Friction in finding specific information via a web search

[jonbiemond]

When accessing the documentation via a web search (such as Google), the user is required to take an additional step of navigating the page to find the relevant section. This adds friction to the process of finding specific information for a function or feature.

For example, a Google search for "django window expressions", correctly returns the Django Query Expressions page as my first result. However, once I've navigated to the page I'm presented with "Supported arithmetic", quite far off from a window expression. A less optimistic user might abandon the page entirely at this point. I will utilize my browser's find tool to search for "window" (skipping past two unrelated hits), scroll foolishly or scan through the Contents side bar. Finally, I get to the Windows functions section half way down.

Possible Solutions

• Move the Contents side bar to the left side. This has the advantage of being the first place one looks (for left-to-right language readers) and moving navigation links to up in the find tool's results.
• Have expandable sections in the Contents side bar. This could also just be worse.
• Break out the documentation into more pages. If the pages are more concise there is less for the user to look through. The jQuery docs do this well. Here is the first link in the results of my search for "jquery remove element": https://api.jquery.com/remove/

Related to #1495

[thibaudcolas]

Thank you for reporting this @jonbiemond! Do you prefer using the google search or is it just because the built-in site search doesn’t work?

[jonbiemond]

@thibaudcolas I use Google search mostly due to force of habit. So more of a preference I suppose, rather than a reaction to the experience of the built-in search.