Let’s say you’ve just finished creating a fantastic course. You have full confidence in your materials and its usefulness to students. Now you’re up to creating your course landing page. Sounds pretty easy right? Just describe what your course is about to students and they’ll enrol. Simple. In most cases, student’s may be required to take your course so the landing page might seem like a waste of time.
However, this is not the case.
Your course landing page plays a big part in setting the tone for your course. It will be the difference between a student having to join your course instead of wanting to join the course. If your course isn’t a required unit, then it is the difference between someone choosing or not choosing to join your course. Luckily, writing a great landing page isn’t a difficult task.
Here are 5 easy tips on writing an effective course landing page:
Avoid technical language and jargon. This is a pretty common mistake. While many people think this helps show credibility and highlight expertise, it actually makes it harder for the reader.
No one likes jargon.
Keep your language simple and your sentences short. This helps readers stay interested and absorb your content much quicker. It’s easy to get caught up in jargon, especially when you might use it on a daily basis. The best way to know if you’ve communicated your message well is to test it. Ask someone outside of your industry to read something you’ve written, if they can understand and explain to you what your course is about, then you’ve done it!
Imagination is a powerful tool.
Rather than telling students simply why they should take your course, try and make them feel and visualise something. Here's an example of imaginative writing:
If you can connect students to your topic through emotion or experience, you have them interested. While your courses may be a compulsory unit, getting your students genuinely interested in your topic makes the difference between ‘having’ to learn something and ‘wanting’ to learning something.
This plays a big role in setting the tone for your course. It not only shows your enthusiasm as a teacher, but demonstrates in a creative way the benefits of taking your course. Who wouldn’t want to create the next big thing?!
Who doesn’t enjoy a great story?
When writing your course landing page, try to break it down into 3 basic things:
An intro – introduce a pain/starting point. This may be a current problem, gap in an equation, or maybe a point of origin (example: We live in a world filled with diverse foods and cuisines).
A challenge – this is the middle ground connecting your starting point to your solution. It may be how this challenge effects your students lives, or world, or possibly subject area. (Example: This means choosing the best food from a gluten free and paleo fad to the lemon detox diet, is becoming more and more confusing.)
A solution – This is where you showcase the real benefits of taking your course. How will learning your topic solve the challenge or help your students? (Example: Learn Basic Food Nutrition and start forming your own informed decisions on healthy eating).
Another way of doing this is thinking in terms of who, what, when, how, or why.
The old phrase talk ‘to’ rather than ‘at’ people still applies. Write your landing page as if you were talking to your students. Maybe even record a conversation with someone explaining your course and use that as your first draft! Using personal pro-nouns like ‘you’, ‘I’, ‘us’, ‘we’ keeps your content relevant, friendly and overall more effective.
Instead of writing, “This course will help students understand…” a simple change to “Our course will help you understand…” makes all the difference.
All your amazing content wouldn’t mean much without leading students to enrol in your course. Make sure to always invite students to join the course using active verbs. Some great verbs you can use are: join, start, click.
Enticing students to join the course is like adding a ‘little cherry or sprinkles on top’ and who doesn’t like cherries and sprinkles?! Add in a final motivating sentence to get learners excited about your course. It can make the difference between considering and joining your course. For example:
If you were interested in a painting course, I’m sure that line would have you clicking the ‘join now’ button!
For more useful tips on creating a great landing page, check out How to Create An Engaging Video Students Will Watch.
OpenLearning is an online learning platform dedicated to increasing access to high quality education. For more online course creation tips, check out our latest webinar:
