How to create advanced LearnDash and BuddyPress user reports

One of the greatest things about the WordPress ecosystem is the synergy that some plugins have. Although a lot of plugins are created to be self-contained, most of them work even better when paired with others. Today we’ll see how to extract information from Learndash and BuddyPress so you can better understand your user base.

When it comes to creating a classroom environment with WordPress LearnDash is king. It allows you to create and sell courses, and make them always fresh and interesting for your users. But when we talk about social interaction that’s right up BuddyPress’ alley. It goes beyond the basic forums interaction and allows students to join groups, add friends and learn more along the way.

This combination may seem obvious, but today we’ll see how to make the most out of it. We’ll see how you can use Users Insights to give you a whole new understanding of your entire e-learning platform. Our main goal is learning different kinds of reports to extract information of these two plugins combined.

The main topics we’ll cover today are:

• Setup and planning
• Understanding pass ratios
• Course preferences and user groups
• User demographics and performance
• Finding new niches

So let’s get started!

Setup and planning

We often highlight the importance of a good planning. Once you know what kind of information you will get, it’s far easier to craft reports to do what you need.

In our case, the setup part is simply activating the BuddyPress and Learndash Modules for Users Insights.

Once you do that your registered WordPress users will be searchable by many criteria using the plugins information.

Now it’s time to quickly check all the filters and columns available. This will give you an idea of what is possible to do, and what isn’t. For example, once we see the “Has enrolled course” filter we know that it’s possible to gather user information for each of the courses independently.

You can also learn more about all the available filters and columns in our LearnDash and BuddyPress guides.

Now let’s go ahead and check a few examples that aren’t so obvious. From there you can even craft your own user reports!

 

Understanding pass ratios

We have different columns and filters about quiz attempts and quiz passes. Therefore, using this information it’s possible to understand what makes a user pass or fail the quizzes.

We’ve covered how you can find out information about quiz completion for your users in the past. So we’ll show you not just the basics, but how to combine this with the BuddyPress information.

For example, it’s possible that there’s a correlation between the social activity or number of friends of a user and their success. This may show that users who ask and interact more with friends are more likely to have their issues solved.

To check this we’ll export a list of all users with their quiz attempts, quiz passes, friends and activity updates visible.

Once you have this information you can discover the quiz pass ratio (quiz passes divided by quiz attempts). Using Excel you can order users from high to low, and there you’ll have the most successful users at the top.

From there you can use something as simple as conditional formatting to see how likely users are to pass based on their social activity. Also, you can use more complex tools, such as statistical analysis. We’ve covered that in our guide about reports with LearnDash and bbPress.

It’s also possible to check the same correlation between quiz passes and other criteria such as:

• Total number of groups
• Users who are members of a group in specific (for example members of the group “Math Questions” may be less likely to fail Math quizzes)
• Different pass ratios for each course
• User groups
• Company
• Age / Date of Birth
• Languages
• Occupation
• Past courses

Now let’s check how to better understand the users’ preferences.

 

Course preferences and user groups

When you are managing your online courses it’s easy to see which are the most popular. But there are some information surrounding this that could be interesting as well.

For example, you could create reports of the users who are enrolled in a course and are from a certain group. Or even you could see out of a group, how many users are enrolled in a certain course.

Let’s say that we want to know out of the members of the “PHP Lovers” how many users are not in the PHP course. In this way we can reach out to them and recommend them this course.

If you want, you can first have an overview of the entire group with a simple filter.

Now we know that this group has 42 members. We’ll check which users haven’t enrolled in the course:

You can export these users and send them an email about the benefits of that course in particular. Since that course clearly matches their interest your chances of getting more users enrolled are high.

 

User demographics and performance

If you have a broader audience it’s good to take into account demographics aspects when creating or evaluating your courses.

So, for instance, you can take into account users from different countries or even different languages. This can help you tailor the courses to their needs, considering cultural differences or language barriers.

Let’s check the course completion rate among users from a foreign language. In this example we assume that we have a custom BuddyPress profile field called “Languages” where our users can select the languages that they speak. So, we’ll need to know how many users have enrolled that course, speak this language and haven’t completed it:

These users may or may not be inactive. To make sure we get users who have dropped the course we need to filter only users that haven’t logged in for too long.

 

Finding new niches

Now when we think about different marketing strategies it’s always good to know where we are already performing well. Hence the information provided by user demographics and preferences is invaluable in finding good niches.

It’s time for some open exploration. There is no right or wrong answer, only different ways of using the information you’ve got.

For example, if you have an Occupation profile field in BuddyPress, you can check the profession of the users who have enrolled in the course X. To do that just make the Occupation column visible.

You can also see individual information for users enrolled in an important course. You can check their profiles one by one and check, for instance, their groups or which other courses they have enrolled in:

The sky is the limit now, you can freely explore your user information and try to find where you are doing well and what you can do to better reach this audience.

 

Conclusion

Our mission today was understanding different reports that combine LearnDash and BuddyPress information. In this way we’re able to gather complete data about your users, their preferences and their demographics.

We also saw how to use this information to expand your business. By the end of the day you should be able to make better supported decisions with all the information needed at hand.

We hope you enjoyed it and see you next time!