If you’re a training company—or if training is part of your mandate—this article may be of interest to you. In fact, if you’re doing well, happy with your number of learners, and receiving positive feedback, we’d love to hear from you and feature your success in a future post!
But if you’re not seeing an increase in demand and your course sales are low, keep reading. We’re sharing insights based on real business cases that might apply directly to you.
A Quick Word About PathWise Solutions
Let me start by sharing a bit about PathWise to establish our credibility on this topic. We’ve been in business for over 30 years, with a strong focus on instructional design, eLearning, and LMS development for the past decade.
During that time, we’ve worked with more than 150 clients, creating multiple online courses and designing materials for standard synchronous and blended formats—whether delivered in person or online. We’ve had the privilege to observe and support our clients’ growth while growing alongside them—offering increasingly effective and creative learning solutions.
But this post isn’t about us. It’s about you, and what you can achieve if you want to grow your training participation and expand your business capabilities.
1. Offer Self-Paced or Blended Online Courses
Our pitch is simple: eLearning can make a huge difference in your number of registrants, as well as in learner engagement and satisfaction. And we have the proof.
A standout example is the 2023 BC Forest Safety Council’s Annual Report, which includes a 20-year training participation overview. The data shows a clear upward trend in training numbers—especially from 2021 onward—thanks to the introduction of online and blended courses. These formats have significantly increased accessibility and engagement.
And here’s what learners are saying:
“I really enjoyed the online training format. Very easy to navigate through it and enough video clips to keep it interesting. Thanks!”
Or even better—word of mouth:
“I just completed a few courses via your website. Absolutely amazing and I have already recommended these courses to people in my network. I work for an American woodworking company in Vietnam; thank you so much!”
Knowing that the PathWise Solutions team helped design and build over 20 of these impactful courses, it’s exciting to see how these programs are meeting demand and expanding reach in the forestry sector.
Want a closer look? See how a traditionally in-person course for forestry supervisors was adapted into eLearning by reading the BCFSC case study.
2. Do Your Courses Right From the Start
Too often, learning programs fall short—either too dull, too shallow, or irrelevant to be remembered and applied. The result? Organizations that lack the skills to grow and innovate.
Have you ever taken a text-heavy course with no visuals or interaction? I’ve seen those and thought: why even call this a course? It might as well be a handbook or article.
Then there are courses that feel like narrated PowerPoints—bullet points fade in while a voice plays in the background. You could start the course, make yourself a coffee, come back, and still pass the quiz. It’s more of a video than a course.
Custom training solutions developed by subject matter experts can elevate your program. Instructional design must be at the heart of your course. It ensures alignment between learning outcomes and business goals, transforming content into meaningful learning.
With the right mix of technology, visual storytelling, and learner-centered design, your courses can become dynamic, interactive experiences.
At PathWise, our mission is to help good organizations grow through learning—by crafting programs that resonate, educate, and empower. If you think you could reach thousands instead of hundreds by shifting to asynchronous learning—just like the Community Social Services Bargaining Association did—we’d love to support you.
3. Market Your Offerings
Unless your training is mandatory, you’ll need to market it. After all, people can’t buy your course if they don’t know it exists.
Some organizations already have a strong online presence with steady website traffic and social media engagement. If that’s you—great! But that doesn’t eliminate the need for a solid marketing strategy and course-specific promotional plans.
While we offer basic SEO support for the LMS platforms we build, we don’t position ourselves as full-service marketing experts. If you’re handling things in-house, the eLearning Industry blog has excellent resources for marketing online courses.
Want to go further? Consider outsourcing to a marketing agency. Both in-house and outsourced strategies have their pros and cons—see this Forbes article to explore.
Because without a good marketing plan, even a great course can fall flat.
A standout example: A private training agency from Nanaimo was approached by a U.S. client to train their employees. We helped them develop a hybrid program with live and self-paced components. Today, their courses are offered across Europe. That’s the kind of scale we aim to help our clients achieve! Read the case study.
4. Get Feedback and Measure Results
When building a course, think ahead about the data you’ll need to measure success. Strong eLearning programs bake measurement into the design process.
Start by identifying short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes that matter to your organization. Then design your course to deliver and measure those outcomes. We go into more detail in our blog post: Measuring What Matters.
If your course lives on a custom-built LMS, you can collect a wide range of learner data. We recommend taking full advantage of LearnDash, eCommerce, and Tin Canny reporting tools. You can also combine those into a custom dashboard inside WordPress.
Too pricey to start? No worries—Excel and Google Sheets are great for reporting, data visualization, and insight sharing.
At the next level, Looker Studio dashboards can offer real-time views. For one client, we used Formidable Forms within LearnDash to collect demographics, course feedback, and engagement metrics. This data feeds into a custom Looker Studio dashboard that helps them evaluate performance, track trends, and plan updates.
5. Improve and Update Your Training
If you’re data-driven, you’ll know when your course starts falling behind learners’ needs.
Minor issues may arise—like broken links or navigation glitches—and should be fixed quickly to maintain a good user experience.
But sometimes, you’ll need to do a major update. New regulations may shift your content. Learner feedback might reveal knowledge gaps. Smart organizations anticipate this and plan periodic updates to stay relevant.
And don’t forget—technology evolves too. What felt cutting-edge five years ago may be outdated today. Tools that were once too expensive—like AI narration or animation—are now accessible even on smaller budgets.
You can now use AI to:
- Narrate your course
- Streamline research
- Edit your writing
- Generate custom illustrations and videos
The possibilities are endless—if you know how to use them. So lack of budget is no longer a valid excuse for offering dull, outdated training.
Final Thoughts
Our goal in this post was to show you what’s possible.
We hope you feel inspired to scale your business with engaging, meaningful, and accessible online training. And if you’d like help getting there—whether it’s instructional design, eLearning development, or LMS support—we’d be thrilled to collaborate.
👉 Let’s talk about how PathWise Solutions can help you reach your next level of impact.
