{14th STC India Annual Conference: Session} Demystifying search: Tips on how to make your help content search-friendly - Anindita Basu and Vidhya
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STC India Conference
Oct 8, 2012, 4:18:03 AM10/8/12
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Topic Details
If users can't find what they are looking for, it doesn't matter how accurate, complete, or task-oriented your help system is. Making sure that your product help is visible to customers and delivers the relevant information on demand requires that the help content be search friendly. Our goal is to encourage customers to use our products without getting frustrated searching through help content. The presenters will demonstrate how to facilitate navigation and search by the use of keywords, headings, indexes, links, and icons to improve the search experience. The presentation will also take you under the hoods and show you how search engines pick and rank content.
Main aspects that will be discussed during the presentation/ workshop:
1. What should I do to ensure that my readers can find what they are seeking - exactly that and nothing more - within the first three clicks? Surveys show that an average user visits no more than three pages within a help system.
We discuss how to approach the design of your online content as a user and point out the techniques to facilitate ease of navigation and retrieval of relevant content. We examine the appropriate level of detail in key help components and offer useful tips to effectively leverage metadata.
2. Is my help content search optimised? Surveys show that users pay the most attention to the top five results in any search query.
We discuss the various criteria that are aggregated by search engines to rank content. We give tips and best practices for using these criteria to our best advantage so that information sought by a user through an external search engine is no further than three pages away.
3. How do I monitor the progress and success of my efforts to optimise help content for search?
We discuss the various methods through which the search behaviour of users can be tracked and how the information thus gathered can be mined to help make future searches speedier and more relevant. We also share with the audience the efforts at Rational (IBM) towards search-optimisation and some "Before" and "After" statistics.
Speakers
Anindita Basu is an editor at IBM India, where she started as a writer. Her interests include the English language, DITA, and documentation process improvements.
Vidhya Kumar is a lead technical writer at IBM India. She has experience in handling complex global projects at IBM, NetApp, and TCIS. Her expertise lies in information architecture, usability frameworks, and a wide gamut of authoring tools. Her areas of interest are Agile, user experience, and tools.
Registrations
If users can't find what they are looking for, it doesn't matter how accurate, complete, or task-oriented your help system is. Making sure that your product help is visible to customers and delivers the relevant information on demand requires that the help content be search friendly. Our goal is to encourage customers to use our products without getting frustrated searching through help content. The presenters will demonstrate how to facilitate navigation and search by the use of keywords, headings, indexes, links, and icons to improve the search experience. The presentation will also take you under the hoods and show you how search engines pick and rank content.
Main aspects that will be discussed during the presentation/ workshop:
1. What should I do to ensure that my readers can find what they are seeking - exactly that and nothing more - within the first three clicks? Surveys show that an average user visits no more than three pages within a help system.
We discuss how to approach the design of your online content as a user and point out the techniques to facilitate ease of navigation and retrieval of relevant content. We examine the appropriate level of detail in key help components and offer useful tips to effectively leverage metadata.
2. Is my help content search optimised? Surveys show that users pay the most attention to the top five results in any search query.
We discuss the various criteria that are aggregated by search engines to rank content. We give tips and best practices for using these criteria to our best advantage so that information sought by a user through an external search engine is no further than three pages away.
3. How do I monitor the progress and success of my efforts to optimise help content for search?
We discuss the various methods through which the search behaviour of users can be tracked and how the information thus gathered can be mined to help make future searches speedier and more relevant. We also share with the audience the efforts at Rational (IBM) towards search-optimisation and some "Before" and "After" statistics.
Speakers
Anindita Basu is an editor at IBM India, where she started as a writer. Her interests include the English language, DITA, and documentation process improvements.
Vidhya Kumar is a lead technical writer at IBM India. She has experience in handling complex global projects at IBM, NetApp, and TCIS. Her expertise lies in information architecture, usability frameworks, and a wide gamut of authoring tools. Her areas of interest are Agile, user experience, and tools.
Registrations
Registrations are now open for the 14th STC India Annual Conference. To register, please visit http://bit.ly/stcinconfreg
Thanks and Regards,
Program Committee
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