About the Project

Alison is one of the world’s largest free learning platforms for education and skills training. It is a for-profit social enterprise dedicated to making it possible for anyone, to study anything, anywhere, at any time, for free online, at any subject level, offering free courses for adults to upskill in their careers. Alison offers over 4,000+ free courses and has 30 million learners, 6 million graduates globally. Alison acquired Dash Beyond in March of 2021, an ed-tech startup that I co-founded.

My Role: Head of UX & Product Design
Create the UX Strategy around building and launching career and education related products

Responsibilities/Challenge
-Integrate Dash Beyond's content
-Design & Launch New Features that support the learner's experience on Alison
-Lead the Design Team 11 + 5
-Transform Alison from Waterfall to Agile Methodology
-Attain business goals for the company (ie: increase engagement and revenue)

User Research

Qualitative Data

At Alison, Qualitative Data was collected by conducting 30 minute user interviews which are linked to an email survey sent to all users, which allows them to receive 10% off Certificate Purchases if they agree to volunteer. During the user interview, learners are asked to walk us through using the platform and give us their thoughts. This is how we collected insights on the user’s experience of the platform, figured out their pain points, what we can improve on, and what kinds of tools to roll out.

Users:
Who are they?

Active User Base:
200,000 daily users out of 30 million user base

Location:
Majority of learners are from the US, India, Nigeria, South Africa, and the UK.

Short & Free:
People use Alison over competitors like Coursera or Udemy because on Alison all courses are free, courses are shorter, and an Irish certificate as unique.

Low Data Mode:
Because many of our learners are from mid-lower income demographic they prefer Alison over high data consuming platforms. Alison’s content is primarily text based, so it is accessible to the lower socio economic demographic with low data availability. Continue to keep the platform usable on low speed internet while increasing product features. Keep the product free to use while increasing revenue by adding more locations to implement Google Ads.

Study Time:
Most learners only study during the weekdays while at work or in transit to work. There is a marked decrease in learning over the weekends because learner’s want a holiday. Average time spent on the platform is 30-40 mins per week by the AUB.

USERS PERSONAS

USERS PERSONAS

Adult Learners

  • Unemployed

    Lisa Smith, 18, High School Graduate, North Carolina

    “I want to work an exciting job in an exciting city.”

  • Unemployed

    Ahmed Ali, 60, Retired, Pakistan

    “Learning keeps me young.”

  • Upskilling

    Teo Jackson, 29, Supply Chain Manager, Atlanta

    “I don’t have to obtain a master’s degree to move up in my career.”

  • First Job

    Amir Kapoor, 22, College Student, Delhi

    “I want to move abroad as soon as possible.”

  • First Job

    Nihaar Sharma, 19, High School Graduate, Mumbai

    “Experience holds more weight than college degrees.”

  • Changing Career

    Ivy Ndidi, 25, Nursing Assistant, Cape Town

    “Money can’t stop me from my dreams.”

Quantitative Data

Google Analytics
HotJar (Heat Mapping Software)
Google Sheets

Qualitative data was collected by conducting 30 minute user interviews which are linked to an email survey sent to all users, which allows them to receive 10% off Certificate Purchases if they agree to volunteer. During the user interview, learners are asked to walk us through using the platform and give us their thoughts. This is how we collected insights on the user’s experience of the platform and what we can improve on it. I have made it sacrosanct that our design team speaks to at least 10 learners each month.

Key Performance Indicators:

  1. Drop-off Rates on Homepage, Location

  2. # New User Sign-Ups

  3. # Course Enrollments

  4. % Course Completions

  5. Amount of Time users spend on the platform

  6. # of GoogleAds delivered in a given study session

  7. Drop Off Rate of Courses

  8. Revenue from Google Ads

  9. #of Certificate Purchases

  10. Revenue from Certificate Sales

Problem Statement

The User’s Pain Points:
1. Navigating the Website
2. Staying Engaged
3. High Drop Off Rate

Business Problems:
1. Increase Monetization (via GoogeAds + Certificate Purchases)

Solution(s)

How do we decrease initial drop-off rates and increase conversions?
Optimize the landing page, Modernize the UX

How do we keep the user engaged?
We create features that offer great value to the user in helping them qualify and apply for jobs

Product Rollout Plan:
1. Optimized Homepage
2. Career Guide
3. Workplace Personality Assessment
4. Public Profile
5. Resume Builder
6. Personalized Recommendations
7. Shop Sale Timer feature

Homepage

The old homepage was over 3 years old. It did not showcase the breadth of Alison’s offerings, wasn't user friendly, was not visually appealing and therefore had a high bounce rate as new users weren't sure how to navigate the website.

