users and give them valuable tips on the program?

8. Test Your Audience

Have you sought out a non-client mentor who can also go through your process and provide feedback?

Learn from Experiencing Your Course

Experiencing your program is the only way to ensure your course is efficient, user-friendly, error-free, and high value (aka, worth it!).

The only way to do this is to walk the talk. Practice what you preach. Eat the dog food!

As a Vision Coach I am both a course creator and a mentor to other course creators. Every day, I am working toward the ideal Vision for myself using my guiding rubrics and strategies. I refer to my own tools to help me make decisions, and I revisit my Vision almost daily for alignment.

I know the course works because not only do my customers actively tell other people that it does, but because I created it out of doing the work on myself.

Take your own course from beginning to end and apply it to your life. If you can passionately use your solution to improve your own life, you’ll continue to improve your course for others.

Author Lois Weinblatt’s clients often go on to achieve their Visions faster than they ever expected.

Is this something you’d like to do too?

Lois guides women like you and organizations all over the world to create the roadmap for their next destination. Check Lois out.

You’ll be glad you did.

View Lois’s profile