A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, some technical writing manager at a company that had just moved their user manual online spoke to someone who maintained websites and discovered the pageviews metric. Ever since then, technical writing teams around the world have used this as a measure of how good their documentation is. But is it?
Why do people come to a page on a Help site? The obvious answer is to get information on how to perform a task. The not so obvious answer is because the product UX isn't intuitive enough to allow a user to complete the task at hand. Once we understand that, then we realise that the best way to increase pageviews is to simply build an unusable product.
So should we stop tracking pageviews? Far from it, we should track it closely - albeit for a different reason. Pageviews are a great way to figure out parts of the product where the UI is not inuitive enough for the user. The solution may still be within the documentation, but there is a high chance that it lies in the product UX.
What metrics do you use to demonstrate the usefulness of your Help site?
Comentários