What’s this? In 2021 I made a course called From WordPress To Webflow. This post is one of a series of behind-the-scenes emails I wrote as I went along, exclusively for my email list (start here).
As I’m planning and developing the new course, I’ve also very early on been working on ideas for the course branding too.
In fact if you wanna take a peek…
You can see the basic logo and illustrative style for the new course on this basic holding page I whipped up over the weekend:
(You don’t have to opt-in! You already know I’m making a Webflow course, right? This is just my mantra in action: always be collecting email addresses.)
And here’s the logo on its own:
What do you think? The 1970s called and want their logo back. 😜
And if you ever saw one of my previous sales pages, you’ll recognise the illustration style at the bottom of the page that I’ve basically stolen from myself. If it ain’t broke, etc.
I’d love to know what you think.
Anyway, you’re probably wondering:
“Dave, my friend—why on earth are you bothering with the course branding when you’ve not even MADE the darned thing yet??”
Obviously, the actual teaching content of any course is waaaay more important than what it looks like.
Understatement of the year.
And when you’re creating your first course – and even beyond that – please (for the love of all that is good and pure) don’t let procrastinating over what it looks like stop you making the course and getting it out there.
(Unless your course is a design course… in which case.. yeah… maybe try and make it look good)
For my first course – No Stress WordPress – I really just threw basic video slides together as I went along, with zero thought for what they looked like.
Tbh, it was my first course, and I had plenty enough already to get my head around.
And no-one complained about the design of the slides, nor the fact the videos looked nothing like the eventual sales page. All they cared about was how well my teaching helped them. End of.
However, when I made my next course – No Fear Funnels – I had a bit more brain space to be able to think about what the course was going to look like, even just briefly.
I’m not talking anything fancy – just a basic logo and deciding on a colour palette.
And I didn’t work on this alone. I actually hired in design help from my friend John Fraskos (of AnalogWP and Style Kits fame).
(Another mantra: if you can… hire in help for the things that someone else can do better and/or faster than you.)
But anyway…
There were a few benefits of taking just a little time upfront to establish a basic brand:
1. It added perceived value
It gave No Fear Funnels much more of a professional look, and therefore added perceived value, both within the course itself and the promotional material for it.
2. It made developing the course quicker and easier
I’d already established the design style, which removed a layer of decision-making each time I needed to create something visual.
3. It reinforced the right buying decision
The presale page, and the eventual final sales page, all featured the same branding as the course itself. So new customers had a seamless experience, from sales page to their course dashboard to the videos themselves. All helpful for reinforcing that someone has made the right decision, at the typical ‘buyers remorse’ stage, directly after the purchase.
So yeah – if you can quickly create a basic idea of the logo, colours, font and general design style your course will use, upfront, then great. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You can always revise and improve the design in later versions.
But again…
None of this is a substitute for killer course content. That’s most important, by far. If your mental brain space is 100% consumed by the process of creating a course (and man… I hear ya there) then please focus on that above all else.
Next, I’ll share why I feel so fortunate having a business model of teaching online.