Redesign the support page
| Project: | Drupal.org webmasters |
| Component: | Content moderation |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Amazon |
| Status: | active |
Redesigning the support page
The Drupal support page is visited approximately 75 000 times per month. The /support page has been growing organically for a while and has become a catch all for everything the community thinks users should know, rather than a resource for support.
Problem with current page
Based on web analytics (pdf) we decided to try and improve this page. The exit rate on the support page is 12%, which is reasonable. Most of the traffic goes to two sections of Drupal.org, documentation and forums. Three of the most popular links from this page are primary navigation pages indicating users might not have found what they are looking for, and are returning to the home page or downloads page. Six percentage of visitors click the support tab, the page they are already on, indicating they are not getting what they wanted on the support page.
Proposed solution
Our proposed solution is to reduce the content, focus on most popular resources, use information hiding to reduce clutter, and provide high quality relevant solutions such as Drupal products to help users get support.
Reduce the content
The current page is 78 lines long and has 655 words on it, with dozens of links, most of which are very infrequently clicked on. The proposed solution is 15 lines long, fits in a single page, and has only 173 words.
We created several new pages to focus on particular content and link to them. We created a new support in other languages page. We created a new training services page. We are creating a commercial support page.
New Layout
The new layout focuses on three main types of support: getting started, documentation, help. We moved to a three column layout for better scanning. In the first row we include the most popular options. In the second, row we include advertisements for relevant and useful Drupal products. In the third row, we provide a series of links to popular references.
The new design was first developed by Bojhan, with a digital iteration by myself. Then Roy reviewed it and further suggested an iteration similar to the current design. .png)
Based on feedback we changed the third column title to better reflect its content as help.
Advertising
The Drupal community is developing a lot of new and exciting products that are useful and relevant to users looking for support. While we kept community resources as the top recommendations, we acknowledge that some of these products are more up to date and relevant. In particular, there are several Drupal 6 book products but the getting started PDF is still on Drupal 5.
Ad delivery is done using Google's Ad manager beta product which allows us to control the placement, delivery, and frequency of advertisements. The advertising system allows multiple users to create advertisements and managers to control delivery. We also have complete control over costs as we build a market for our advertisements. We have both text and image ads available and plan to conduct tests to see which are most popular.
Advertisers were contacted based on relevant products that would help users looking for support. The Drupal association keeps a list of everyone, currently 62 people, who have ever asked about advertising on Drupal.org. As more companies become aware of advertising opportunities on Drupal.org we expect to see an increase in revenue due to competition for advertising. Most of the advertisers have negotiated deals to provide sales commissions back to the Drupal association in exchange for advertising. Where sales commissions are not viable, we have established a market rate for cost per click based on rates on the /hosting page. Employees of companies recuse themselves from negotiating rates on behalf of their employer, but rely mostly on market rates and established deals. As the market for advertising becomes more competitive we anticipate better competitive advertising data to better inform which ads are displayed. Our efforts on the /hosting page using these techniques increased revenue well over 1000%.
Text Ads
Image Ads
This new support page was developed with help and feedback from many people including: Bojhan Somers, Roy Scholten, Greg Knaddison, Kent
Bye, James Walker, Jeff Whatcott, Jay Batson, and myself. I also worked closely with several members of the Drupal community to develop
new pages including Addison Berry, Gerhard Killesreiter, Greg Knaddison, Laura Scott, Khalid Baheyeldin. Thanks to advertisers who helped develop iterations of ads and provided feedback including: Jeff Robbins from Lullabot, Tom Geller from tomgeller.com, Damian Carvill from Packt Publishing, and Bryan House from Acquia. There are pending requests out to many other companies who are interested in useful and relevant advertising on the support page.
#1
#2
After seeing all the iterations of this page I must say I like the outcome, its more scanable and the information that needed to be prominently displayed as the business goal to improve ad incomest are. We might just fiddle a bit around with the format of the page when it comes to size of certain elements to get the biggest conversion.
Format
The alignment of the bullet point lists is off, it should be on the same indent as the content that you see under documentation, help, getting started.
Content
The content in Get started, Documentation and help need some work. For example we can't say, start here. We either have to inmedidly refer to the PDF or 1/2 other documents that are to get started. For the documentation, are we taking care of developers? (API documentation?). The Help content could possibly contain something, about WE LOVE to help, a indicator to aspire people to ask.
