The ROI of documentation and support

In two conversations this week, the issue of "how do you measure the value of documentation?" has come up.

The benefits of user documentation (reduced support calls, increase in the perceived value of the product, happier customers, better customer retention, increase product usage etc) can be identified, but it can be hard to measure them and accurately quantify the Return on Investment.

Here are two ideas:

1. Conduct a test with two groups of potential users. Give one group your product to install and use for a period without documentation. Give the other group the product with documentation. Ask each participant (a) At what price should this product be sold for? (b) What monetary value would you place on the documentation? For (a), those that had the documentation should value the product more highly than those that didn't. The difference between the two prices gives you one indication of the monetary value of documentation.
2. If you have a Web-based application, use Google Analytics to measure the number and types of people using the Help pages. By placing a value on each visit (e.g. every 2 Help pages visited equals 1 support call avoided), you have another indication of the $ value of documentation. You can use Google Analytics to measure usage by embedding its code into the HTML of each page. Also, some of the Help Authoring Tool vendors offer analytics software for LAN based Help.