Christine Kent wrote:
>
>
> Structure may not always be the
> answer, but looking at the usage patterns that work is a complex issue.
>
>
> From time to time, I suggest in online
> docs that we set up some scripts to check hits on various parts of the documentation
> set. It'd be interesting to see which bits get read, which get ignored etc.. And
> that should presumably inform ideas on online doc structures. Never seem to quite
> get anywhere with that one, though.
>
>
> This is another area where the on-line world has taken off
> without us. It is routine to set something such as Google Analytics to track hits to
> your pages, entry from and exit to data, etc. This lets you review the effectiveness
> (usually from a marketing or sales perspective) of each page. You can determine how
> the page was found (from a Google search, from a related web page, from a friendly
> link), the geographic location of the reader, data about their technical capacity etc,
> how long they stayed on the page, and whether the reader exited the page to another
> page on the site or left the site altogether. This gives you pretty much all the data
> you need to determine if a particular page is serving it?s stated purpose.
>
>
> I have not worked in a corporate environment for over three
> years now, but I gather, from what you are saying, that corporate has not started
> collecting this data. Does anyone work in an environment that does, and does anyone
> analyse either information delivery or training from this perspective. Interesting
> topic (to me).
>
Maybe some do. I haven't seen a rush to it, although you'd expect a bit more thought might be given to such things when people already want context-sensitive help, often accessed through web browsers.
What's interesting if you get such information, though, is how you react to the usage patterns, and how you base changes on different patterns of access etc... It's also a basis for further testing and/or refinements of such hypotheses as the 3 click rule etc... and some much deeper stuff.
For example, Google has a range of interesting new tools being developed in these and similar areas. Recently I was pointed to http://www.googlelabs.com/ and I recommend a bit of spare time browsing there to see some of the things that might become useful tools. Worth exploring. I think each of us might have different ideas about the usefulness or field of application of some of this stuff, but there are a couple there that have me thinking about how they can be used to make the job easier and more effective.
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