Turning a book into a course: what the market decided before we built it
DESIGN STRATEGIST | CREATIVE SCIENCE | 2022
Creative Science wanted a course out of the founder's book and needed to know whether anyone would buy it. We built the landing page before the course, put it in front of the market, and came back with a price, a length, and a schedule for a product that had no content in it yet.
The founder had written a book on behavioral design, and the business wanted a course out of it quickly. Nobody knew what it should cost, how long it should run, or whether there was a market at all.
The ordinary way to answer that is to build the thing and find out. We built the page that would have to sell it instead, and treated the page as the test.
Approach
01
Getting smart
02
Information architecture
03
UX prototyping
04
Validation
Aligned on the business objective, reviewed what Creative Science already had, and studied comparable courses to see what the category was doing on structure, length, and price.
Built the narrative arc, then lo-fi wireframes and a content outline. This is where the course took a shape a stranger could understand without any of it existing.
Designed the landing page and put it in front of stakeholders for resonance, one round each with a founder, a design strategist who had taught, and a market coordinator.
The page went live as an A/B test on price points and session times, so the commercial questions got answered by the market rather than by the room.
What we were selling
One question ran under the whole engagement: what are we really selling? The answer was a way of thinking people could carry into their own work rather than a set of lessons from the book.
That reframe set the curriculum structure. Every module runs a case study showing how a practitioner got to a solution, then finding relevance against the learner's own practice, then translation where they apply it themselves, then workshopping it with peers and a leader's perspective.
Case study
How a practitioner got to a solution.Finding relevance
Where it meets the learner's own practice.Translation
Now it's your turn. They apply it themselves.Workshopping
Peers and a leader's perspective on the work.What the market said
THE CURRICULUM WAS THE THING
Stakeholders were drawn to it consistently and named it the most compelling part of the page. For a course with no content built, the outline was carrying the sale.
“This is the wave of the future. Y'all are doing the right thing with this.”
Stakeholder sessionCREDIBILITY HAD TO BE SHOWN
Case studies were what made the concepts believable to people. So the page itself became the demonstration, using behavioral design on the reader to show what the course teaches. The method proves itself by being visible in the sales material.
PEOPLE WANTED TO FIND THEMSELVES ON THE LANDING PAGE
Abstractions lost them. Naming the specific questions and problems each module answers is what made it land.
PEOPLE WANTED TO FIND THEMSELVES ON THE LANDING PAGE
Abstractions lost them. Naming the specific questions and problems each module answers is what made it land.
NOBODY WAS GOING TO READ THEIR WAY TO VALUE
Attention was scarce and work and life had blurred together, so the argument had to carry visually and convince at a glance.
AND THEY WANTED THE FOUNDER
Access to his perspective came up repeatedly, alongside talking material through with peers, bringing a real problem of their own, and keeping the resources after the course ended.
“I want Nate to tell me what's important. That's what people are paying for.”
Stakeholder sessionFrom insight to recommendation
FORMAT
Hybrid
The sweet spot between fully asynchronous and fully live. People digest content independently, then come together to talk it through, which is the part they said they wanted and the part a book can't give them.
CADENCE
Four to six weeks, one module a week
Classes capped at 60 to 90 minutes, outside work chunked into 30 to 60 minute sessions across two or three days, and never more than twice a week. Early in the week, at lunch or in the evening. Learners told us they wanted to sit with the material rather than grind through it, and the live test settled the timing.
COST
$200
Each stakeholder saw the price range twice, once answering what they'd be willing to pay and once what they'd be willing to accept. The average of the two, across three stakeholders, sat at $200. The live test then ran price points against each other to gather more signal.
Where it landed
The engagement delivered a course structure, a tested landing page, three commercial recommendations, and a staged plan for what to build once traction held. A cohort ran.
Reflection
Three stakeholder sessions got me a price range. The live test picked the number. I use qualitative work to decide what to test now, and put the test in market to settle it.
There was no course when we priced it. The curriculum outline was the most compelling thing on the page, so people were responding to a promise. Making that promise specific enough to believe was most of the work.