The Technical Content Benchmark Report 2023
In today's digital world, technical content is essential for businesses offering complex products and services to reduce support costs, increase customer satisfaction, and drive product adoption.
Your technical content can be either a liability or a true asset to your company. Companies that generate good content, authored and managed effectively, which is easily accessible to customers, will see a clear ROI, typically ranging from $100,000 up to $3,000,000 annually.
For this benchmark report we defined a set of recommended technical content KPIs which we believe every company should closely track. We then analyzed these KPIs' behavior over content interactions performed by 16 million users from 136 countries in 60 million sessions and identified "what good looks like, providing a clear and comprehensive industry benchmark for each of those KPIs.
We are happy to present you with the first ever technical content industry benchmark report, that allows you to measure how your content is performing against those industry benchmarks, identify areas for improvement, and use our best practices to turn your content into a more powerful asset.
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TRAFFIC KPIs
Average Pages per session
4.9
Measure content efficiency
Average Session Duration
4.54 MIN
Monitor user engagement and experience
Bounce Rate
38%
Measure how many visitors leave without browsing further
Returning Users
29%
Measure customer loyalty and repeat visits
SEARCH KPIs
Sessions with search
14%
Define and adjust your navigation strategy based on your user behavior
Search Click Through Rate (CTR)
52%
Measure how often users click on search results
Searches With Results
91%
Measure how often users find what they are looking for
CONTENT KPIs
Pages Viewed
40.2%
Measure the relevance of your content
Content With Engagement
14.4%
Measure interactions with your content from clicking the feedback button to downloading to PDF and sharing
CASE DEFLECTION AND SELF-SERVICE
Case Deflection
39%
Measure the reduction in your support workload and improvements in efficiency
Self-Service Rate
82%
Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty
This report provides insights derived from over 60 million user web sessions in customer documentation sites. These 16 million unique users come from 136 countries. They were involved in our study throughout 2022-2023. The report highlights trends based on KPIs related to user traffic, search behavior, and engagement with content.
The charts below show the distribution of the users by their industry and company employee size.
Traffic KPIs give you a better understanding of how your audience is engaging with your content.
Traffic KPIs include:
The KPIs are presented below together with a definition and the Zoomin benchmark value.
How to influence this KPI:
To boost documentation engagement, tailor content based on behavior and search queries using data analytics. Enhance navigation with internal links, related links, sidebars, and metro maps (workflows).
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How to influence this KPI :
To increase the average session duration, we recommend optimizing content to ensure it is easily digestible and engaging. This can be achieved by using visuals, videos, and Interactive elements to break up large blocks of text and make the content more appealing to customers.
1. Our previous B2B Self-Service Report indicated that customers expect to find the answer they are looking for in 6 minutes or less .This is an adequate amount of time for customers to engage with the documentation and find the information they need.
How to influence this KPI:
To decrease bounce rate, add related links and a table of contents in the sidebar for easier navigation. Cross-reference links should be added within topics for nonlinear navigation. Encourage exploration with a clear, concise homepage. Note that bounces aren't always negative and should be analyzed with additional engagement metrics for a better understanding of the user experience.
Returning users provide valuable insights into improving your customer experience and measuring customer loyalty. Returning users tend to have a higher customer lifetime value, lower acquisition costs, and provide valuable insights for improving the overall user experience.
A high percentage of returning users can indicate that users are finding value in your content and are returning for more. The percentage of returning users is on average 29% across all industries.
2. "We see when customers visit the technical documentation, they are twice as likely to become a customer. And if they visit us more than one time in month before a sale, they are five times more likely to become a customer." -David Hoare, VP Content, Service Now on Zoomin Flourish podcast
Users engage with the site's content, spending an average of 4.54 minutes per session and viewing about 5 pages. However, the high bounce rate of 37.6% suggests that many visitors leave after viewing just one page, likely due to the nature of technical documentation and dynamic links. By analyzing traffic insights, organizations can improve navigation and engagement to enhance the user experience.
In this section we will explore how to use search insights to improve content discoverability, by monitoring KPIs such as:
The KPIs are presented below together with a definition and the Zoomin benchmark value.
One way to measure search usage on your site is by tracking the percentage of sessions with search. This KPI shows how often users use the search function on your site compared to other methods of finding what they're looking for, like using navigation tiles or third-party search engines.
The percentage of sessions with search was 14.2% for all industries. When it comes to public sites, it is common to see a lower percentage of searches taking place within the site itself. This is because users often arrive at the site after conducting a search on a third-party search engine. For documentation sites that are publicly accessible and have high SEO scores, as much as 60% of the site's traffic may come from external search engines.
Another KPI to keep a close eye on is the percentage of successful and unsuccessful search queries on your site. This KPI shows how effective your search functionality is in helping users find what they are looking for.
