Its pretty apparent that one of the highest ranked travel paths relates
to lost bookmarks... Here is the navigation path
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Knowledge_Base (the highest ranked landing
pages) ->
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Firefox (then to a firefox landing
page,
from here the top link click is to the bookmark page below) ->
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Bookmarks (when users get to this
page they seem to split up the navigation path with the two highest
ranked clicked on links listed below)
The most frequent hit on the bookmarks page had people going to
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarkbackups_folder
It appears that people might thinking that this might be a solution page
and are attempting go directly to a solution like "tell me how to
find/install a bookmark back up file..."
while others go here for information that relates to the problem I have
described in terms of the problem
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks (people that have a
orientation to describing a problem)
There isn't very good content at
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarkbackups_folder that provides a direct
answer on how to restore a bookmark back up file (its more a definition
page) so then a very high pct of users appear to leave that page and
follow the link to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks
As we start to put together ideas for the style guide how should we
should be thinking about article naming conventions that will help in
efficient navigation from pages and search terms?
Should we try to name articles mostly based on a summary of the
problem?, or name articles based on a description of the solution (how
to's) ?, or possibly cross link one or more article(s) that attack the
problem from both ends.
In this particular case it appears that users want to go directly to the
solution, but we might be frustrating that by causing additional link
navigation...
It's interesting that with search the pattern is entirely different.
Top searches related to bookmarks that results in hits to the knowledge
base are
1. "Firefox Bookmarks" (general)
2. "bookmarks" (general)
3. "lost bookmarks" (problem description)
then on to other bookmark topics like
4. "Import Bookmarks"
This might indicate that when people are searching they are describing
the problem, not the solution. Anyone know of some good research in
this are that might help provide some guidelines around optimizing for
directory navigation and/or search?
chris h.
Summary of the problem, definitely. While in this case, one possible
solution is fairly obvious ("restoring from a backup"), I'd say that
in the majority of cases, the solution isn't obvious, or there are
many possible solutions.
Take for example "Toolbar customizations reset on startup". The
solution to this is to open safe mode and pick "Reset toolbars and
windows". Users would have no idea that this is the solution, and
would not likely pick an article named as such (it's even the
*opposite* of what they're trying to do). In the current KB, this
article redirects to "Corrupt localstore.rdf", but this is just done
to prevent duplication across the half-dozen issues that have the same
solutions.
> There isn't very good content at
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarkbackups_folder that provides a direct
> answer on how to restore a bookmark back up file (its more a definition
> page) so then a very high pct of users appear to leave that page and
> follow the link to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks
I think the solution would be to add some useful "maybe you want to
read this instead" links to the top of that article, and possibly
remove that article from the category.
I have to say this is incredibly useful data. Up to this point
understanding what users are trying to do in the KB has just been
guesswork and anecdotes.
\snip
I think the solution would be to add some useful "maybe you want to read this instead" links to the top of that article, and possibly remove that article from the category.
Bookmarks appear to be missing after upgrading to Firefox 2.Then provide instruction for recovery under each of these sections or link to another page if multiple symtoms can use a common set recovery instructions. Some examples of common recovery steps might be...
Bookmarks always missing after restart (firefox fails to shutdown)
Bookmarks missing after computer power outages, crashes, or abnormal shutdown
Bookmarks appear in the Bookmarks Manager but not in the main menu (Corrupt localstore.rdf)
Bookmarks missing after inadvertent switch to another user log on account,
Bookmarks missing after inadvertent switch to another Firefox profile.
Finding your bookmark
Restoring bookmarks from backup
...
I have to say this is incredibly useful data. Up to this point understanding what users are trying to do in the KB has just been guesswork and anecdotes.
_______________________________________________ support-planning mailing list support-...@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-planning
I would just like to point out that if a user gets help via the
forums/irc/etc. they will likely be pointed directly to a page. This
may skew the numbers you are seeing. For example if a user is having
the corrupt localstore.rdf problem and getting help from IRC they will
be pointed to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolbar_customizations_reset_on_startup
+99% of the time. This is because we have canned support responses
thanks to firebot.
It would be interesting if the new support system could give us
breadcrumbs for a random selection of users so that we could better
organize information.
Kevin Brosnan
And where does searching from come into account, can you
tell where from.
What if I know I want Corrupt localstore.rdf
and don't want to type it, and want to do a cursory check
of the text with the search results
:: corrupt localstore
and go to what is probably going to be the first hit from
did that constitute a search for me that you see, what if I turn
referrer id off, it certainly won't be
a search for someone who reads my reply of
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Corrupt_localstore.rdf
and which I normally do not show the title of such articles since
they are within the name of the URL.