Nice writeup
#3
Here is the HTML for formatting, http://drupalbin.com/3356, I'll take some suggestions for how to fix it.
We can't refer to the PDF since it's only for Drupal 5. I don't think people looking for support are looking for APIs. People looking for APIs are going to be fairly advanced in their needs and will know their way around.
I'll think about how to improve the help content.
#4
For reference, here's a screenshot of the page as it currently stands, which will probably be nice for people coming back to this issue in the future to see how far we've come. :)
#5
Here are my comments in graphical form: http://img.skitch.com/20080929-g5ws59wpcqjq2uyfubsccbx8kw.png
And in text form:
- I prefer the graphical ads. It makes it clear the distinction between community vs. commercial resources at a glance. It's also probably better CPM.
- I like the action/task-based heading "Getting started." "Documentation" and especially "Help" are weaker.
- No need for "Paid affiliate Advertising" header. People know what ads are. :P This will save some real-estate on the page so we could potentially add another link or two to the areas below.
- We should also include an inconspicuous link for "want to advertise here?" to help drive more business to this page.
- "Multichannel baby" doesn't fit with the rest of the text (Addi? ;)). It should ask a question like the other two.
- The bottom of the page says "Does this not meet your needs? Let us know." but there's no indication of how to let us know. :P Probably a link to the contact form, or..?
Thanks a lot for your hard work, folks. This looks great.
One other question. What is the "action" on this issue? Is this just a call for feedback? Is this a call for someone to implement this? Or..?
#6
Agreed on all your points, esp. remove the 'Paid affiliate…" header and adding the contact link.
The copy needs finetuning for sure, I'm surprised to see my first draft largely intact still :-)
suggestions:
Documentation -> Read documentation
Help -> Get help
Multichannel… -> Want to join the discussion?
Put the 'want to advertise here?' link below the ads, aligned right.
#7
Thanks for the feedback. I've implemented it all.
The call to action is feedback. Where the CSS or HTML needs to be tuned, I'll take some help.
Kieran
#8
I am going to go and request Google Analytics be re-enabled. This has now been deployed live.
#9
Why do we need Google Analytics again? HBX is there, you could just use those?
#10
I attached an image to show the alignment of the bullet points. I think that Training, books and commercial support should be aligned the same as Get started, get documentation ect.
We should work a bit on the copy :
What do you want to know more about? (Have to make this shorter)
Start here (Doesn't explain the link)
And on a last note : Can't find what you are looking for? Have a suggestion for improving this page, add a comment below.
Do people feel comfortable commenting on a landing page?
#11
When I initially checked out the new version, I thought this was a mistake until I read the copy of the page. Seems like people may want a way to leave a note that isn't out in the public for everyone who visits the page to see.
#12
Broken link:
The link in the sentence "Support in other languages?" is resulting to a "Page Not Found".
Before the redesign, it was:
See our list of Drupal community <a href="http://drupal.org/language-specific-communities">sites in other languages</a>.To follow the style of the new support page, my suggestion is to change the text to:
Drupal community <a href="/language-specific-communities">sites in other languages</a>?So it will be:
PS: The word "support" was actually dropped in this sentence even before the redesign because the sites listed on the linked page aren't *just* for support. Ref: http://drupal.org/node/5/revisions and http://drupal.org/language-specific-communities
John
#13
I fixed the "other languages" link
#14
The "Who do you think you are?" strikes me strange. think "Who do you think you are, the king?"
#15
A couple of quick comments:
- the Google image ads are sometimes interrupting page load
- Under "Who do you think you are", I expected "Site maintainers guide" to be aimed at people who maintain Drupal sites, but it is instead aimed at maintainers of *this* site. Don't think the support page is the right place for this link!
But overall, much improved :)
#16
chx: I think I have to agree, what could we do else?
qpk: Agreed, the site maintainers guide should not be there. Let me watch some statistics on this page, as we change it.
#17
@Amazon Thanks to the great redesign. ;-)
#18
@gpk, addi - Site maintainers guide should probably go to something like http://drupal.org/handbook/customization instead.
Where in the documentation should this point to?
Thanks to everyone for the feedback. We are continuing to refine it.