Summary
Maven is a new platform for cohort-based courses. Cohort courses allows students to start and finish the course at the same time. A cohort provides a more interactive, immersive experience for students, with members of the course sharing their own understanding and application of the course material with each other as they go. Maven partners with the world's best instructors to offer live, online, community-driven courses to transform your career. This was a one week project to quickly make some product pivots.
Maven
Product Designer | Researcher
May 2021
The Challenge
Maven has launched but is struggling to get students enrolled. They have site traffic, but not enough users are clicking into course descriptions or are signing up on our homepage.
The Solution
Cohorts need a bit of work for users to more easily understand what’s available + current and potential instructors need their own space. An emphasis on "Cohorts" needs to be above the fold to guarantee a user can find them easily, and there needs to be a search feature so users can more easily locate what they are searching for. In addition to add to give cohorts more clarity, there needs to be consistency in each cohort page with the exact meeting dates/times.
What Metrics Matter
01 Product Performance
Which courses are selling out?
Which courses have the best attendance?
Which courses have the best feedback?
02 Sales-to-Date
How are these students finding us?
What do the classes selling the best have in common?
03 Bounce Rate
Which page on the site a e we loosing potential new students?
Are we loosing more mobile or desktop users?
04 Average Conversion Time
Which classes have the quickest sign ups - what are different about their course pages?
How many repeat page views until conversion or much time is spent on a page before conversion?
05 Customer Service Data
What are the commonalities between questions that potential students are asking our customer service reps about?
Meet the Competition
Coursera
Coursera takes a more academic approach, and offers the ability to not only take courses, but complete certificates and degrees.
The majority of its programs are offered by professors from actual colleges and universities.
Offers self-paced or session based courses.
Courses start and finish on specific dates. There's a timeline that you will need to follow.
Costs range, but defintely cheaper than attending a bootcamp to gain a certification.
Udemy
Udemy focuses more on short-term courses that students can use to learn specific skills like photography or basic computer skills.
Anyone can create a Udemy course, so the quality varies.
Better for the self motivated learner and most courses can be completed in the same day.
Costs range, but overall is the cheapest.
General Assembly
General Assembly offers a wide range of seminars focused on tech, but with a few focus areas for its full time or part time bootcamps.
General Assembly hires instructors with industry experience to teach their classes.
Offers classes that start and finish on specific dates or flexible dates and times as long as a bootcamp is completed within a specific time frame.
The most expensive learning option.
Meet the Students
The Influencer
Motivation: New to the Influencer world and starting her own e-comm site and needs to learn more about influencer
Interest: Influencer Marketing School
Needs:
Quality class but not spend too much money
Flexible commitment, but wants a community since she's fully committing to her Influencer career
The Finance
Motivation: Wants to develop a better understanding of the crypto world for his own personal investments
Interest: Influencer Marketing School
Needs:
Quality class and can spend more money for the right program
Wants to learn from an industry professional, though ultimately this class is for fun, but also networking
The Engineer
Motivation: Working a full time job as a Software Engineer while working to launch an app/start her own company
Interest: : The CMX Community MBA: Enterprise Cohort
Needs:
Quality class and doesn't want to spend money or time on an MBA
Wants to learn from an industry professionals and jump start knowledge to get her company started
What the Students Say
01
Users struggled to realize that the cohorts were listed below the fold, especially when viewing on mobile
02
Users struggled to realize that the cohorts were listed below the fold, especially when viewing on mobile
03
Users clarity on when cohorts meets so they can attend after work but not commit to something full time in person, but be able to still build a community
What the Data Says
01
Bounce rate is high on the homepage
02
Cohorts with the quickest conversion rates list the days and times of their classes higher up on their course profile
03
Customer service often gets requests to find out days and times for when a cohort meets
The Homepage
A closer look at the Changes
The Course Page
A closer look at the Changes
Takeaways
User feedback and data comparison gave us enough information to synthesize and find pinpoints that could hopefully be solved by tinier design changes. By looking at the same metrics, we should be able to see a difference with the launch of this new design.
Due to the very quick turn around time for this project, a deeper dive may need to occur if we still get user feedback regarding its hard to understand when a class is and our conversion ratings don't improve.