Don't let your office tools create confusion

it is vital that employees are well supported as companies implement new digital-adoption strategies.

Finding the right software for any business takes a little research but it can save a company significant time and money in the long run. (Credit: Nuthawut/Adobe Stock)

The software small businesses implement can directly affect productivity, so it’s in the interest of small and medium-sized business owners to know which ones are considered the most complicated to use.

Join our LinkedIn group, ALM’s Small Business Adviser, a space where small-business owners can gather to network, have discussions and keep up with the trends and issues affecting their industries.

Accounting software tool QuickBooks appears to generate the most confusion for users, as it was the most frequently searched.

That’s according to a report from Digital-adoption.com, which used Google search data to decipher which digital work tools require the most support to understand and use.

The report paired 275 popular office apps with 35 phrases commonly associated with support to come up with the top 10 most Googled software. The data came from SEO tool Ahrefs, according to the report, which identified the volume of global and U.S.-based searches each month on average.

QuickBooks comes up in Google searches about 68,320 times a month, according to the report, which said the most common of those searches was ”QuickBooks customer service,” Googled 19,000 times a month in the U.S. The second most common was “QuickBooks support,” searched about 12,000 times a month.

“QuickBooks searches also have the largest volume and share of U.S. traffic out of any app in the top 10, which means that even though it is arguably the most well-established in the country, it receives the highest amount of queries from people that need help and support to understand it,” Digital-adoption.com said in a press release. “These results show that as companies implement digital adoption strategies, it is vital that their employees are well supported to ensure that the approach is implemented effectively and brings clear benefits rather than confusion.”

Next up was Microsoft Excel, which came up in approximately 49,490 monthly searches. “How to use Excel” was searched 9,600 times a month, and almost half of all global monthly searches for “Excel help” came from the U.S.

The third most Googled office software, according to the report, is e-commerce platform Shopify, which featured in 44,720 estimated monthly searches. The most frequently searched terms are “What is Shopify,” “Shopify customer service” and “Shopify support,” with 15,000, 8,400 and 7,800 monthly searches from the U.S., respectively.

Here’s the full list of results from Digital-adoption.com:

U.S. Average Monthly Support Searches by App

QuickBooks — 68,320

Microsoft Excel — 49,490

Shopify — 44,720

Salesforce — 39,420

Square — 34,510

Microsoft OneDrive — 26,140

Microsoft Teams — 25,780

Zoom — 24,300

WordPress — 24,290

DropBox — 21,730


Join our LinkedIn group, ALM’s Small Business Adviser, a space where small business owners can gather to network, have discussions and keep up with the trends and issues affecting their industries.

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