Sell More Stuff and Make it Pretty!

Unwittingly, I completed a goal!

069. Complete an online course

The course in question was Store Design, Visual Merchandising and Shopper Marketing, a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) taught by Claus Ebster for iversity.

I'd meant for this goal to be an encouragement to complete some of the Udemy courses that I've signed up for, but when I received an email from iversity about this course, I was quick to sign up!

Having used iversity before (I studied their Design 101 course back in 2013/14) I knew it was a great interface for learning something new.

I mainly signed up in the hope that I'd pick up more knowledge relating to visual merchandising, but I also found the store design and shopper marketing parts of the course interesting.

The six week course came in the form of several video lectures, which were accompanied by a set of questions relating to the video content. The videos were easy to follow and presented with good humour, and many examples relating to the topics discussed. Each week included a discussion exercise and recommendations for further reading, so it was a really well fleshed-out course!

I ended up gaining lots of new insight into shoppers, and ways a store can be set up to encourage sales. What's more, I had inspiration for the place I volunteer!

Something I like about iversity is that the courses offer two different tracks: an audit track (which is free) or a certificate track (for which you pay a fee, and take an exam or complete graded coursework).
I opted for the audit track, which gave me a shiny Certificate of Participation:

This is also proof of my completing the goal. Of course, I've hidden my real name ;)

I really enjoyed this course and have several pages of notes taken from the lectures, along with lots of inspiration and a better understanding of the psychology of shoppers and the way store design, atmosphere and displays can affect them.

iversity has a number of courses on offer, so perhaps I'll end up signing up for another one...

This is NOT a sponsored post. Any products, brands or services I blog about here are mentioned of my own free will, and I have NOT received any money, goods, or other benefits in exchange for the creation of this article.