Solution:
Check it Out

Results

Since the new Homepage went live, revenue has increased by 54%. SEO agency said our ranking improved significantly because of the way copy was integrated into the homepage. Made the UI/UX modern and very different from all other competitors.

Workplace Personality Assessment

  • Designed by expert psychologists, Alison’s free workplace personality assessment enables you to realize your career dreams by providing you with an extremely accurate report of who you are and why you do things the way you do.

    • Less than 300 people per day taking test

    • High bounce rate, despite PPC (pay per click) campaign

    • Under 25% completion rate

    • Updated Landing Page + UX

    • Less questions per page

    • Easier to process and answer questions

  • 2 Design sprints (+ 1.5 mos. tech)

    • Completion rate increased from 25% to 50%

    • Number of users taking test went from 300 to 900 people per day on average

Try It

Career Guide

  • An Encyclopedia of 600+ Career Profiles showcasing the skills needed, qualifications, education roadmap + courses to enter a career path

    • Nothing existed to showcase careers that tie to relevant careers so learners can make informed decisions about what courses to take

    • Integrated Dash Beyond’s Career Encyclopedia of over 300 careers into Alison. Alison now has over 600 careers live all of which recommend courses for learners to enroll in.

    • 93,000 new users signed up to Alison because of this Career Encyclopedia

    • 418,406 new accounts created

    • 45, 494 enrollments in courses

    • 17 minutes spent on average on Career Guide (Google Analytics Data)

      In 4 months

  • 2 design sprints (+ 1 mos. tech)

Explore the Career Guide

    • Previous iterations had no way to allow Alison grads to showcase their skills, experience, and Alison certifications to potential employers

    • In order to compete with the likes of LinkedIn, we came up with the public profile feature which is more oriented to students, upskillers, and job seekers

  • 4 Design sprints (+ 5 mos. tech)

    • 1.8 million public profiles within 3 months of launching

    • Allowed for the collection of data to make better course and career reccomendations

Public Profile

Look at my profile on Alison live

Resume Builder Tool

    • We needed to find a way to help our learners progress in their careers and show off their assets, skills, and capabilities

    • Taking inputed data from a learner’s Public Profile, we created an easy way for them to download an automated Resume for their career search

  • 3 design sprints (+ 3 mos. tech)

    • Over 28,000 new resumes created in the first month.

    • More data for marketing and for better recommendations on “For You” page

Check it out

Recommendations ‘For You’

    • For 14 years, users had to search through 1000s of courses

    • Before this feature, users were lost on where to begin

    • Drop-off rates were high before even beginning a course

    • Adult learners needed to know what courses would apply to their interests and career goals

  • Implemented a simple, 5 step questionnaire, to “recommend” courses:

    • Created a survey to obtain psychometric data about the learner

    • Input their interests and intentions into an algorithm to match courses and careers

    • Created a personalized dashboard with relevant courses and careers to explore

  • 3 design sprints (+ 2 mos. tech)

    • Course enrollment rate increased from 19% to around 37%

Check it out

Shop Sales Timer

    • Revenue was down

    • We needed to find a way to create urgency for users to “Act Now”. and purchase the certificate after completing their free course

    • A simple, easily implemented, functional change - creating a timer that allowed the learner to purchase their certificate at a discounted rate for only a specified amount of time

  • 1 design sprint (+ 1 week tech)

    • A massive explosion of certificate sales from 3% to 11%

    • Increased revenue by over 27% in tests where this screen was implemented

Previous

Wells Fargo
Next

Dash Beyond