Structure:
Putting "See also/instead" information at the beginning of
an article would probably be a bad idea and distracting.
The person came to the page to see something, probably
even saw relative description of article based finding search
words. If they don't find what they want or know they won't
find it they end up or go to the end of the article for other
information. The only exception would be if something is
a confusing issue because of spelling or usage you might
include alternatives at the top, with wiki that often means
an article with the same title but different capitalization
(gag, barf but it works).
--
David McRitchie,
Firefox Customizations: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm
To me, any "preventing future problems like this" sections or links to other pages should come at the end of all these navigation paths to avoid frustrating users trying to solve the immediate problem ...
When a symtom (like bookmarks are missing/lost) might appear as the result of one of many causes do we have any style guidelines that can help to structure the information?
There isn't very good content at
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarkbackups_folder that provides a direct
answer on how to restore a bookmark back up file (its more a definition
page) so then a very high pct of users appear to leave that page and
follow the link to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks
On Jun 11, 11:41 pm, Chris Hofmann <chofm...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> When a symtom (like bookmarks are missing/lost) might appear as the
> result of one of many causes do we have any style guidelines that can
> help to structure the information?
There's no set guidelines, but what we keep in mind is
-The frequency of the problem (need metrics!)
-The difficulty of diagnosis or solving
-The destructiveness of diagnosis or solving
For the most part, the most common solutions are listed first. But,
like Majken says, given a hypothetical situation where 90% of the
problems will be solved by a new profile and 10% of the problems will
be solved by pressing a button, I'd suggest the button first because
of ease and non-destructiveness.
> One possible style guideline might be to first describe all the possible
> symtoms... e.g. sections or individual articles for topics like those
> listed below, and an attempt make to order the list in terms of
> estimated frequency, or simplicity of the symtom.
Creating section headers based on the symptoms often works, but it
breaks down for articles like Lost Bookmarks. The solutions just don't
have distinct enough symptoms. Like Majken says, I don't know if the
most complex articles are the ones to base guidelines on.
I think we're just talking about including it in the intro text rather
than having a distracting list. The text would be like what we do at
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved - a user might
legitimately think that "preferences not saved" could mean their
preferences on where toolbars are, so we include a possible
alternative they might want to look at.
Sorry for asking this at the wrong place, but where could I suggest a
new feature for T-bird? (I'd like to have the option of attaching a
pic to people's names so that when I let autofill complete an address,
I'd get a visual cue that I'm sending to the right person. Would
eliminate some mistakes.) Thanks for your advice.
Okay, hardly noticeable, so not really distracting. Interesting that
it is not included at bottom and especially because the name is
not shown at top.
As I said in my reply to the first meeting notes, search should be the
primary navigation tool. Ideally, a user looking for help, should go to
the support portal
<http://wiki.mozilla.org/images/9/98/Firefox-Support-Mock-Homepa.png>,
and type his/her question. Let's say "can't find bookmarks", or
"bookmarks are gone". This should result in a list of search result,
with the "lost bookmarks" page, hopefully being the top result.
Portal-->Search_results-->Article
By they way, what search engine are we going to use?
What do you think of doing away with "general" pages. In a system, where
search is the primary navigation tool, pages that don't address a
specific task/question do not serve much (if any) purpose.
My big fear is bad terminology:
- favorites disappeared (no results at all)
- my websites are gone (6 results, but none are the lost bookmarks page)
- firefox ate my saved pages (1 result, which isn't the lost bookmarks page)
I see it a lot like searching for a bug in bugzilla; and I've found the
inclusion of DUP bugs in search results to be a Godsend. This is where I
think including forums discussions in search results could really be
helpful.
Which pages are you referring to as "general" pages? The Category
pages?
> My big fear is bad terminology:
> - favorites disappeared (no results at all)
> - my websites are gone (6 results, but none are the lost bookmarks page)
> - firefox ate my saved pages (1 result, which isn't the lost bookmarks page)
This would be another useful metric to have... The most common
searches that result in nothing, or the most common searches where the
user ends up posting a question.
Different terminology can be partially addressed by including that
terminology in the page. For example, on http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs,
the words "freezing" and "not responding" are included for the sake of
searchers.
Yes, category pages would certainly be classified as "general" pages;
but I just don't want to limit the term to category pages. :-)
> This would be another useful metric to have... The most common
> searches that result in nothing, or the most common searches where the
> user ends up posting a question.
>
> Different terminology can be partially addressed by including that
> terminology in the page. For example, on http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs,
> the words "freezing" and "not responding" are included for the sake of
> searchers.
Maybe tags? Meta keywords?
My ilias.ca access logs actually show my what search terms were used,
when a person arrives at my site. I wonder if it's possible to find out
the most common search phrases entered in sumo?