Taxonomy, navigation and vocabulary decisions for documentation that keeps growing.
View All TagsContent conversion is the visible part of a migration and the part that rarely fails. The part that fails is the URL layer: every bookmark, support macro, in-product help button, partner page and search result that points at the old docs. A redirect map keeps those working, and it is usually built last, in a hurry, by whoever is still awake.
Documentation information architecture usually starts as a sensible list of sections that matched the product on the day someone created it. Then the product grows: a second product line, an enterprise plan, a mobile app, an acquisition, three reorganizations. Each change adds a section or a subsection wherever it fits least badly, and a few years later the navigation is a fossil record of the company's history rather than a map of what customers need to do.
Good writing helps a reader who is already on the right page. Good structure gets them there, tells them within seconds whether they are in the right place, and lets them find the one step they need without reading the rest. When we review a help center that customers say is "hard to use", the prose is rarely the problem. The problem is that every page has a different shape, so readers cannot predict where anything will be.