Lately, isn’t it great how people can find tons of online courses for almost every topic out there? However, if you’re an instructor, this can mean tougher competition for you. You might have an amazing course but the response may not be as good as you hoped. What do you do then?
The answer is Reviews. Reviews are a tried and tested method to attract customers for a reason. Yet, to get good reviews, you first need to get students. Once you can get these students to review, you can successfully grab the attention of others.
In this article, we’ll be discussing why reviews are so important and how you can inspire students to review your course.
Importance of Reviews
Reviews are a concept used everywhere. Whether it’s a product or a service, you can usually review it. And it works because nearly 9 out of 10 people look at reviews before purchasing anything.
It applies to courses too but that doesn’t mean your course has to have a perfect score. Statistics prove that a perfect score is a reason why many users would hesitate.
Here is where negative reviews come in handy. According to Bright Local, almost all users who read reviews also take time to notice a brand’s responses. So, a well thought out reply to a negative comment can be the deciding factor for a student to enroll in your course.
In addition, review traffic is super valuable as it’s the most engaged, and these users stay longer on the site as it has a lower bounce rate. Reviews also bring in higher page views which means more users noticing your courses.
These are some reasons why you should pay more attention to reviews so now, let us see how you can get students to review your courses.
Tips to Improve Your Courses
You can’t expect to get glowing reviews for your course if it’s not delivering what the students desire. Therefore, fine-tuning your course is one of the most crucial steps. But what exactly do they want?
Explain Simply
What they want are simple explanations. Nothing is worse for a student than enrolling in a course that ends up being complex and unhelpful. It doesn’t matter if the course is meant for beginners or experts, you have to make sure that you explain all concepts clearly.
You should also make sure that you:
- Do not use technical jargon that is not on the same level as the students’ understanding.
- Give as much detail as you can on complex topics.
- Give shorter lectures or videos so that it’s easily digestible.
- Be patient while explaining.
Show Your Knowledge and Drive
You must be confident in what you teach because students can instinctively tell if you’re well versed in the topic or not. However, it does not mean that you need to be a total expert. It should be fine as long as you’re a few steps ahead of your students during the entire course duration.
It also helps if you’re passionate about what you teach. Your enthusiasm will definitely drive the students to work harder, and the opposite is true as well. Basically, passion and knowledge can go a long way in gaining a student’s trust.
Be Reachable
Not all students learn at the same pace. There will be cases when some of them need more assistance, and Q&As can only do so much. To help them you can instead:
- Hold live Q&A sessions where you answer their questions in detail.
- Share a schedule during which students can have one-on-one sessions with you.
- Leave helpful feedback on assignments.
Luckily, you can easily host live Q&A and one-on-one sessions by integrating Zoom with Tutor LMS!
For more information, check out this article.
Keep Course Updated
Students will not find your course satisfying if they notice outdated information, not to mention cases where it may be a disaster. For instance, imagine you made a great video sharing tips for content creation. Yet, this video may not be as helpful a few years later because the trends have already changed, and those tips may become obsolete.
To avoid these issues, keep a running note of what things to update and implement these changes every few months.
Other Notable Tips
So, those were some key factors that you can focus on to improve your courses. Now, let us take a look at a few other suggestions that you may also find helpful.
Logically Sequence Topics
No matter how good your course is, it will not get good feedback if the lessons are not sequenced right. So, make sure to order them in such a way that it does not confuse the students.
With that in mind, Tutor LMS offers a powerful drag and drop course builder that lets you easily switch around the lessons and other content within a topic if needed and also has a nifty add-on called Content Drip that you can use to enforce sequential learning.
Create Challenging Projects
Students won’t fully grasp what they learn until and unless they apply it. And they can only do that if they get challenging assignments or projects. So, keep this in mind when you design tasks for your course.
Tutor LMS boasts a very advanced Quiz Builder and also has a useful add-on called Assignments. And unlike the name suggests, it can be used to assign projects as well.
Provide Resources
Like we mentioned earlier, students learn at different paces. There are always students that may need more clarification and others that love diving deeper into the topic. For these students, it’ll be great if you could take the time to provide them with additional resources that they can look through in their own time.
While the Lessons Builder has an option to upload attachments, you can also use the Course Attachments add-on for Tutor LMS to upload files that aren’t lesson-specific. Use this feature to upload any file types supported by WordPress.
Create a Community
Students also thrive when they are part of a group that shares a common goal with them. It’s why traditional classes work so well. Create a community for your course so that students can discuss and learn as a group.
You can make this a reality by using the BuddyPress Plugin with Tutor LMS to create a full-fledged social site for your students.
Review Strategies
Now that you know how to improve your courses for the better, it’s time to adopt some strategies that can help you further in inspiring students to review.
If you’re using Tutor LMS, make sure that the review feature is enabled. If it’s not, navigate to WordPress Dashboard > Tutor LMS > Settings. Click on the Course tab and scroll down to the Course Review option. Finally, uncheck it to enable reviews.
Make It Happen
Asking for reviews might seem obvious, but it’s a pretty important step. Students may not remember to review while taking a course, so it’s good practice to remind them. You can even send students emails and newsletters mentioning it once they complete a course.
Another aspect to keep in mind is to place your review button front and center. Reviews will be hard to come by if the button is not noticeable or tough to find. Also, most people do not have a lot of free time so you will get more reviews if you make the process quick and easy.
Make Use of Negative Reviews
Ignoring negative comments does more harm than good. Like we discussed earlier, some negative comments are needed to reassure students of the authenticity of your course. So, if a reviewer poses a legit concern, do the following:
- Reply addressing the problem.
- Give them a solution if possible.
- Incite them with some other advantage.
How you respond is important, because it will be noticed not only by the reviewer but also by other potential students.
Also, do not forget that negative reviews help you improve your courses by pointing out what changes to make. After the issues are solved, you can even contact those reviewers again to get their opinion if possible.
Utilize Existing Reviews
Once you start getting reviews, do not let them collect dust. Look through them and select the best ones to showcase on your site. You can either display them on a featured course page or create an entirely dedicated testimonials page.
However, make sure to contact the reviewers to thank them and get their permission beforehand!
Be Social
Finally, make sure to be where your students are. A social media presence makes it easy for you to reach out to your target audience. You can not only promote your courses to them but also receive honest feedback and suggestions in response. Potential students can also easily contact you if they have any queries which may end up being the push they need to enroll in your course.
Wrapping Up
So, that was our curated list of 12 actions you could take to increase and improve your course reviews. Of course, there is likely more that we missed so, feel free to share your suggestions in the comments below!
