How Long Should a Professional Online Course Be?
There are two potential million-dollar questions in online course development for professional speakers, consultants, and trainers.
How much should (maybe can, is the better verb) I charge for my course?
How long, in time, should my course be?
For this article, we will look at that second question. Although, I will help you with the first question in the future.
I researched the second question, and the results focused on K-12 education, corporate learning and development, or small service oriented business owners new to the training space.
But that is not you. You are different. You have delivered this content in various forms to an audience. You aren’t starting with content with no history with participants. However, you also may not have endless resources to launch this course, and time is money. The longer course length, the more resources are needed before you see an ROI.
How I answer this question with my clients depends on these key points: the client’s business strategy and the participants’ experience.
First Things First
These are my guiding principles when I create any learning event or content:
Always add value to your participant’s lives. It is your responsibility as a professional speaker, coach, or trainer not to waste anyone’s time. Whether your course is 5 minutes or 55 weeks, it should help your participant gain or improve their knowledge, skills, abilities, or behaviors.
You should do everything in your power to help your participant to finish your course. Yes, there is participant responsibility, but you can smartly design your course to encourage participants to successful completion.
Now let’s get to coaching on the course length.
What is your strategy?
What is the business outcome for this course on your business? This critical decision guides you toward the corresponding resources needed to invest in to accomplish that goal. The two I see most often are Lead Generation and Revenue Stream, which I will explain below. There are more, but these are where most course creators start.
Lead Generation Strategy
It doesn’t make sense to create a free or low-cost course that contains several hours of content. In a Lead Generator, the participant gets to know you, so they want more of you, typically at a higher price point. If you give them your best at a cost of their email, there is no tension for more. You have changed their expectations, and now they will expect you to work for free.
A good Lead Generator course will be on the shorter side, no more than 60 minutes, and will add value to your participants. Think of it as a good first date. So how would you invest for a good first date? You would come prepared, look good, and be polished, but not tell them all your stories, right? Same idea.
Revenue Strategy
The higher the price of the course, the higher the participant expectation of quality.
higher quality doesn’t necessarily correlate to more time.
But higher quality doesn’t necessarily correlate to more time. It can, as this course will fully explain a core principle for your expertise. “Long,” in my definition, is anything over an hour; our attention spans are rapidly diminishing. The course can be multiple hours, covered over multiple weeks. To create such a course, however, is an investment in time and money. You could chunk it too and create several courses out of one day-long training. Beware that it could take time to generate an ROI. To narrow down the proper length of a revenue strategy, you want to consider point number two: participant experience.
What is your Participant Experience?
I have some cold truth: no one will love your course as much as you do. (Heck, I know I love this blog more than you do. :)) This is a classic mistake I see in that a client creates their course based on what they think the participant needs, or the participant will love the content so much that it doesn’t matter how long or full of filler information is included.
It matters.
Participants are dealing with multiple distractions when participating in an online course. Even if they have the best intentions to finish, life or work will get in the way. One exception is if the course is mandated by their employer. Of course they will finish, but they don’t have to be happy about it, which affects your brand.
SOLUTION: Close your eyes and visualize two or three of your ideal participants. First, think of location where they will be taking this course: home, office, coffee shop, co-working space, etc. How long could they comfortably sit in that location to engage with a segment of your course? Think of what they are wearing (keep this non-creepy; I am a former HR executive :)). Is this conducive to a long period of sitting? What is the longest you think they can be free of distractions, get some good content, and feel like they made progress? That last question will guide you to module length. It really could be as short as a minute. To the other extreme, expecting them to watch an hour-long PowerPoint recording of a speech you gave 2 years ago isn’t setting them up for success.
Big Picture
Course length has always been part art and part science. When we speak or train in person, usually someone tells us our time constraint: an hour keynote, a half-day breakout, a three-day workshop, etc. In a virtual space, that time decision is yours. It is classic Goldilocks, too long, too short, or just right, so that good learning occurs, and your participants finish.
I lean towards creating shorter courses, because they are quicker to market, and your participants get an earlier and impactful win. It is also easier to add content later than to analyze what to remove. You can always watch your course metrics and adjust. The possibilities are endless, which is a challenge in itself. However, if you use the two guiding principles of your business strategy and participant experience, your training length will be off with a smart educated guess. Set your clocks and go!
“Whether your course is 5 minutes or 55 weeks, it should help your participant gain or improve their knowledge, skills, abilities, or behaviors. ”
