WEBVTT 00:00.360 --> 00:06.550 In this video, Let's go over a product description for one of the most popular courses on Udemy. 00:06.570 --> 00:09.900 It's a course about Java programming by Tim Buchalka. 00:09.990 --> 00:15.960 It's one of the best best selling courses on all of Udemy with 600,000 plus students. 00:15.960 --> 00:19.110 So let's use it as an example of how to write a description. 00:19.110 --> 00:24.870 And in this video I'll walk you through what I like and what I don't like about the description of this 00:24.870 --> 00:26.140 product, this course. 00:26.160 --> 00:32.190 Let's scroll down and let's read the description and let's see what's good about it and what's not good 00:32.190 --> 00:32.800 about it. 00:32.820 --> 00:36.410 First of all, it's a little on the long side, which is fine. 00:36.420 --> 00:42.600 There is a small number of people who just want to read more and they want to learn more for them. 00:42.600 --> 00:43.290 That's fine. 00:43.320 --> 00:48.810 Of course, early on you want to have a call to action to enroll because what if a person is ready to 00:48.810 --> 00:49.200 enroll? 00:49.200 --> 00:50.190 You don't want them to keep reading. 00:50.190 --> 00:51.140 You want them to enroll. 00:51.150 --> 00:53.330 But nevertheless, here we go. 00:53.340 --> 00:57.150 This instructor starts with his credibility. 00:57.150 --> 01:02.200 He literally drives the point home like, Hey, I've got 600,000 students and mostly five star ratings. 01:02.200 --> 01:03.040 And it's true. 01:03.070 --> 01:06.250 This is a very, very good instructor on Udemy. 01:06.250 --> 01:11.470 And then he goes over the benefits build skills you need to get your job. 01:11.470 --> 01:13.500 This is the big things people want. 01:13.510 --> 01:17.830 So he reinforces the title and subtitle and builds on it. 01:17.860 --> 01:24.130 Most people taking this class will probably want to get some kind of a job or a contract or something 01:24.130 --> 01:24.580 like that. 01:24.580 --> 01:26.650 So that's what he leads with. 01:26.680 --> 01:30.070 I would actually capitalize the bullet points. 01:30.110 --> 01:30.290 Okay. 01:30.310 --> 01:31.470 Little sloppy here. 01:31.480 --> 01:32.700 Build, move. 01:32.710 --> 01:33.880 No one is perfect. 01:33.880 --> 01:39.910 I actually searched a long time before making this video for a, like, perfect, perfect, perfect 01:39.910 --> 01:40.450 description. 01:40.450 --> 01:41.260 I couldn't find one. 01:41.260 --> 01:43.180 There was always something not right. 01:43.180 --> 01:45.400 In some description, I searched on Udemy. 01:45.400 --> 01:48.910 I searched in professional websites, big companies, big brands. 01:48.940 --> 01:50.740 There's always something not right. 01:50.770 --> 01:55.360 Not because people are sloppy, but because there are so many things to get right and the description 01:55.360 --> 02:01.330 can be a little bit of a low priority because most people rightfully focus on titles and subtitles first, 02:01.330 --> 02:02.890 because those are mostly seen. 02:02.920 --> 02:04.660 Not everybody reads the description. 02:04.690 --> 02:09.880 Depending on the site, you can approximate maybe between 5 and 20% of the people actually read the 02:09.880 --> 02:11.170 description in detail. 02:11.170 --> 02:17.350 So it's still a significant part of your audience, but certainly not as big as the title because everybody 02:17.350 --> 02:18.700 reads that now. 02:18.700 --> 02:22.390 Again, this person knows really well what people want. 02:22.420 --> 02:25.900 They want to pass some sort of like certification exams. 02:25.900 --> 02:29.500 So he really drives these points home. 02:29.620 --> 02:35.950 If I was him, I would make it actually visually stand out more, not just with these little weak hyphens, 02:35.950 --> 02:39.760 but maybe with a real bullet point, with real bullets. 02:39.760 --> 02:41.320 Maybe I would bold some of the things. 02:41.320 --> 02:46.930 Maybe I would give them their own headline, see how he uses kind of headlines like these bolded text. 02:46.930 --> 02:50.530 But his text is not really, well, broken up like here. 02:50.530 --> 02:57.220 You can see it's a distinct section, but visually, this is a lot of text thrown together. 02:57.220 --> 02:58.150 It's hard to read. 02:58.150 --> 03:03.900 This is not good visually, so if I was writing this, I would actually organize this. 03:03.910 --> 03:06.640 Here's an example of how mine look like. 03:06.670 --> 03:08.350 You see, this is my description. 03:08.350 --> 03:15.580 And you see, not only do I have titles that are bolded and capitalized, but I also have this little 03:15.700 --> 03:17.320 line break things. 03:17.590 --> 03:21.160 It's just for visual effects so that it's easy for people to skim. 03:21.160 --> 03:23.530 But you see, mine is at least organized. 03:23.560 --> 03:30.460 What you can criticize about mine is that for online readability, the sections are a little too long. 03:30.460 --> 03:32.380 Like there's a little bit too much text. 03:32.380 --> 03:37.390 I would actually cut the text a little bit because the font here is a little small. 03:37.390 --> 03:41.380 I don't have control over the font because the font is controlled by the Udemy website. 