User guides have evolved significantly since the time businesses first started creating them to assist customers. The journey of user guides from offline to online, boring to interesting, ineffective to effective and complicated to simple, is a testimony to the rapid advancements made by technology.
Today, we cannot imagine using a product without a full-fledged user guide in hand that can be conveniently accessed anytime. After all, calling the customer support staff and waiting for an executive to turn up is frustrating, as it doesn’t match the mounting expectations of customers for instant gratification. However, is creating an online guide that has all the right content in place enough to satiate the growing needs of technologically-forward customers? Sadly, it’s not.
The burgeoning requirements of customers for an exceptional information-gathering experience demand something extra. This extra means there is a need for an interactive and good-looking user guide that is a potpourri of valuable information, graphics and images, how-to videos and contextual help.
Find out how you can create a compelling online user guide that is interactive, digital and smart:
1. Add Images, Videos and Infographics
Multimedia can weave magic into your user guides. Include relevant images, how-to videos and infographics to support your content. Plain text with no breathers in between can be quite a task to read. Make your user guide interesting with the help of attractive images that go well with the content. This will maintain the interest level of your readers and also gives them a better understanding of the content. How-to videos are of tremendous help when it comes to giving readers a step-by-step guide on solving a query. Most customers will prefer going through videos to reading text, as it saves time and also clears concepts quickly.
2. Include Contextual Help
Context-sensitive help can boost the performance of your online user guides by providing the right information at the right time to customers. Given the complex features and functions of your product, it makes sense to include contextual help to give readers an end-to-end understanding of your content. You can use contextual help in the form of –
- Tooltips – Delight your customers with tooltips that explain your product features, pricing disclaimers, policies, etc. Simplify complex terms & concepts and provide an exceptional experience to customers.
- Lightboxes – Handhold your readers and take them through your product with the help of lightboxes, which will guide them about the procedure to use it in different situations. The scroll bar effect of lightboxes helps you display the detailed content of your user guide in a better way, which makes onboarding easier for new users.
- Popups – Embedding popups in your web-based user guide helps you to provide accurate help content to readers as and when they need it. You can even show interactive content like images and icons in a popup, without doing any coding or programming.
3. Design a Beautiful User Guide
Don’t ignore aesthetics when it comes to your user guide. Plain and boring content doesn’t catch eyeballs and there are higher chances of readers losing interest in it. Package your user guide with attractive themes and fonts to capture customer attention. Brand your online product guide with your company’s logo using the white-labeled templates offered by ProProfs and give your content a unique appearance.
Benefits of an interactive user guide
A digital and interactive online user guide helps you provide a positive experience to your customers. Your support tickets will drastically reduce since your clients will be able to solve queries without requiring any external aid. Readers get real-time guidance when they browse your user guide, which enables them to accomplish their goals easily.
An interactive user guide can also help you rope in more leads. Promoting new products on your user guide will capture customer attention and arouse their interest in trying your product. Further, the unmatched experience your user guide offers will enhance customer loyalty and generate positive word-of-mouth for your brand.
Furthermore, you can also leverage interactive user guides for smooth employee onboarding. Organizing training sessions for your employees can be tedious and time-consuming. With user guides, new recruits can train themselves and get acquainted with your product quickly. This makes the otherwise cumbersome procedure of employee onboarding a breeze for both you and your workforce.
Wrapping up
Investing in creating intuitive and interactive user guides can be a game-changer for your business. With the intense competition seen in the market today, providing clients with digital and mobile-friendly user guides can make you stand apart. At a time when the quality of experience has garnered immense importance, user guides present a lucrative opportunity for you to delight customers. Choose the right software and start creating compelling interactive user guides for your clients.
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