Reducing the number of unsuccessful searches can improve user experience, increase engagement, reduce site abandonment, and improve search engine performance. The percentage of searches with results was 90.7% for all industries. This indicates that customers are finding what they are looking for in the documentation, and that the search functionality is performing well.
Search click-through rate measures the percentage of searches where users clicked on a result or refined their search with a filter. A higher CTR can indicate that your content is resonating with your audience, leading to increased traffic to your site, brand awareness, and customer engagement. The percentage of search click-through rate was 52.3% for all industries.
Consider fine-tuning your search analyzer using "golden-URLs"-like techniques to assess your content findability, using an analytics tool to identify the search queries that don't result in clicks, and understanding the root cause. In addition, use relevant titles and keywords in your content and consider adding search tips inside the search box to guide users in finding the information they need.
The search function is an essential feature of any website, and documentation sites are no exception. The search performance can greatly impact user experience. According to Zoomin search benchmarks, the percentage of searches with results was high across all industries, indicating that customers are finding what they need through the search functionality. However, the search click- through rate can still be improved. To improve your CTR, focus on fine-tuning the search algorithm using analytics to identify the search queries resulting in no clicks, and provide relevant titles and keywords in the content. Consider adding synonyms aligned with how your users are searching for information.
3. Zoomin customers can leverage Zoomin Analytics and Zoomin's Next Generation Search to enable a better search experience for their users.
1. Conduct keyword research: Identify the primary keywords that your audience is using and incorporate them into your content.
2. Optimize your site structure: Organize your site structure in a logical and intuitive way that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for. Use clear and descriptive titles for your pages and ensure that the URLs are search engine friendly.
3. Create high-quality content: Write informative and engaging content that is optimized for your primary keywords. Use subheadings, bullet points, and other formatting techniques to make your content easy to read and scan. Make sure your content is original, accurate, and up-to-date.
4. Use descriptive meta tags: Include relevant keywords in your page titles and meta descriptions, as these are often used by search engines to determine the relevance of a page to a user's query.
5. Use internal linking: Link to other pages on your site whenever it makes sense to do so, using descriptive anchor text. This helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your site, and can also keep users engaged and on your site longer.
In this section, we will discuss how organizations can use content insights to improve customer satisfaction and product adoption. There are some KPIs that you should track to measure the succes of your content strategy:
The Pages Viewed metric helps to measure the relevance of your total content corpus. A high percentage of content pages viewed indicates that most published content can generate interest. It is essential to consider the nature of your industry and the type of content being published when interpreting this metric.
The percentage of pages viewed (out of all pages on a portal) by customers is around 39% across industries. Public visitors are interested in a wider range of content and this can be attributed to the various steps in a customer's journey.
Use the Pages with Engagements per Session KPI to see if engagement (likes, shares, downloads, etc.) is focused on a few topics, or if it is more widespread across all your documentation. By understanding how your users interact with your content, you can make informed decisions on how to optimize and improve it. The percentage of pages that customers engaged with was 14.4% for all industries, with fully-gated content getting to as high as 19%.
To improve the content KPIs, consider implementing the following strategies:
1 Ungate relevant content to remove unnecessary access barriers.
2Conduct thorough user testing on all new content to ensure optimal usability and relevance.
3 Align content development with user needs using traffic and search insights.
4 Analyze and communicate user feedback to show value and action taken.
5 Regularly remove obsolete content from the site to improve user experience.
The success of a content strategy can be measured using Content KPIs. The Content Satisfaction Score indicates how well the content meets user needs and expectations; whereas Pages Viewed per Session shows the relevance of published content. Pages with Engagements per Session KPI highlight how users interact with content, allowing for optimization and improvement. To improve content KPIs, investigate your users' behavior and understand their demographics and make sure to incorporate this within your content. Ungate as much content as possible, regularly archive obsolete content, and respond to user feedback in a timely manner.
Self-service and case deflection are critical business goals every company in the world is looking to improve. Technical documentation is a powerful tool to achieve these two goals. By creating comprehensive, engaging, easy to search, find and consume content, you can empower your customers and to find the answers they need on their own, increasing self-service success rates and deflecting cases away from your support team. Let's dive into how you can leverage your documentation to drive your business forward and achieve these objectives.
Case deflection measures the extent to which customers can independently find answers without requiring live customer service assistance. A high case deflection rate is indicative of a positive customer experience, as customers are able to resolve their issues independently.
To improve case deflection:
1 Improve search functionality: Ensure that the search function on your site is easy to use and provides accurate and relevant results.
2Make content easily accessible: Ensure that helpful resources and authoritative content are available where your users are inside your web application, community or support site.
3Focus on user experience: Ensure your site is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Provide clear instructions and guidance for users to resolve their issues.
