How to Use Analytics to Improve Online Courses

If you teach online, creating great lessons is only half the job. The other half is understanding what learners actually do inside your courses—where they drop off, what they skip, and which lessons help them succeed.

With the right analytics online courses in place, your WordPress LMS can show you exactly how students move from landing on a course page to completing the final lesson. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use analytics (especially GA4) to measure enrollments, engagement, and completions, then turn those insights into concrete course improvements.

If you have not yet connected analytics to your website, start with our guide to using Google Analytics with WordPress, then come back here to build course-specific tracking and reports.

Prerequisites

Before you can use analytics to improve your analytics online courses, make sure you have the following in place.

• A WordPress site running an LMS plugin (for example, LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS, or similar). If you are still deciding, see our guide to the best WordPress LMS plugins.
• Admin access to your WordPress dashboard, the LMS plugin settings, and your analytics tool (typically Google Analytics 4) and/or Google Tag Manager.
• A GA4 property with basic pageview tracking already working on your site.
• At least one published course with some real learners going through it, so you have data to analyze.
• Familiarity with your theme or header scripts area (for Jannah, you can add tracking code via the Theme Options panel if you are not using a plugin or Tag Manager).

Step 1: Define Course Goals and Success Metrics

analytics online courses only become useful when they’re tied to clear goals. Before building reports, decide what “success” looks like for each course and which numbers tell you whether you’re getting closer.

1. Clarify your business goals.Common examples include: increasing course revenue, growing memberships, improving student satisfaction, or qualifying leads for a service.
2. Clarify your learner goals.What should students be able to do after completing the course? This might be “launch a basic WordPress site” or “publish their first blog post.” Your analytics should help you see whether learners reach that point.
3. Choose measurable metrics.Translate goals into trackable metrics such as:
   • Course enrollment rate (enrollments / sales page visitors)
   • Course start rate (students who begin lesson 1 after enrolling)
   • Course completion rate (students who reach the final lesson or pass the final quiz)
   • Average time to completion
   • Quiz pass rate per module
   • Refund or cancellation rate (for paid courses or memberships)

Step 2: Configure Tracking for Key Course Actions

Once you know which metrics matter, the next step is making sure your analytics actually capture them. For online courses, that means tracking more than just pageviews—you want events for enrollments, starts, completions, and key interactions.

1. Confirm baseline tracking.Check that your GA4 tag is firing on all course-related pages (sales pages, lessons, quizzes, account pages). You can do this using the GA4 DebugView or your browser’s developer tools.
2. Identify your course URLs or IDs.Note the URLs or post IDs for your course sales pages, lesson pages, and thank-you pages. You will use these when defining events and funnels.
3. Enable LMS tracking features.Many LMS plugins include built-in reporting or event triggers (for example “course completed” or “quiz passed”). Review your LMS documentation to see which events you can send to analytics automatically.
4. Create GA4 events for critical actions.If your LMS or analytics plugin allows custom events, map each key action to a GA4 event. For example:
   • course_enrolled – when a student completes checkout or clicks “Enroll” on a free course
   • course_started – when lesson 1 is first viewed
   • course_completed – when the final lesson is marked complete or the final quiz is passed
   • lesson_completed – when any lesson is completed (with a parameter for the lesson ID)

   If you are adding events via gtag.js or a custom HTML tag in Google Tag Manager, your code might look like this:

   <script>
   gtag('event', 'course_completed', {
     course_id: 'course-123',
     course_name: 'WordPress Basics',
     value: 1
   });
   </script>

   Place this in the appropriate template or hook that runs when a course is completed (your LMS documentation should indicate which hook to use).

5. Test events in GA4 DebugView.Enroll in a course using a test account, start lesson 1, complete a lesson, and finish the course. Verify that your course_enrolled, course_started, lesson_completed, and course_completed events appear in the GA4 DebugView.

Step 3: Build Funnels from Landing Page to Course Completion

Events on their own are useful, but funnels show you where people drop off on the path from “interested visitor” to “successful student.” GA4’s funnel explorations make this easier to visualize.

