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Docs vs. Dotcom: Why Traffic Splits and Why Both Matter
Our customers consistently report that about half of their web traffic goes to their documentation site. And while this varies company to company, every organization we’ve worked with sees a substantial portion of the digital experience being driven by documentation.
At LavaCon 2024, we presented with our customers at ACST and they included a discovery that 56% of their web traffic goes to their documentation site. A telling insight. While you might expect the marketing homepage (dotcom) to take the lead in traffic, sometimes the real action is elsewhere.
This dynamic reveals something important about how people interact with the digital presence of tech companies. And it’s not necessarily about docs versus dotcom, it’s about how the two complement each other.
But let’s take a closer look at each.
Dotcom: Your Company’s Front Door
The corporate website, the dotcom, is the front door. It’s where the story begins to unfold, showing visitors:
- Who you are
- What you do
- Why your solution matters
- Proof points and value props in the form of stuff like case studies, analyst reports, customer logos, etc.
For prospects, investors, analysts, and even job candidates, the dotcom is the initial handshake. Its job is acquisition-focused: creating awareness, building interest, and drawing people deeper in to want to know more.
The catch is, once someone is interested and understands the contours of your business, or even a serious evaluator, that front door isn’t where they’re hanging out anymore. A good way to look at it is from the angle of purpose. A good marcomm site is there to convince you of a product’s value. A good docs site is there to offer help with specifics about a product, regardless of whether it’s a prospect scoping things out or a customer troubleshooting. Docs are inherently trustworthy because they aren’t pitching anything, they’re providing answers.
Docs: Your Product’s Living Room
Documentation is where the real work happens. It’s not just a reference manual, it’s an extension of the product itself. Customers and prospects use docs to:
- Learn how a product actually works
- Self-service onboarding and general learning
- Troubleshoot problems
- Explore advanced features
- Assess ease of integration before they commit
Unlike dotcom pages, docs aren’t about persuasion, they’re about enablement. They don’t sell, they show and explain. This is why they’re so much more effective in building trust than the content on a dotcom. This explains why ACST saw 56% of its traffic flowing into documentation. For more complex technical products, the docs are the place customers “live” long after they’ve walked through the marketing front door.
Why the Docs-to-Dotcom Ratio Changes Over Time
The balance between docs and dotcom traffic often correlates with product maturity and complexity, too:
- Early-stage or simpler products → more dotcom traffic. These companies are still explaining who they are and what they do. Their websites must tell the story, build credibility, and drive conversions.
- Mature or complex products → more docs traffic. At this stage, everyone already knows the brand. The real need is depth: guides, references, API documentation, troubleshooting steps, etc.
Think of it like this: nobody spends time on Microsoft.com to figure out what Word does. But ask anyone who’s set up something like AWS or Salesforce where they spend their time, and the answer will almost always be the docs.
Going a step further, good documentation sites often denote product maturity. While newer products might have the limelight because people are excited about its potential or sparkling market presentation, they still have a ways to go to prove value. A mature product has already done the convincing and goes on to prove its maturity by having extensive, well-trusted documentation. This continues to foster and elevate its reputation by building an ever better documentation library that looks to field every query.
The B2B Buyer Journey: Docs as Part of the Funnel
What’s interesting is that docs aren’t just for customers, they’re increasingly part of the sales process itself. Prospective buyers, especially technical ones, often go straight to the documentation before they ever talk to sales. They want to see:
- Is the product usable?
- Is the integration process clear?
- How well is the company supporting developers?
- Does it fit my organizational needs and requirements?
If the documentation content is poorly organized, outdated, or hard to navigate, buyers may bounce long before they reach a demo request. For every customer that doesn’t find what they need in your docs and calls support, there’s a prospect that doesn’t find what they need and never calls sales. In that sense, documentation is as much about acquisition as it is about retention.
What This Means for CX, Marketing, and Product Teams
The traffic split between docs and dotcom isn’t a problem, it’s a signal. It tells you that both properties are playing distinct, complementary roles.
- Marketing teams should recognize that brand perception is shaped as much by documentation quality as by homepage polish.
- Product teams should treat docs like a core product surface, not a byproduct.
- CX and support leaders should view documentation as the foundation of scalable, trustworthy self-service.
When teams align around this, investments flow more evenly. You don’t just refresh the dotcom homepage every quarter and call it a day, you also improve searchability in docs, maintain content freshness, and design them with the same care as customer-facing web experiences.
The Future: The Docs-Dotcom Allegiance
The old division of dotcom for acquisition, docs for retention is blurring. With AI search, conversational interfaces, and product-led growth models, docs are becoming more of a frontline discovery tool. At the same time, dotcom experiences are evolving to provide more technical depth earlier in the buyer’s journey, guiding visitors toward the documentation.
The future isn’t docs versus dotcom. It’s docs and dotcom, working together to create a seamless digital experience that welcomes, informs, and enables.
What’s Next?
Companies seeing half their traffic going to documentation is a wake up call for anyone thinking about digital experience, it’s a reminder of where customers and prospects really spend their time. For B2B technology companies, documentation often is the main hub of traffic.
But this isn’t about prioritizing one over the other. Dotcom opens the door. Docs make the house livable. Both are essential, and both deserve equal strategic weight.
Because at the end of the day, customers don’t just want to know who you are. They want to know how you work; and that’s where docs and dotcom shine together.