4 Consolidate all technical content - regardless of the content sources or authoring tools - make sure all content is presented in a unified way, with knowledge consistency.
5Design a personalized content experience where your users see the content that is relevant to them, when they need it.
Self-Service Rate measures the percentage of unique sessions where the users were able to successfully resolve their issues without opening a support ticket. A high Self-Service Rate indicates efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction.
To improve your Self-service Rate, consider the following:
1 Analyze user behavior: Use analytics tools to track user behavior and identify patterns or trends. This information can help you improve your self-service resources and identify areas for improvement.
2Offer proactive support: Anticipate common issues and provide resources to users before they even they need help. This can help improve the overall self-service success rate and reduce the number of support tickets opened.
3Simplify processes: Look for ways to simplify processes for users, such as providing step-by-step instructions or visual diagrams to explain complex tasks. This can help improve your user experience and increase the chances of self-service success.
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This report provides a detailed analysis of technical content benchmarks and how to impact them so your technical content becomes a real growth engine for your company. Our research shows that companies that invest in optimizing their technical content can see a clear ROI ranging from $100,000 up to $3,000,000 annually and even higher. Conversely, companies that fail to optimize their content architecture may lose up to $13,000 every day.
Use the content KPIs and benchmarks in this report to help you get started with identifying, measuring, and comparing your content's performance with industry standards and what actions you need to take to close any performance gaps.
Zoomin revolutionizes the way customers experience technical content by bringing together product user guides, support articles, developer documentation, and more to match the right answer to the right person at the right time. This not only increases trust and improves self-service, but also gives businesses crucial insights into their customers' behavior.
Zoomin offers proven methodology to help customers and other companies build a content ROI framework. Our approach involves identifying relevant content KPIs, compiling a comprehensive data set of these indicators, and utilizing our benchmarks and tools to quantify your data into a straightforward monetary value report.
CONTENT KPI
DATA
BENCHARK TOOLS
VALUE REPORT
As a bonus, partnering with Zoomin also includes a full benchmark analysis which compares each of your KPIs to industry standards. This analysis provides clear actions to take to ensure your company stands out as a leader in your industry.
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Last quarter Zoomin released our technical content benchmark report.
In that report, we meticulously analyzed content interactions performed by 16 million users from 136 countries in 60 million sessions and identified for you:
The most critical KPIs to track
The industry benchmark for each KPI
How to influence each KPI and win
With these insights, any company can effortlessly gauge their content's performance against industrybenchmarks, leveraging insights derived from millions of users and get tools and tips on how to improveeach and every KPI.
Today, we are releasing additional critical industry benchmarks to help you not only dive deeper into yourcontent’s performance, but also to help you make critical decisions about your content strategy. In thisenhanced benchmark report you can find:
A full comparison between gated and public content for all KPIs
In product help value KPIs
Content engagement benchmarks
In our recent white paper “The Case for Ungating” we elaborated on the main considerations forungating your product documentation. Today, we are sharing the full comparison content KPIs tablefor gated and ungated content
Pages per session
5.02
5.9
Session Duration
4.57
5.8
Bounce Rate
42%
23%
SEARCH
Sessions with search
16%
33%
Search Click Through Rate (CTR)
90%
87%
Searches With Results
53%
53%
CONTENT
Content satisfaction score
2.94%
3.2%
Pages viewed
40%
26%
Pages with engagement
11%
14.40%
Pages with engagement
45%
21%
Pages with engagement
85%
95%
Our global database shows that companies who have implemented In-Product Help and surfaced alltheir technical content right within their applications have seen the following results:
An outstanding 41% case deflection rate
A substantial 33% increase in users' content engagement
A noteworthy 12% uptick in content consumption
An impressive 7% rise in click-through rates (CTR)
Content engagement is the level of user interaction with topics (like download PDF, subscribe/watch,share, etc.). It is calculated as the percentage of viewed pages where users engaged at least once outof the total content pages viewed.
Content rating - 9%
Topic added to users “my docs” - 13%
Topics shared - 13%
Content rating - 7%
Subscribe to a topic - 6%
Content rating - 9%
Send feedback - 6%
This summary unveils the strategic roadmap hidden within our white paper, which focuses on thedynamic realms of KPIs and industry benchmarks. Navigating the landscape of gated content andpublic sharing, our research provides a treasure trove of insights to propel your endeavors forward.
Uncover the power of data-driven decision-making as we delve into metrics that matter, unveiling theindustry benchmarks that serve as your North Star. Whether you're in pursuit of heightenedengagement, lead generation, or enhanced brand visibility, this white paper not only empowers youwith knowledge but also arms you with actionable steps to elevate your content strategies. Let'sembark on a journey of discovery, exploring how these findings can reshape your approach and fosterunparalleled success.
