Michel Thouati from Lithium Technologies presented in our last session at the Online Community Summit (yes, I’m still talking about that!). In his presentation, Michel referenced some data from his (vast) experience with online community and content management that was surprising to me. The question was about user behavior in online communities – how do people actually get the answers to their questions?

For every single resolution you have on your site through peer-to-peer posting (direct questions and answers through comments, posts, edits, etc.) you’ll have 3-5 people discover their resolution through browse, says Michel. For everyone else? Their answer will be discovered through search. We’re talking 95% of all resolutions.
So, that’s why it’s important to have a search box on our home page, which we do not have yet, but my guess is ’tis coming soon. But I’ll wait patiently for the wireframes to be done so we all can see for ourselves. (In case you’re worried, all the drafts I’ve seen thus far seem to have one, so I think we’re on the right track….)