Best Tips for an Effective End-User Documentation

Running an online business can be both exciting and frustrating at the same time. It is delightful to come up with new ideas for business development projects and waiting to see how they will work out. But there are always some moments in each business that are more difficult to deal with.

For example, let’s take customer service. It is a very important factor that directly affects user satisfaction. A negative experience with customer service, either it took too long to wait for an answer or the user did not like the answer, may lead to negative reviews. And these bad boys can damage your reputation irrevocably.

To deal with customer service better, we strongly recommend checking out the best examples of user docs – this will help you understand better why you, too, need end-user documentation. For more arguments about why you need one and tips on how to create effective end-user documentation, read the article below.

Why Do You Need End-User Documentation?

First of all, it helps your website visitors a lot. Most people will actually look for frequently asked questions or end-user documentation on your website rather than call, email you, or use the website chat. People have become very impatient in these digital times where social media is king; therefore, a lot of website visitors prefer to find the information themselves than wait.

Secondly, it saves a lot of time for your support team. Just think how much time they would spend explaining the same things step after the step over and over again. Not only is it very exhausting and tiring, but it is also very ineffective. So if you have end-user documentation, your support team can either use it to copy information from there or navigate the website visitor to a specific page that explains everything in more detail.

And most importantly, it helps to save money and time for you. If you have proper end documentation, you save time for the whole company, including the people who are working as your support team. And this means that your business will have more time for growth and development. So stop wasting your precious time and seriously consider creating end-user documentation.

Make Sure You Know the Product Well

There is no other way to create high-quality end-user documentation unless you test the product multiple times and know it very well. The best way to do this is to go by every single function or option of the website and try to see it through a website visitor’s eyes. Take one option after another and explain them step by step, one by one. Anything that could be possibly unclear.

If you notice that some functions are very easy to perform, still make sure you explain them but not in detail. And when you find something really complex, try to explain it as clearly as possible, step after step.

And while testing everything out, you might catch yourself finding some functions and moments tricky even for you – for a person who knows his product so well. If you find such moments, you should add comments to explain it better. If it is difficult for you, it is going to be even more difficult for the user. Or maybe even consider upgrading these features and making them easier.

Determine What Information Should Be on the Docs

When it comes to the moment of deciding what to place on the end-user documentation and what to leave out, you need to really think it through. Of course, you could write down instructions for each and every single process, but will it be worth the time?

And also, keep it in mind that the more information you have displayed, the more difficult the document becomes to navigate. Especially for your website visitors that see it for the first time. To help you radically decide what information should be on your docs, simply communicate with your support team.

If you pick a specific feature of a product, ask your team what questions are being asked about this specific topic? What are the most frequent questions? And this is the smartest way to do it. You will analyze the demand for specific information and hand it to your website visitors. The longer you are running your business, the easier it will be to determine which topics are the most important.