5 Reasons Why Design Matters for Your Online Course

Between me and my clients, we’ve built over 20 online courses, workshops, and group challenges! Whether they were existing courses that needed a spruce-up, or ideas that hadn’t been put onto paper yet, we’ve helped to build them into more profitable signature courses. They’re the number one thing clients inquire about or want to tackle first when we start working together.

And it’s no surprise — the value (and price you can charge!) of your course increases as you invest in design. Well-designed course assets like worksheets, workbooks, and slides increase your clout and legitimacy as a business owner and educator and make it easier for prospective students to realize how much potential they’ll find inside your lessons! That’s the magic of great design — it better communicates what you bring to the table and validates your professionalism. But it also does 5 major things for your course that will make it successful.

1. Great first impressions do matter

Think about your ideal audience for a second — the person who you know needs your course and who you think would get so much out if it. What does that person value? What influences their buying decisions? For most online shoppers, looks do matter, especially if you’re teaching them how to do something in their business or how to significantly improve their quality of life in some way. Online shoppers are inundated with advertisements and product offers. A well-designed course shows shoppers that you’re a legitimate business with some clout and that you’ve been successful enough in your arena to pass on information to them. And, it shows customers that you’re invested in providing them with a great experience.

2. Design increases the usability of your course. 

A great design doesn’t just stop at looking pretty — it makes the information you’re sharing easier to understand. Have you ever received a course workbook that you’re supposed to fill out, but even after listening to the training, you’re still not sure how to use it or which blanks need to be filled in with which information? Or there’s just a giant heading at the top of the page and a bunch of blank space you’re not sure how to use? Increasing the usability of your course worksheet, the understanding of your slides, and even the understanding of what’s included in your course before it’s bought all increases your course’s effectiveness.

3. Well-designed courses have a higher course completion rate.

The easier it is for your course to be understood, the easier it is to complete! High course completion rates are definitely something to brag about when so many of us buyers are course hoarders who seldom finish what they started. Increasing your course completion rate means you’ll be able to tell prospective buyers that your course is worth it because they’ll actually be more likely to finish and reap the benefits of what they learned.

4. Design makes your course easier to promote and save you time

Let’s say you have your course all set up. Training videos are made and uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo, and you’ve got course worksheets and slides all laid out in Google Sheets.

Now it’s time to tell the world it’s available! Where do you start with newsletter graphics, Instagram graphics, Instagram Stories, Pinterest pins, and the whole shebang? Chances are you’ll be putting something together from scratch in Canva, struggling to make the information look appetizing and unsure of how to show people what’s included.

When you’ve got well-designed course assets already at your fingertips, whipping together graphics can take minutes rather than hours. That fun background pattern you used on your course cover? It’s now an Instagram Story background! That typography you liked from your slide deck? Copy and paste it on everything. 

Once you’ve got a few go-to colors, backgrounds and type styles you like, creating new promotional graphics is a breeze because all of your basic components are already created and you’re never starting from scratch. Especially when one you find yourself in one of these happy situations:

• It’s a holiday and you decide to run a sale! You need graphics to tell people all about it.
• Your course has gotten so many great reviews and you want to share a testimonial from a student, but it’s got to look as good as the words sound.
• Your course gets picked up by a larger company who wants to bundle it with other popular courses, and need to tell people about this great deal!

5. Investing in design now increases your ROI once things start taking off

Look to the future a bit, and dream with me. Your course is created, you invested some extra time at the beginning in good design. You’ve been easily promoting it because you already have everything you need to make graphics on the fly. Your course is taking off, and you want to put a little extra leverage behind it and boost it with some ads.

Once you start investing in new eyes seeing your course, every bit of trust and intrigue counts so that you get the biggest return on your investment! A well-designed course that looks reliable, easy-to-use, and packed full of information from a trustworthy source is going to help you get the clicks and the purchases you need to justify the ad spend!

Ready to step things up in your course? Explore our Complete DIY Course Design Kits that include Canva-editable workbook templates, social templates, video thumbnails, and more!