The content needs to help users find what they need: In a study by Forrester, 72
percent of those polled cited ???Direct path to content I am looking for??? when asked
about what constitutes a positive experience on a website.7 This was the leading
answer, eclipsing good menu structure, site search, and personalized features.
Users want to be pointed in the right direction, and rely on strong, clear
messaging to help them.
2. The content needs to help users solve their problems: Leading a camel to the
watering hole is just fine??”as long as you don??™t ask them to drink vinegar. Actual
help documents need to be penned in a clear, authoritative, knowledgeable voice
that helps readers.
Many companies staff professional helpdesk writers to scribe this information, and most
are exceedingly good at their jobs. This is one area where a permanent staff member who
understands the product or service on the finest level of detail can deliver a surprisingly
high ROI. Consider this excerpt from a document published in ESRI??™s knowledgebase
(shown earlier in Figure 10-3):
???Geographic data is represented on a map as a layer. A layer might represent a particular
type of feature, such as highways, lakes, or wildlife habitats, or it might represent a particular
type of data such as a satellite image, a CAD drawing, or a terrain elevation surface in
a triangulated irregular network (TIN).
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