Udemy Course Performance Analysis Report
Objective: The main purpose of this report is to have a better understanding of the revenue performance for each course and identify revenue opportunities. Four courses’ categories were used for this analysis.
They are;
- Business Courses
- Design Courses
- Music Courses
- Web Development Courses
Report Design
The following approaches were employed in this report;
- Merging of data from different sources into a single sheet
- Data cleaning with Excel (duplicates and blank cells were removed, ensured consistency in the subject titles and also clear and concise headers. These steps were employed to ensure answers gotten from our findings are reliable and of high quality).
- Data analysis for insights to make informed decisions.
- Data visualization with Tableau.
Key Findings
Analysis Summary
- General sales were improving until 2016, when a sharp decline in sales occurred across the subjects. Although there was a positive growth year-on-year, however, the percentage growth experienced a sharp decline in 2016.
- Website Development had the highest number of subscribers, courses and hence, the highest sale. This is the cash cow of the business.
- On the other hand, except for Piano, courses in Musical Instrument, Graphic Design and business Finance grossly underperformed.
Key Observations
Subscribers Breakdown Analysis
- Web Development has the highest number of subscribers which is responsible for the high sales recorded.
- More subscribers were recorded for paid courses compared to free courses which depicts that customers do not mind paying for courses.
- The number of subscribers for each courses reduced level upon level (beginners’ level to expert level)
- Year-on-Year, enrolment improved gradually for all courses except Website Development that has a sharp gradual rise in 2015. However, at the end of 2015, enrolment began to drop through 2016.
Quarterly Analysis
- Q1 2016: Subscriber numbers for Website Design courses began to fall drastically, after an initial rise from Q2-Q4 in 2015.
- Subscriber numbers for other courses experienced similar trend, except for Graphic design that improved.
- From Q1 2016 onward, sales never fully improved till year end of 2017
What could be the reason behind the increase in number of subscribers in 2015?
The data supplied is not enough to know the reason for the rise in 2015. However, any of the following is possible
- Increased targeted promotional effort in 2015
- Improvement in ease-of-payment or ease-of-access to the courses in 2015
- Application of sales discount factors in 2015
- Increased quality of courses in 2015
- Introduction of new courses
- Increased incentives to enable subscribers finish the course in 2015
- Increase Search Engine Optimization efforts in 2015
With more data, it is possible to narrow the cause down to a factor or two, which can then be subsequently deployed to improve sales
Course Performance Analysis
- 90% of courses under the Top 10 performing courses were Web development courses which attributed to the high sales recorded.
- All of the Top 10 courses recorded were paid courses.
- The number of subscribers was a function of sales.
Course Ratings Analysis
- The ratings for the courses were cumulatively rising all through until 2016, where like every other trend, it began to drop.
- This perhaps could be as a result of low course quality or courses not meeting up to standard, hence the low ratingsSales Analysis
- Following the trend of subscribers enrolment, year on year sales improved until 2015, and fell drastically from 2016 to 2017-year end.
- Website design generated the highest revenue, followed by Business finance, Graphics Design and Music, in that order.Conclusions & Recommendations
Conclusions
- General sales dropped from 2016 to 2017
- Website designs courses are the best performing courses, driving more revenue generation.
- Course rating dropped from 2016 and may be an indicator of a lack of improvement in the courses’ qualities
- Musical Instruments courses are not attracting people, except for Piano-for-All.
Recommendations
- Being the driver of revenue, effort should be made to revive the quality of Website Design. Promotions and targeted ads can be considered as well.
- Musical instrument courses should be discontinued, except Piano-for-all, and be replaced with more modern in demand courses.
- Enhancing sales for Business Finance and Graphic Design could be achieved through a dual approach: delving into promotional strategies and advertisements while concurrently elevating the quality of the courses themselves.
- The company should work on improving the quality of their courses.