03:41.380 --> 03:47.530 But nevertheless, I should keep in mind that I've got to keep it shorter so that it's easier for people 03:47.530 --> 03:50.290 to browse through and focus on. 03:50.320 --> 03:51.220 That's what I would do. 03:51.220 --> 03:56.230 And by the way, these are the kinds of bullet points I was alluding to on Tim Buchalka page. 03:56.230 --> 03:58.900 But let's go back to Tim Buchalka, the other course. 03:58.900 --> 04:07.750 So there are many things he's doing right, like he's speaking right to the person visiting this page. 04:07.750 --> 04:11.380 He's asking, Are you aiming to get your first Java programming job? 04:11.380 --> 04:14.740 But struggling to find out what skills the employers want. 04:14.770 --> 04:20.530 Now this is very awkward looking because he only bolded half of this line. 04:20.530 --> 04:25.180 I know that there is probably reasoning to why he did that, but the result is bad because the result 04:25.180 --> 04:26.080 looks a little sloppy. 04:26.080 --> 04:27.580 Like this is awkward to read. 04:27.580 --> 04:30.940 I don't know where my eyes should focus on the most, so that's weird. 04:30.940 --> 04:35.410 And it's supposedly a section title, but it doesn't look like it. 04:35.410 --> 04:39.790 Well, and I don't honestly know if this whole big blob is part of that. 04:39.790 --> 04:43.510 It's not actually because here he's posting a student review. 04:43.510 --> 04:45.640 Now a student review is social proof. 04:45.640 --> 04:47.890 It's a really great thing to add here. 04:47.890 --> 04:52.360 But the mistake he's making is that he's not visually separating things. 04:52.360 --> 04:56.140 Like I have to literally read it line by line, which most people don't do. 04:56.170 --> 04:59.710 Most people skim and most people, they have their eyes kind of. 04:59.910 --> 05:02.200 End on section titles. 05:02.220 --> 05:02.550 There you go. 05:02.550 --> 05:03.390 Section by section. 05:03.390 --> 05:05.100 And they see which section do I want to read. 05:05.100 --> 05:08.460 What's interesting for me visually, he's not organizing it well. 05:08.460 --> 05:15.030 It's hard to imagine that such a successful course has such a big problem in the description. 05:15.030 --> 05:22.470 But I also think that because he's so successful, people give him a pass and because it's a great course, 05:22.470 --> 05:23.760 they still buy it. 05:23.760 --> 05:30.780 But for us, let's say if you have a new course or you're a new instructor, you should make it as easy 05:30.780 --> 05:35.820 as possible for people to browse your description and learn everything. 05:35.820 --> 05:37.500 Now what do they want to learn? 05:37.530 --> 05:42.080 There are a few questions that students or potential customers want to know. 05:42.090 --> 05:45.030 They want to know about the credibility of the instructor. 05:45.030 --> 05:49.500 You build that up with a little bit of a blurb about you as an instructor. 05:49.500 --> 05:55.920 Like in my case, I have a section like that instructor background so that people know, Hey, this 05:55.920 --> 06:01.930 person has a lot of experience because you want a service provider who is great. 06:01.930 --> 06:06.820 Do you want a doctor who is their first surgery and do you want them performing surgery on you? 06:06.820 --> 06:07.360 No, no. 06:07.360 --> 06:09.250 You want them to be very experienced. 06:09.250 --> 06:11.710 Same with every kind of thing. 06:11.770 --> 06:19.240 Now, you also want to build, just like Tim Buchalka is doing here, this instructor on the promise 06:19.240 --> 06:19.840 of the course. 06:19.840 --> 06:24.430 Like, Hey, you're going to get your job, you're going to get a certification, it's going to be amazing. 06:24.460 --> 06:26.020 Those are the things people want. 06:26.050 --> 06:27.370 Those are the benefits. 06:27.370 --> 06:32.860 But the next thing a potential visitor will ask in their mind, like, how does this really work? 06:32.860 --> 06:33.190 Okay. 06:33.190 --> 06:34.900 So he kind of explains this. 06:34.900 --> 06:36.460 This is 80 hours long. 06:36.460 --> 06:40.900 And like, for example, there's a little section of here's just some of what you will learn. 06:40.900 --> 06:45.490 And he talks about you will learn how to install it, the next step and the next step, and you'll get 06:45.490 --> 06:49.720 all the necessary coding exercises and tools and you'll start coding and blah, blah, blah. 06:49.750 --> 06:50.170 Okay. 06:50.170 --> 06:51.910 It will be easy for you to get started. 06:51.910 --> 06:56.020 So the person reading this would be like, okay, it's easy to start. 06:56.050 --> 06:57.430 I'll be able to learn. 06:57.520 --> 07:00.820 If I go through this, I will be really ready. 07:00.820 --> 07:05.410 Okay, so all the questions are getting answered and by the end of the description you want to have 07:05.410 --> 07:06.160 a call to action. 07:06.160 --> 07:11.230 And of course, in such a long description, you want to have multiple calls to action, like see what's 07:11.230 --> 07:13.990 inside, Hurry, Java class is waiting. 07:14.050 --> 07:19.630 And that style of a call to action is a great way to end your description. 07:19.630 --> 07:26.830 So hopefully this gives you a practical example of a real product description from which you can learn 07:26.830 --> 07:29.650 the right things and avoid some of the mistakes.