Improving Udemy To Increase It's Revenue In Next 1 Year



About

Udemy is an online learning platform that provides classes on a variety of topics, including business, music, photography, and programming. Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar developed the platform in 2010 with the intention of enhancing everyone's access to and affordability of education.

The platform has 59 million users as of December 2022, more than 200,000 courses, and more than 70,000 teachers who were teaching in around 75 different languages. More than 800 million students have registered for courses.


Revenue Model

The two main business divisions of Udemy are B2C (or Consumer) and B2B (or Enterprise).

A succinct description of the various Udemy services and products:

  • Individual Courses: There are approximately 200,000 courses available on Udemy, which can be viewed for free or by making a one-time payment. Along with lifetime access to the course materials, the purchase also includes interactive learning tools like quizzes and exercises.
  • Personal Plan: Individuals can sign up for Udemy's Personal Plan, which offers unrestricted access to more than 8,000 courses, for $30 per month or $200 per year.
  • Team Plan: This is a personal plan for teams of between five and twenty persons. For an annual subscription fee of $360 USD per seat, Udemy's Team Plan provides access to all courses in the Udemy Business catalogue.
  • Enterprise Plan: The Enterprise Plan, available to larger organisations, contains all the capabilities of the Team Plan in addition to extensive user administration, API interfaces, and advanced analytics. Pricing is determined on volume and functionality, and subscriptions are available for one year or more.
  • Udemy Business Pro: Udemy Business Pro is an add-on that can be added to any enterprise licence for Udemy Business. With examinations, laboratories, and workspaces, it offers a more in-depth, immersive learning experience that helps students advance their skills in vital fields like information technology, software engineering, and data & analytics. Pricing is determined by the number of seats and contract length.
  • Cohort Learning: Companies can invest in Udemy's cohort-based leadership development platform to strengthen their leaders' skills through a flexible, hybrid learning environment. Pricing for subscriptions is determined by cohort volume and functionality. This is based on CorpU's $30 million purchase of Udemy.

Udemy's Revenue for past 4 years:



The B2C market is Udemy's most lucrative one, as the table shows. It's important to note that the B2B market has experienced faster growth. B2C revenues have increased by 1.3 times between 2019 and 2022, whereas B2B revenues have increased by 6.1 times.


Identify Users

User Segmentation

Udemy users can be broadly categorised into:

  • Students: These are people that are eager to pick up new talents or develop the ones they already have. They sign up for Udemy courses in order to learn new things and develop new talents.
  • Professionals: These are people who sign up for Udemy courses to enhance their employment prospects by learning new skills or honing their already-existing ones.
  • Hobbyists: These people sign up for Udemy courses to further their hobbies or for personal growth.
  • Businesses: These businesses use Udemy for staff training and development. To help their staff members advance their knowledge and abilities, they buy courses in large quantities.
  • Educational Institutions: These institutions of higher learning use Udemy as an additional source of learning. As a part of their curriculum, they provide Udemy courses to its pupils.
  • Instructors: These are experts who design and release courses on Udemy. They share their knowledge with students through the platform because they are experts in a particular sector.

Prioritizing Users

According to the revenue table, the increase in consumer revenue is unsatisfactory. As a result, I will be directing my attention towards the major contributors to consumer revenue, namely students and professionals, for this assignment.

User Pain Points

I conducted a brief survey, and the following are some of its responses:

User Personas

Based on the survey responses and to the best of my knowledge, here are the user personas that we can work on:






Prioritise User Problems

Collecting all the user issues mentioned above, and then sorting them based on priority while also considering the business perspective.




Explore Solutions

To boost revenue, we need to identify and implement solutions that enhance user experience and engagement. I believe it is important that the solutions should be focused on improving the user experience, not just on increasing revenue. By creating a better user experience, we can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, which can ultimately lead to increased revenue.

Solutions for improving User Experience:

  1. Bundling Related Courses for Efficient and Effective Learning: By taking courses that build on each other, users can develop a more nuanced understanding of a subject area and achieve their learning goals more efficiently. This can also help streamline the learning experience and provide learners with a more comprehensive understanding of the topic at hand.
  2. Enhancing the Quality of Assignments:

    This can be further divided into two parts:

    • Incorporating real-world problems: This can help ensure that learners are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in their chosen field. By offering a more practical and hands-on learning experience.
    • Assessment process for assignments: Users will have clear expectations of what is expected of them in terms of completing and submitting assignments, and the assessment process can reinforce learning by providing an opportunity for users to apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios.
  3. Slack Community for Udemy Users: This can be implemented for only a select few quality technical or management courses where the community plays an important role, by increasing the price by a minimal amount. Users can connect with a community of learners to discuss course content, collaborate on projects, and gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter. They can also reach their mentors in case of any doubt.
  4. Ensure Consistency in Pricing: By implementing a centralized pricing system that is accessible across all devices and platforms.


Prioritise User Solutions

Before prioritizing a solution, it is important to consider both the user and business perspectives of all possible solutions.


As we can see, these solutions have the potential to not only solve user and business problems but also improve the relationship between them.

In accordance with the method outlined in "Product Solutioning: How To Decide What To Build" by Gagan Mahajan, the Priority Score can be calculated as follows:

Priority Score = [ (Impact x Confidence)/ Effort ] + Leverage




Success Metrics

Metrics that can be used to determine Udemy's revenue increase over the course of a year after integrating the functionality for the assessment process for assignments. Among the potential measures are:

  1. Course Completion Rates: Udemy may experience an improvement in course completion rates by offering a more thorough assessment procedure. As more users complete their courses and possibly enrol in additional courses, this could result in higher revenue.
  2. Course Reviews and Ratings: If the feature for assigning assessments results in higher-quality courses, it may produce more favourable course reviews and ratings. This could enhance Udemy's user base and revenue.
  3. Student Retention Rates: Udemy may see higher student retention rates by offering a more interesting and demanding learning environment. As students sign up for more courses over time, this could result in increased revenue.
  4. Repeat Business: The Assessment process for assignments feature may result in more repeat business if it results in higher-quality courses and greater student satisfaction. As more students sign up for additional courses or recommend Udemy to others, this could result in increased revenue.