1. List your ideal course journey.For a paid course, a typical journey might be: view course sales page → click “Enroll” → view checkout → complete purchase → view lesson 1 → complete course.
2. Create a funnel exploration in GA4.In GA4, go to Explore → Funnel exploration. Create a new report and define each step using either page paths (for page-based steps) or events (for actions like course_enrolled or course_completed).
3. Apply filters for a specific course.Use dimensions like page path, event parameter: course_name, or campaign to focus on one course at a time. This lets you see where learners for that course are getting stuck.
4. Look for major drop-off points.Pay attention to steps where you lose a large percentage of people, such as from sales page to checkout, checkout to purchase, or lesson 1 to lesson 2. These are your highest-leverage improvement opportunities.

Step 4: Analyze Lesson Engagement and Drop-Off Points

Funnels show you the big picture; engagement reports show exactly which lessons are working and which are losing students. Combining LMS reports with GA4 helps you zoom in on problem areas.

1. Use page and screen reports for lesson engagement.In GA4, look at Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens. Filter by your course lesson URLs (for example, pages under /courses/course-name/). Note which lessons have high views but also high exit rates or low average engagement time.
2. Track video and scroll behavior.If your analytics tool or LMS supports it, track events like video plays, pauses, and completions, or scroll-depth events (50%, 75%, 100%). This shows whether students are consuming the lesson or just clicking through.
3. Compare quiz performance by lesson.Cross-check GA4 engagement data with LMS quiz reports. For example, if lesson 3 has high drop-off and its quiz has a low pass rate, that’s a strong signal the content may be too hard, confusing, or poorly explained.
4. Identify “choke points.”Make a short list of lessons where engagement or quiz performance drops sharply compared to earlier lessons. These are the choke points you will focus on improving first.

Step 5: Turn analytics online courses Insights into Course Improvements

Once you know where students get stuck, it’s time to make changes and measure their impact. Treat this as an ongoing optimization loop rather than a one-time fix.

1. Prioritize one course and one bottleneck.Start with the course that has the highest business impact (revenue, leads, or strategic importance). Within that course, pick a single bottleneck such as a sales page with poor conversion or a lesson with heavy drop-off.
2. Form a hypothesis.Use your data to guess why students are dropping. For example: “The sales page doesn’t clearly state who the course is for” or “Lesson 4 is too long and has no interactivity.”
3. Make a specific change.Examples include shortening a long video, breaking one dense lesson into two, adding summary cheat sheets, rewriting headlines, or rearranging modules so that early wins come sooner.
4. Run a simple A/B test when possible.If your page builder or marketing stack supports A/B testing, create two versions of your course sales page or lesson layout and split traffic between them. Track which variant leads to higher enrollments or completions.
5. Measure results over time.Allow at least one or two course cycles (or a few weeks of traffic) before judging results. Compare metrics like enrollment rate, completion rate, and quiz pass rate before and after the change.

Step 6: Create a Simple Reporting Routine

analytics online courses are only useful if you look at them regularly. A lightweight reporting routine ensures you keep improving your online courses without getting lost in endless dashboards.

1. Build a simple analytics dashboard.Use GA4’s Library or your analytics plugin’s built-in dashboards to create a view that shows: course enrollment rate, course completion rate, top drop-off steps in your funnel, and engagement for key lessons.
2. Schedule a weekly review.Once a week, spend 20–30 minutes checking trends. Look for sudden changes (spikes or drops) and confirm whether they match recent changes you made to the course or marketing.
3. Schedule a deeper monthly review.Once a month, dive deeper into funnels and lesson-level engagement. Update your list of bottlenecks and choose one or two experiments to run in the coming month.
4. Share insights with your team.If you work with instructors, designers, or marketers, summarize your findings in a simple report or slide deck. Highlight what’s working, what’s not, and what you plan to change next.

Keep Your Analytics Online Courses Evolving with Data

Using analytics to improve online courses is not about staring at graphs all day—it’s about asking better questions. Where are students getting lost? Which lessons genuinely help them succeed? Which traffic sources bring committed learners instead of window shoppers?

By defining clear goals, tracking the right events in your WordPress LMS, building funnels, and reviewing engagement regularly, you turn your courses into living products that get better over time. Start with one course, focus on one bottleneck, and let your data guide the next improvement.

Further Reading

• How to Install Google Analytics on WordPress
• How to Check Traffic on a WordPress Website
• Best WordPress Membership Plugins Compared

Frequently Asked Questions