Udemy Data Analysis Report
DESCRIPTION
Online teaching platforms have become very popular in recent times. The popularity of online teaching platforms was enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic which made many nations close their doors to the external world. This also made citizens go inside their homes in a worldwide lockdown. While indoors, humans soon found out that man is a social being and that staying indoors without engaging in an interesting activity was almost plunging most people into depression. The effect of the pandemic also started hitting hard with a greater percentage of the world’s working population out of jobs. It, therefore, became necessary for most people to upskill and for others to engage in a brain-stimulating activity in order to keep depression away. Most people started turning to online teaching platforms. People started taking different courses for different purposes and hence there was a spike in the number of people subscribing to online teaching platforms.
This report will answer the following questions
- Which subject areas have high performance?
- Which ones have low performance?
- How can revenue be increased and a good user experience still maintained
The dataset is one provided by entry level experience for July 2021 which learners used to practice and consolidate on concepts learnt.
DESIGN
The data used to generate this report is data collected over a four year period (2012–2016). The data was presented in Microsoft excel. The data was preprocessed by cleaning and removing duplicates, then blank cells were removed as well. The way the headings were written was made to be consistent and the subject titles followed the same pattern. After the data was cleaned, some functions were utilized to gain additional insights on the data like IF, V-LOOKUP which was used to get the twenty most subscribed courses. The courses in the data set were divided into four subject areas namely; Business Finance, Graphic Design, Musical Instruments and Web Development
Tableau and Microsoft Excel were used to make visualizations of the data and to make a dashboard of the data. These visualization tools were used because they offer clear, concise visualization of data hence it is easy to look at the data and the visualization to identify trends and to gain better insights.
FINDINGS
Finding 1.
From the graph above, it can be seen that the most popular course subject is the web development subject which has made about 631 million dollars in revenue and has gathered subscribers averaging 6,635.02 people and has the highest number of subscribers of 7,981,935 people over the four year period under review.
Finding 2.
It can be seen that Musical Instruments subject is the least popular subject because it has the lowest number of subscribers of about 846,689 people, generated the lowest revenue of about 53,359,055 dollars and a low average number of subscribers of 1245.13 people. Business Finance subject has the second-highest popularity, the second-highest number of subscribers of about 1,868,711 people, generated the second-highest revenue of 123,735,315 dollars but then averages the third-highest number of subscribers of 1569.02 people. The graphic design subject ranks third in popularity. This is because it generated the third-highest revenue of 76,983,170 dollars, has the third-highest number of subscribers of 1,063,148 people but it averages the second-highest number of subscribers of 1766.02 people.
ANALYSIS
Using root cause analysis, I will examine each subject in order to see the reason behind the trends we see in these subjects, I will start this analysis from the course that is least popular and then move steadily to the most popular course. After the root cause analysis, I will be able to draw conclusions and make recommendations.
Musical Instruments
This subject generated the lowest revenue because it had the least popularity. This is because the number of subscribers is the lowest. The reason why it has the lowest number of subscribers is that it has a very poor rating for a subject that ranked third above graphic design according to the number of courses. The reason for this poor rating is perhaps because the content duration is the lowest out of the four subject areas. This can be seen in the graph below.
From the graph, it can also be seen that the expert and intermediate level of the musical instruments subject had the lowest ratings with the expert level being the lower of the two. I strongly believe that this also contributed to the reason why this subject has the lowest revenue and lowest subscribers. This is because mid-level professionals are in the process of career growth and advancement and for a professional to want to take an expert or intermediate course, the person is looking to grow career wise and will not mind paying for good content, which unfortunately the musical instruments courses lack.
Graphic design
This subject area has the third highest popularity because it generates the third highest revenue. This third highest revenue is because it ranks third according to the total number of subscribers but then ranks second according to the average number of subscribers even though it ranks lowest according to the number of courses just behind the musical instrument subject that ranks lowest in revenue. The reason for this surprising performance according the graphs above is that this subject area has the highest rating when the subjects were rated according to levels and it was noticed that the expert level rated the highest, followed by the intermediate level. This subject area also ranked the second highest according to the content duration, just immediately after the most popular subject which is web development. This means that this course has the potential of generating more revenue and increasing numbers but it seems the issue is that the price for the courses is almost the lowest with musical instruments having the lowest prices. The expert courses that have the highest rating had the lowest price even with the potentials this level has.
Business Finance
This subject is the second popular subject because it generated the second-highest revenue. This can be attributed to it having the second-highest number of subscribers. From the tables above, it can be seen that the subject also has the third-ranking according to the average number of subscribers. This course also has the second-highest number of courses available to customers. The reason for this subject to have ranked second overall in terms of revenue is due to the fact that it has the second-highest rating and even rates higher than the web development courses which has the highest revenue. The average price is also good, so the course is really doing well.
Web Development
This subject is the most popular subject when it is assessed by most of the performance rubrics. It is the most popular subject, it generated the highest revenue, and it has the highest number of subscribers. This subject also has the highest average content duration. However, it is worthy to note that this subject has one of the lowest ratings, with only the musical instruments courses coming below this course. In the table below, looking at the number of subscribers per level, I noticed that this subject had more subscribers for the intermediate and beginner level. A further look at the V-LOOKUP table showed that the two courses that had the highest number of subscribers fell under the web development subjects and they are both free. In fact, most web development courses made it to the top twenty courses according to the number of subscribers and most of them were free. However, it was noticed that the courses that were not free but made it to the top twenty courses had a content duration higher than 10.5. We can then deduce that the reason the web development subject has the highest revenue is due to the high prices of its courses, the high content duration and the high number of subscribers.
Conclusion
The musical instruments subject can generate revenue and this can be done by increasing the rating of the courses under this subject. This can be achieved by increasing the content duration of the subjects since the course already has a good number of subscribers but has a really low rating. This subject also has low price but it will be advisable to give users a longer content duration, this will improve the ratings of this subject and then price can be increased. This way users will not mind paying more for better content. This will also attract more intermediate and expert level subscriptions.
The graphic design subject though not making much money has a lot of potentials and can make more money. This course has the highest ratings because it has the highest average content duration, though it has the lowest number of subscribers but the ratings cover for this deficiency and that is why it generates more revenue than the musical instrument subject. The expert level of this subject has the highest rating but has the lowest price. Revenue can be increased on the subject by increasing the prices of the courses in this subject for each level especially that of the expert level.
The Business Finance subject is really doing well by all indications but ratings can be improved to fetch more revenue
The web development subject has one of the lowest ratings and with the expert level having the lowest rating. Increasing the prices of the courses under this subject is strongly discouraged because the courses that had the highest number of subscribers under this subject was a free course. The subject has low rating for the level where more money can be made, increasing the prices of courses under this subject will lead to less subscribers as the price is high already but it’s not meeting the need of the professionals who will most likely be more ready to pay for quality. It is advised that the ratings of this course be improved by providing better content for experts and intermediate level professionals.
