Do Low Completion Rates Matter?

Since 2019 and the covid-19 pandemic, the number of digital courses available has skyrocketed. However, one thing that hasn’t skyrocketed since that time is course completion rate. In fact, course completion rates are quickly  dropping across the board.

Some course creators believe this isn’t a problem for them because their customers have already paid, so why should they care whether or not these customers complete their course?

Well… we’re here to tell you these course creators have a misguided mindset. Sure, creating one time customers can bring in some serious cash, but they’re limiting their ability to create repeat customers and clients.

When you take a look at the customers that become repeat buyers (meaning they buy from you again and again) the majority of them typically have a course completion rate of 50% and above. This means the higher completion rate, the higher chance of them becoming a repeat customer!

So YES, course completion rates do in fact matter. Especially when it comes to growing a long-lasting course, coaching, or client based business. The higher your completion rate, the higher your lifetime value of each customer becomes.

With the average course completion rate sitting around 15% in 2022, how do you work at increasing this percentage?

There’s 2 simple ways you can do this TODAY:

1. Gamify your courses:

Gamify your courses by using points, accolades, and other rewards to motivate your customers to complete certain tasks and move towards their end goal. We’ve found that by doing this your customers will be more motivated and excited to complete certain modules of your course because there is a reward for doing so. The data shows that this reward can add a little dopamine “hit” for the customer leaving them motivated to continue working through your course leading to higher course completion rates!

2. Break Your Course Down Into Smaller Daily Action Steps.

Breaking your course into small daily achievable steps can boost your completion rates right out of the gate. This helps your customer feel less overwhelmed (which leads to lower completion rates) and allows your customer to build new habits on top of each other every single day (more dopamine “hits”). It’s this daily repetition that will drive long term results for both your customers and your course completion rates.

So there you have it… course completion rates do matter! Especially if you want repeat customers and to increase the lifetime value of each customer.

Give these two simple things a try today and let us know if they help. If you want an easy way to implement these 2 things automatically, we highly suggest checking out our all-in-1 course and challenge platform Framework.so.

With Framework, your course or challenge is automatically organized into daily checklists so your audience always knows what to do next. Better yet, Framework uses checklist data to show you where people drop off and who needs your help. Use these insights to make your challenge even better and increase course completion rates.

If you’re interested in learning more about Framework, please sign up for a free trial or book a demo with one of our product specialists who can walk you through the platform and answer any question you may have.