Relative costs of paper and online documentation

This article compares the development cost, production cost and maintenance cost between paper-based documentation and online documentation.

To pretend that only usability issues determine which media are used is unreal. Cost is a factor. The move to online help is not only because it is sometimes better than paper-based documentation, but also because it is always cheaper.

Development cost

The development costs of the source documents are approximately equal for paper and online material. The general technical authoring tasks are similar (for example, gathering information, document design, reworking due to changed software). Inputting the information into a source document is a small part of the entire documentation process, and it makes little difference whether the final document is paper or online. Final page layout for paper-based material is likely to add a little time to the project, but it's not significant.

What's This? (field-level context sensitive) style help is time-consuming to implement, because each control in the software (such as an entry box, button, check box) must have an ID which must match an ID in the help. If any control is changed, then the help must be changed, recompiled, and tested against the updated software. Nowadays, this form of help is rarely developed.

It is possible to use window-level context-sensitive help with hyperlinks on a graphic to explain fields—a simulated What's This? help. This is time-consuming to implement, and unless the individual popups topics are also listed, the user will not be able to print them.

Production cost

For the supplier, delivery cost for online documentation is always cheaper than paper-based documentation. Typically, it is effectively free, because the documentation can be included on the CD on which the software is delivered.

However, if the material needs to be printed, this effectively dumps the production cost (time and materials) onto users. From a value-added perspective, it may be more cost-effective to produce 1000 units that are shipped with a product, rather than expecting 1000 users to print individual copies.

To produce paper documentation in batches of less than about 1000, digital publishing is the most cost-effective solution.

For large print runs, traditional litho printing is the best solution. It is top quality, and reasonably cheap. The problem is the high set-up cost.

Maintenance cost

There is little difference in maintenance costs between paper-based help and online help such as CHM or WebHelp. The details differ, but in either case, when the software changes, the documentation needs updating.

However, with What's This? field-level help, updates are more costly because there are far more steps involved in the update process.