Re: Knowledge Base stats for a "good" number of views?

[Nina Rogers <janina -dot- rogers -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Thanks to everyone who commented on my question about KB views. Our content
audit is going to look at a number of factors in additional views -
audience, level of technicality, readability, link source, etc. I think it
will be interesting to see the correlations that come out. I'll plan to
share some of the results/lessons learned here if I think they'll be
helpful. Thanks again!

Nina

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 3:22 PM Nina Rogers <janina -dot- rogers -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> Ha!  But I think you make a good point. A KnowledgeBase isn't a novel, and
> most people aren't going to access it unless they're stuck. Lots of views
> doesn't necessarily mean what a manager may think it means. I think a lot
> will be revealed in the content audit.
>
> Thanks!
>
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 3:36 PM Emoto <emoto1 -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 1:26 PM Nina Rogers <janina -dot- rogers -at- gmail -dot- com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi, all!
>> >
>> > My company recently looked at the stats for our KB (which I manage), and
>> > they are not happy with them. Of the 326 articles in the KB, 91 articles
>> > are getting 80% of the views while 235 articles are getting 20% of the
>> > views.
>> >
>> > I realize there is always room for improvement in any KB, but I'm not as
>> > upset over these numbers as management is. We have certain features in
>> our
>> > software that are rarely used, and a good portion of our articles are
>> for
>> > special, uncommon use cases and legacy versions of the software--and are
>> > stored in a folders labeled as such. So I wouldn't expect certain
>> articles
>> > to get a great number of views.
>> >
>> > I am wondering where I might find information on what would be
>> considered
>> > "good" view rates for a typical KB. I'm preparing to do a large-scale
>> > content audit for our company, which will include the KB, and I'll be
>> > looking at (among other things) the views. I'd like to have something to
>> > compare it to--some sort of "normal" standard.
>> >
>> > Any ideas? I've Googled a bit but am not finding anything, and I'm
>> hoping
>> > I'm just looking in the wrong places. Thanks!
>>
>> My thought is that if Management is not happy with the numbers, they
>> should be able to articulate what "good" numbers are and *why* those
>> numbers are good.
>>
>> I would flip it around and say something like "Our Product GUI is very
>> user-friendly and intuitive, such that users only need help with a
>> small number of items. The better our product design is, the less hits
>> our KB will get, because the user won't need help. Therefore, we
>> should really try to discover what it is about those areas of the
>> product that causes people to consult the KB. If we can improve those
>> product areas, we can improve the user experience by making it
>> unnecessary for them to research how to use those product areas in the
>> KB."
>>
>> Of course, I'm kind of a nut, so don't listen to me.  ;-)
>>
>> Bob
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