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What do you use for creating online tutorials?

I work for a Web hosting company and am in charge of creating KB articles, online Help, etc. Several times a week, I look at the Support pages for other hosting companies to keep my finger on the pulse, and it looks like online tutorials are very popular. Personally, I think they are over-used. I just find it hard to believe that the average user would sit and watch a three to six-minute demo on how to do really simple, intuitive tasks, like setting up an e-mail account. To me, watching these are almost as tedious as creating them. However, I've been told that having them are really good for SEO, so understandably, the powers that be want them. In the past, I have used Captivate, but I'm a solid two versions behind. Recently, I downloaded and used a trial of the latest version, and definitely liked it better, but I have to justify the cost of upgrading. I have to create a LOT of these things, and am wondering if there's something out there that I should be looking into instead.

What do you use, and why?

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Comment by Richard S. on February 23, 2012 at 4:29pm: Up front I'll say that I've only done this a bit. I know a fair bit about AV formats and video encoding, but I'm more of a hack when it comes to scripting and storyboarding these things.

With that out of the way, my main thought is that the cost of a new version of Captivate is chump change. The upgrade is a couple hundo, and the full version is something like $800. The cost of your time is probably orders of magnitude greater. I'm having a hard time believing that tool cost would register as more than a blip on your overall costs (unless it's a volunteer project I guess).

If the tool cost is an issue, you might consider Wink (from the DebugMode folks). I've used it a while back, and it does what it does well, and it's free. Also, if you are just doing screencap video and don't need for it to be interactive, tools like Captivate and Wink might be a little overkill. Again though, get other opinions. I've done this sort of thing before, but I'm not an expert.

Comment by Kim Martin on February 27, 2012 at 8:42am: Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Richard. Some new projects have fallen into my lap since my original post; one being that, in addition to creating online demos for our Support page, I will also be creating tutorials, with quizzes, for new hires in our Tech Support department (which has tripled in head count in the last 1.5 years). Being that we are a 24/7 operation, we have little to no time to train new hires. So that pretty much helped me to realize that upgrading to the latest Captivate makes more sense. I'm looking forward to learning all the new features (since v.3). Too bad I'm not going to have much time to "play" - I have a mountain of projects now.

Comment by Tammy Butcher on February 28, 2012 at 4:22pm: Kim, have to say I tend to agree with you in that customers seem to want to speak to people (Tech Support) rather than view online tutorials on simple tasks. Even at the expense of reading online help or quick references sometimes, unfortunately, in my experience (and especially when that support is free). That said, our company uses Captivate as well for the short demos or, if not creating quizzes, creates quick video captures of them.

Comment by Gordon Meyer on March 10, 2012 at 5:50pm: I agree that most authors have overestimated their reader's attention span or patience. A very visual way to provide a tutorial,with the tedium or expense of video, is to use something like Clarify. I wrote about it here http://www.g2meyer.com/usablehelp/singles/631.html but the direct link to the app is: http://www.clarify-it.com/