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Link to Help Center?


K13

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Why is there not a link to the Help Center in one of the prominent tabs on the main page of the website?  I FINALLY found a link discretely placed (or hidden) down at the bottom of the page

 

Is this why so many of the new players have problems with the guidelines and practices of our hobby?

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44 minutes ago, K13 said:

Why is there not a link to the Help Center in one of the prominent tabs on the main page of the website?  I FINALLY found a link discretely placed (or hidden) down at the bottom of the page

 

Is this why so many of the new players have problems with the guidelines and practices of our hobby?

 

There's a link to the Help Center on the bottom of most pages (forums, profiles, even cache pages).

 

Geocaching 101, where many new players begin/learn about the hobby has a link to the Help Center in it's second sentence ( after the "welcome" and above the "what is geocaching?" video).   :)

 

Edited by cerberus1
addification :)
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...though it should be noted that the footer of many listing pages doesn't get seen, because more logs are loaded automatically if you scroll to the bottom of the page. One would need to be viewing a listing page with few logs or one of the other pages on the site.

 

I seem to remember that there used to be a very helpful "Help" menu (or something similar) in the header a while back, and still don't understand why that was removed. If a new user is looking for help, they won't normally look for it in the same place as their account information.

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On ‎12‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 3:58 PM, The A-Team said:

I seem to remember that there used to be a very helpful "Help" menu (or something similar) in the header a while back, and still don't understand why that was removed. If a new user is looking for help, they won't normally look for it in the same place as their account information.

 

In August '17  there was a release note on "Header updates", and one of the "improvements" was the “Learn” drop-down was removed.

 -  There was a lotta comment about color.

Few seemed to notice, much less be bothered that handy, important information was (for some reason...) no longer there...

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1 hour ago, little-leggs said:

 This why the game is messed up ?

 

the HELP CENTER needs to be where people can see it ,

 

it could go in the ( PLAY ) drop down box 

At some point you (and anyone else) will transition from someone "new to the game" to an experienced geocacher.   At that point you may have read the Help center many times and see a prominent link as clutter that you have to ignore to get to the links you'll use far more frequently.  

 

Should the web site cater to those new to the game or those that use it every day?

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15 minutes ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

At some point you (and anyone else) will transition from someone "new to the game" to an experienced geocacher.   At that point you may have read the Help center many times and see a prominent link as clutter that you have to ignore to get to the links you'll use far more frequently.  

 

Should the web site cater to those new to the game or those that use it every day?

 

"Learn" was where Play, Community, and Shop still is now.

Obviously "Shop" isn't considered clutter, why should a simple , important link next to it be ?

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3 hours ago, little-leggs said:

the HELP CENTER needs to be where people can see it , 

People can see it, it's right there on every page, but you want to hide it away on a sub-menu, not exactly intuitive.

 

Look at many other websites (BBC, Microsoft, IBM) and you will see that putting such contact & help links at the foot of the page is the defacto standard,  so it's where the majority would expect it to be.

 

 

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57 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

People can see it, it's right there on every page, but you want to hide it away on a sub-menu, not exactly intuitive.

 

Look at many other websites (BBC, Microsoft, IBM) and you will see that putting such contact & help links at the foot of the page is the defacto standard,  so it's where the majority would expect it to be.

 

its only there if you look for it ,
* I don't scroll to the bottom of the page its a long way on my account 
* I don't Log out 

* I'm thinking of New players , who need to read the topics in the Help Center ...... before they wad in and get stuck 

remember every days a school day , learning will make the game better for us ALL 

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1 hour ago, MartyBartfast said:

Look at many other websites (BBC, Microsoft, IBM) and you will see that putting such contact & help links at the foot of the page is the defacto standard,  so it's where the majority would expect it to be.

 

but this is not the ( BBC or Microsoft ) why follow , be bold , be different , we're geocache's no lemmings 

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3 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

People can see it, it's right there on every page, but you want to hide it away on a sub-menu, not exactly intuitive.

Personally, I'd prefer that it be in both locations: in the footer, and also in the header menus. I'm sure there's some website design handbook that forbids duplicating links on a page under penalty of death or revocation of coffee privileges, but sometimes a link is important enough to be present more than once. Based on the countless instances where reading the Help Center could have avoided an issue or answered someone's question, the Help Center clearly needs to be made more accessible.

 

As for the usefulness of the link in the footer, I still contend that it isn't as useful as some here seem to think it is. What are the pages that get visited the most often? The map? No footer. Listing pages? You may need to scroll through a ton of automatically-loading logs to get to the footer. Dashboard/profile page? The footer is a long way down on mine right now.

 

What's one spot that's there on every page? The header menus. That's where the helpful learning links used to be, and where they should be restored to.

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6 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

People can see it, it's right there on every page, but you want to hide it away on a sub-menu, not exactly intuitive.

 

Look at many other websites (BBC, Microsoft, IBM) and you will see that putting such contact & help links at the foot of the page is the defacto standard,  so it's where the majority would expect it to be.

 

 

I find it incredibly hard on many "modern" websites to find any useful information. They all seem to have big overlayed pictures of Mum, Dad, the kids and dog enjoying their product (whatever that is), with a few short catch-phrases in big letters, usually preceded by "My". Trying to find basic things like product details (not one-word superlatives), user manuals or even the shopping cart is rarely easy or obvious.

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On 12/27/2018 at 11:58 AM, little-leggs said:

 

If you only cater for those who use the sit regularly , how will a new play find their way 

 

It doesn't have to be one or the other,  but placing a link in a prominent location that will primarily be used by new users, but is ignored by those that use the site every day for years makes it more difficult for those that use the site every day.  

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On 12/27/2018 at 12:55 PM, The A-Team said:

Personally, I'd prefer that it be in both locations: in the footer, and also in the header menus. I'm sure there's some website design handbook that forbids duplicating links on a page under penalty of death or revocation of coffee privileges, but sometimes a link is important enough to be present more than once. Based on the countless instances where reading the Help Center could have avoided an issue or answered someone's question, the Help Center clearly needs to be made more accessible.

Back when I was paying more attention to web usability, there were schools of thought that encouraged multiple links.

 

For example, you might run a user study to figure out the best organization for your links, so you'd give test subjects a bunch of cards, one for each link. And then you'd ask them to organize them into piles however they saw fit. Most links will be grouped pretty consistently (90% or more in the same grouping). But if there is a link that is split (closer to 50-50 than 90-10), then the recommendation was to put the link in both places.

 

The point isn't to find the One True Location™ for every link. The point is to put links where people will find them.

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2 hours ago, niraD said:

The point is to put links where people will find them.

Agreed.

Curious whether HQ was able to see which/where link use was hit more than others, and/or what changed since "learn" was removed.

When I asked about "learn" being removed from the top with play, community and shop, I was told it wasn't needed there anymore, as if something, somewhere replaced it.

Some of the most basic questions in these forums, curious where that  is now, since it seems to be quite a few missing it.    :)

Seems  (to me) the site must feel "shop" is in a prime spot.  Why shouldn't "learn" be right next to it  ?

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