Reed Course
Discovery

Context

A job site that also sells courses

Reed.co.uk is best known as a job board, but the platform hosts thousands of online courses — from CPD certifications to professional development. The courses marketplace is a meaningful revenue stream, but users were landing on search pages and leaving without enrolling.

My brief: find out why users weren't converting, redesign the course card to communicate value faster, and fix the search flow so people could find the right course without friction.

The problem

The card wasn't earning the click

Analytics showed users landing on course search pages, scrolling, then leaving without clicking anything. Session recordings and heat maps told us why — they were looking for information the cards simply didn't show.

Three things were missing:

• No rating or review count. Users had no way to assess quality at a glance
• No level indicator. Users feared enrolling in something pitched at the wrong level
• No duration. Working professionals need to know the time commitment before committing money

Design decisions

Every element earned its place

Before designing anything, I ran a content audit across 12 competitor course platforms (Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare). I identified which pieces of information power-users actually look at before enrolling. That list became the spec for the new card.

Discovery flow

The card was only half the problem

Phase two was the discovery flow itself — filters, sorting and browse experience. Users were struggling with filters that required too many clicks, a default sort order that felt arbitrary, and no feedback when a filter combination returned zero results.

We added live result counts to all filter options, introduced quick-filter chips at the top of results for the most common queries, and changed the default sort to "Most popular". Those three changes alone cut filter abandonment significantly.

Results

What moved

Support tickets about course level confusion dropped 35% within eight weeks of launch. Users were enrolling in the right courses first time rather than requesting refunds.

What I took away

Show people what they need to decide

The original card wasn't badly designed — it just withheld the information users needed to make a decision. In ecommerce and learning platforms, trust is the conversion lever. People don't buy courses because they're cheap. They buy because they believe the course will work for them.

The redesign gave users the evidence they needed to make that call without clicking in. That's the job of a product card.