TLDR: WATCH THE VIDEO (click above)
Which is better, conversion or retention? And how do you get both? How do you acquire new users and also keep them using your product? 💡
To find out, we dive today into the Udemy course experience: how it works, what they try, where they fail. 🫣
Quick history lesson: Udemy has its roots in the MOOC (massive open online course) movement.
MOOCs made a splash in the early 2010s as a way to democratize education, making high-quality learning resources accessible to a global audience. But it doesn’t matter how many people sign up for a course if they don’t finish it.
And that’s the problem: because despite the initial excitement and enrollment numbers, we now know that a significant portion of students who enroll in MOOCs do not complete the courses they sign up for. 📉
MOOCs are a tradeoff between widening the funnel (converting more people to start courses) and retaining users (getting more people to finish courses). Opening the funnel brings in less committed people, and you have to work harder for them to complete (or retain).
MOOCs are fighting this battle, and arguably have leaned more on opening the funnel than getting users to complete. This makes VCs happy with user numbers, but leaves learners with half-finished Excel courses.
Completion rates for even the hottest MOOCs (like Andrew Ng's Machine Learning for Stanford) are lower than their non-MOOC equivalent. Recent research shows most MOOC completion rates hovering around 7–10% and rarely exceeding 25%. Surprised?
We saw this same story in my Peloton teardowns (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). In learning, as in fitness, the game isn't getting people to start. It's getting them to continue. To finish the job, then the next, and the next, and the next. You get it. Fitness and learning are JOURNEYS.
It’s up to Udemy to solve this. As a leading provider of online courses, it’s their job to understand this central weakness—MOOCs’ personal kryptonite—and outsmart it.
They could do that through behavioral interventions. They could deploy motivational techniques like near-term milestones. They could value-bomb me with incentives! 💣
And… they try 😬
3 things I cover in this teardown:
💡A behavioral intervention they do (& undo by piling on friction)
💡A lesson from Duolingo that Udemy didn’t learn
💡The core challenge of fitness & learning products (the conversion vs. retention conundrum)
Kudos for trying. And now: Try harder. ☝️
👉 See you next week for a special teardown of one of the most viral photo apps ever. No makeup needed. 💄😉
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Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.
Your Retention, Please: Why You’ll Never Finish That Udemy Course (Udemy Teardown, Part 2)