What is Your Course Description? Why is it Important?
Your course description explains what your course is about to potential students. It is largely responsible for convincing them that your course -- and your course only -- will change their lives! In your course description, we recommend providing information about 1) the content of the course and 2) how students will benefit from that content.
What you Need to Know
- Use the course description to summarize what your course covers, how it is taught, what students will learn, and what they will gain from the course.
- Optimize for sales conversions using our recommended best practices below for the tone and structure of your course description.
- Don’t include images, external links, or links to other Udemy courses in your course description.
- Don’t include coupon codes, coupon links, course referral links, or mentions of discounts (per our rules and guidelines).
Remember, we do check for this as part of our Quality Review Process.
In this article we will cover:
- Best practices for the tone of your description
- Best practices for the structure of your description
- Minimum requirements to pass our Quality Review Process
- Examples of good course descriptions
- How to edit your course description on Udemy
Best Practices for the Tone of Your Description
1. Ask yourself these questions before writing (to make sure you really understand your potential student):
- What are the demographics of your ideal student?
- What needs are you solving for your ideal student?
- Why does your ideal student want to enroll in your course? Is it essential to their career, relationships, lifestyle? How?
- Look at message boards, forums, reviews of other similar books or products. What do students ask for in other places? How will your course meet those needs?
2. Get personal with your students:
- Speak directly to the students; say "You" instead of "enrollees", "students", or "course participants".
- Use easy-to-understand copy, and sentences of various lengths to keep students engaged. Here is a great example for inspiration.
Example
Good: "At the end of the course, you will be able to build 10 Android Apps"
Bad: "This course includes 10 Android App projects"
3. Stay positive and emphasize benefits:
- Focus on the benefits your course provides to students. What problems will it solve for them? How will it change their life?
- Stay positive and approachable as you walk students through what makes your course unique and what the students will learn.
- If possible, add in some real-world examples to validate your course topic.
Example
Good: "In this course we'll fix, together, that bad posture that's been causing you stress, headaches, and overall discomfort"
Bad: "This course covers the basics of what bad posture is."
Good: "Ever wonder how companies like Apple design their products?"
Bad: "I'll teach you how to design products."
4. Bold and CAPITALIZE with care:
- Just as sentence length should vary, so should formatting (if too much is bolded, nothing will stand out).
- Do not include long and dramatic bullet point lists (besides in the area we recommend in the Structure part of this article)
Best Practices for the Structure of Your Course Description
1. Add an introductory 2-3 sentences at the beginning of your description:
- Highlight what your course is (a high level overview) and how it will benefit students.
- Do not ask questions or "pitch" students here -- instead, focus on the problem your course is solving in a positive and inspiring tone.
2. Add in 1 sentence 'heading' after your 2-3 sentence overview:
- Structure this as follows: one sentence that contains an action verb, the subject of the course, and context of the course subject (in bold and "title case" -- the first letter of each word capitalized).
- Do not repeat the title of your course.
- Do not make claims such as "The best course on the subject!" or "100% satisfied or your money back".
Example
Good: "Master Foreign Languages Quickly Using the Magnetic Memory Method"
Good: "Learn and Master the Most Popular Big Data Technologies in this Comprehensive Course"
3. Add in a short list of bullet points underneath the heading:
- If a student is scanning your course page, including this short list will help them take in the most important benefits your course provides, and what makes it unique.
- Your bullets should be structured as short phrases that start with an action verb (e.g. Learn, Recognize, Build, Find).
4. Add in a one line overview of your course topic:
- This line should be different than the one line heading.
- Bold this text, if desired.
5. Add in an overview of your course topic (what are you covering?):
- This should be 4-6 sentences long (or two small paragraphs).
- Some ideas for content to include: the course topic's history, what the topic is used for, who uses it, why it's unique, the types of jobs you can get if you know the topic, current events or news about the topic.
- In general, short teasers are better than detailed histories.
- Highlight what makes your course unique (e.g. real-life applications, projects, test-prep).
Example
Good: "We'll learn about Julia Child: the story of a spy who became a chef who changed the world of cooking forever"
Good: "Well-known startups like Twitter, Tinder, and Meetup all use Python platforms for their websites"
6. Add in an overview of your course (how do you cover your topic?):
- Most course descriptions have the highest word count in this section.
- Expand upon the bullet points you included above: what benefits your course offers, what skills you teach, any course metrics (e.g. # of lectures, projects, quizzes, etc.) you want to include.
- Tone: try not to overload your students with too many details too fast, and stay friendly and approachable. Stick with small paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each.
- At the end of this section include a conclusion which tells the student what they will walk away from the course with.
Example
Good: "I designed this programming course to be easily understood by absolute beginners"
Bad: "This is the most efficient course on programming"
Good: "Complete with working files and code samples, you'll be able to work alongside the instructor and will receive a verifiable certificate of completion upon finishing the course."
Minimum Requirements to Pass our Quality Review Process
- Use the course description to summarize what your course covers, how it is taught, what students will learn, and what they will gain from the course.
- Don’t include images, external links, or links to other Udemy courses in your course description.
- Don’t include coupon codes, coupon links, or mentions of discounts
Examples of Great Course Descriptions:
A Data Course
A Java Course
A Language Course
How to Edit Your Course Description on Udemy
Click here to learn how to edit your course description.