Exam Description: Quality Standards

What is Your Exam Description? Why is it Important?

Your exam description explains what your exam is about to potential examinees. It is largely responsible for convincing them that your exam -- and your exam only -- will change their lives! In your exam description, we recommend providing information about 1) the content of the exam and 2) how examinees will benefit from that content.

What you Need to Know

• Use the exam description to summarize what your exam covers, how it is written, and what examinees will gain from the exam.
• Optimize for sales conversions using our recommended best practices below for the structure of your exam description.
• Don’t include images, external links, or links to other Prepzo exams in your exam description.
• Don’t include coupon codes, coupon links, or mentions of discounts (per our rules and guidelines).

Remember, we do check for this as part of our Quality Review Process.

In this article we will cover:

• Best practices for the tone of your description
• Best practices for the structure of your description
• Minimum requirements to pass our Quality Review Process
• Examples of good exam descriptions
• How to edit your exam description on Prepzo

Best Practices for the Tone of Your Description

1. Ask yourself these questions before writing (to make sure you really understand your potential examinees):

• What are the demographics of your ideal examinee?
• What needs are you solving for your ideal examinee?
• Why does your ideal examinee want to purchase your exam? Is it essential to their career, relationships, lifestyle?  How?
• Look at message boards, forums, reviews of other similar books or products.  What do examinees ask for in other places?  How will your practice exam meet those needs?

2.  Get personal with your examinees:

• Speak directly to the examinees; say "You" instead of "enrollees", "examinees", or "exam takers".
• Use easy-to-understand copy, and sentences of various lengths to keep examinees engaged.

3. Stay positive and emphasize benefits:

• Focus on the benefits your exam provides to examinees. What problems will it solve for them?  How will it change their life?
• Stay positive and approachable as you walk examinees through what makes your exam unique and how the examinee will benefit from it.
• If possible, add in some real-world examples to validate your exam topic.

4. Bold and CAPITALIZE with care:

• Just as sentence length should vary, so should formatting (if too much is bolded, nothing will stand out).
• Do not include long and dramatic bullet point lists (besides in the area we recommend in the Structure part of this article)

Best Practices for the Structure of Your Exam Description

1. Add an introductory 2-3 sentences at the beginning of your description:

• Highlight what your exam is (a high-level overview) and how it will benefit examinees.
• Do not ask questions or "pitch" examinees here -- instead, focus on the problem your exam is solving in a positive and inspiring tone.

2. Add in 1 sentence 'heading' after your 2-3 sentence overview:

• Structure this as follows: one sentence that contains an action verb, the subject of the exam, and the context of the exam subject (in bold and "title case" -- the first letter of each word capitalized).
• Do not repeat the title of your exam.
• Do not make claims such as "The best exam on the subject!" or "100% satisfied or your money back".

3. Add a short list of bullet points underneath the heading:

• If an examinee is scanning your exam page, including this short list will help them take in the most important benefits your exam provides, and what makes it unique.
• Your bullets should be structured as short phrases that start with an action verb (e.g. Learn, Recognize, Build, Find).

4. Add a one line overview of your exam topic:

• This line should be different than the one-line heading.
• Bold this text, if desired.

5. Add an overview of your exam topic (what are you covering?):

• This should be 4-6 sentences long (or two small paragraphs).
• Some ideas for content to include: the exam topic's history, what the topic is used for, who uses it, why it's unique, the types of jobs you can get if you know the topic, current events or news about the topic.
• In general, short teasers are better than detailed histories.
• Highlight what makes your exam unique (e.g. real-life applications, projects, test-prep).

6. Add in an overview of your exam (how do you cover your topic?):

• Most exam descriptions have the highest word count in this section.
• Expand upon the bullet points you included above: what benefits your exam offers, what skills you have, and any exam metrics you want to include.
• Tone: try not to overload your examinees with too many details too fast, and stay friendly and approachable. Stick with small paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each.
• At the end of this section include a conclusion that tells the examinee what they will walk away from the exam with.

Minimum Requirements to Pass our Quality Review Process

• Use the exam description to summarize what your exam covers, and what examinees will gain from the exam.
• Don’t include images, external links, or links to other Prepzo exams in your exam description.
• Don’t include coupon codes, coupon links, or mentions of discounts

How to Edit Your Exam Description on Prepzo

Click here to learn how to edit your exam description.