Online Tutorial Search for Students

John Lynn

Co-Owner

GeniusDV, LLC

GeniusDV is a small business providing training and tutorials for a niche of products related to video editing including Final Cut Pro,
Motion, DVD Studio Pro and Avid.
 
Instead of encouraging students to take notes during class, we liked the idea of referring them to our web site using keywords to find
specific tutorials. While a great idea initially, we found that searching our website was cumbersome when trying to locate our own
content.  Plus, customers would occasionally see competing companies related to their search terms. We eventually discovered that it was
harder to find certain entries and sometimes the wrong content on our site superseded the tutorials customers were trying to find.
 
Google's Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE) solved the problem. The CSBE has been a wonderful search tool, since it allows a user to
search only the content of our own site.  We've also included other sites that pose no competitive threat to our business.  For example,
since we teach the Avid Xpress Pro software, we allow Avid Technology's support forum to be searchable. This provides an
incredible tool for our customers needing help with the Avid software.  Not only can they find related articles that we've written, but they
can access the resources of the company that makes the software.
 
CBSE provides a great resource for our students after they leave our courses.  With CSBE, students can easily find tutorials for things
we've covered in class.   This is invaluable, because students spend more time learning and less time taking notes. And since we link the CBSE to popular support forums that are helpful
to the software products that we teach, CSBE has also helped reduce the number of support calls we receive.
 
To help increase our web visibility, we also use Google Analytics in conjunction with CSBE. We value knowing where our customers are coming
from and what keywords they are using to find our site - knowledge that generate fresh ideas for new content to develop.  We print out all the search keywords for any given day and then look for interesting searches that do not match the content that we offer.  We are then able to improve our own content based on user keyword
searches. We've tried a half dozen analytical website packages, and nothing compares to the features and ease-of-use Google Analytics
offers.

CSBE has helped GeniusDV dramatically improve the value we offer our customers, and we're always confident our clientèle can easily find exactly what they seek using CSBE from our home page.