Software User Guide Sample

[Jennifer Downey]

Digitaltools are inherently more complicated for new users. Software user guides come in many formats, from PDFs, video tutorials, help guides, and interactive in-app guidance. User guides ensure technology systems are adopted into day-to-day workflows accurately, helping to drive intended business outcomes.

This shift in consumer behavior stems from a desire for faster service that users can depend on when they need it most. With user guides, businesses can deliver content that helps customers answer basic how-to questions and conduct simple troubleshooting without depending on any external help. This self-help support not only enables a better customer experience but empowers customer service teams to deflect support tickets through self-service solutions.

You want to empower your users with enough information to feel confident exploring your product and pushing the boundaries of what they can do with it. In-app user guides do just this, empowering your users with contextual onboarding and support that drives adoption and helps them achieve their intended business outcomes.

An instructional manual is a comprehensive document that provides a thorough introduction to a product, how individuals can get set up with it, the different types of applications the product has, and tutorials on each of those applications.

Instruction manuals are a good fit for complex software with intricate features and robust data management policies, helping provide product support for systems like ERPs, computer-aided design software, and healthcare information systems.

In-app guidance provides learning at the moment of need for users, and provides context that traditional software documentation lacks. In-app guidance provides a level of support that drives product knowledge and adoption.

Product managers and non-technical team members can create in-app user guides and help elements with a digital adoption platform (DAP). A DAP like Whatfix provides these team members with a no-code editor to create, launch, and analyze in-app guided experiences.

Knowledge bases are also designed to support self-service learning, giving users a single repository to answer common questions, troubleshoot errors, or deepen their understanding of a product. Easy navigation and clear content organization are needed to make knowledge bases deliver optimum results.

To overcome this, REG partnered with Whatfix to create in-app user task lists, step-by-step flows, smart tips, and other in-app guided experiences to provide contextual support for their various end-users using Salesforce and Oracle.

With this in-app guidance, REG could nudge employees to the correct next step in their user journey, reduce time-to-proficiency for new employees, and provide self-help support on common IT-related issues and process questions.

REG also used Whatfix to curate its employee user documentation and guides into an embedded wiki that enabled end-users with a searchable, self-help wiki to find answers to common questions and overcome product workflow friction.

The content in this tutorial is limited to the execution of the specific task itself, without explaining what the software does or what a user needs to get themselves set up with an account. It uses screenshots to give users more accurate context along with a visible mouse cursor to highlight clicks.

To overcome this challenge, AbleTo used Whatfix to create in-app user guides for its mental health providers to help onboard them to the system, provide a self-help support system for AbleTo-related product questions, and meet evolving customer demand.

In the months following its Whatfix implementation, AbleTo improved its physician onboarding time, reduced provider churn, and grew its network of doctors. It launched in-app smart tips and pop-ups that have been engaged with more than 500k times in the first six months of launch.

With Whatfix, Marketboomer was able to create in-app user guides for multiple types of customers (buyers like hotels and clubs, as well as suppliers like wholesalers), as well as in-app guidance and support for different types of end-users (like CFOs, AEs, or hotel managers). Each required contextual guidance depending on the intended business outcomes, the language preference, and the level of technical expertise.

It provides its users with an embedded self-support wiki on its website, starting with its log-in page, that provides contextual support for new and returning parents and students on how to use its platform.

If a user appears to be having trouble (.ie on the page for a long period or begins to click around the page) a popup appears with a tip to discourage existing parents and students from creating duplicate accounts.

User guides must be accessible to as many users as possible, regardless of their product proficiency levels or industry expertise. Clear copy and short sentences without technical or industry jargon increase readability and comprehension, helping your users solve problems faster and become more confident.

With in-app guidance, you can be more strategic with your user guides and proactively nudge customers toward them at the right points in your product journey. Unlike traditional guides where users would have to take the initiative in seeking out support, in-app guidance lets organizations use behavioral data to predict user frustration and address them early.

Whatfix provides products with a no-code editor to create and launch on-brand in-app guidance, such as product tours, step-by-step flows, onboarding checklists, tooltips, pop-up windows, field validations, and more.

You can use its suite of editing tools to create a branded knowledge base website with your website domain, build a searchable knowledge center homepage, and provides advanced search analytics and capabilities. The platform allows content editors to write its user guides with Word-style editing or using markdown for code-centric documents.

Adobe Framemaker to a software documentation tool used to create and public technical documentation and user guides. The tool specializes in creating an environment for long structured or unstructured content, making it a good choice for guides like software specifications, API documentation, assembly instructions, and safety manuals.

With a no-code content editor, various engaging content formats, and rich analytics features, Whatfix helps you accelerate onboarding and training programs so your users can start creating value with their technology stack.

However unclear or confusing user documentation makes customers angry, throws doubt on the quality of the rest of the product, and negatively impacts future purchases with the company. The stakes are high when it comes to delivering valuable user documentation for your customers.

Providing helpful user documentation could make or break the customer experience. It helps customers get the most out of your product or service and offers a viable alternative to contacting the customer support team.

New users are much more likely to successfully onboard with your product if you provide them with informative user documentation. They can spend time browsing the docs and learning how the product works.

When customers have user documentation to rely on, this results in fewer calls and emails to your customer support team. Lightening the load on the customer support team means costs are lowered and you can help more customers with fewer agents.

Agents are freed from dealing with mundane, repetitive queries and have more time to help those customers who need it. And when you have user documentation available, support agents can just point customers to relevant articles, and significantly shorten the time it takes to resolve their issue.

When you document your product properly this can guard against customers using it wrongly. If you provide adequate warnings against incorrect ways to use your products then this means your company is less likely to become the recipient of legal action.

When prospective customers have access to your user documentation they can find out more in-depth about how your product works, and this can help them in their purchasing decision. It also creates a good impression for customers because it shows that you will support them after the sale.

Even better, when having conversations with your customers your sales team can refer to the documentation. This helps sales reps have more meaningful conversations with customers about the product and improves the likelihood that customers will buy.

You need to have a clear picture of who your customers are before you start writing any documentation. You may find that your customers are a diverse bunch and your documentation is catering to different needs.

When you have a clear idea of who your customers are, you can target your documentation and make it easier to use. You can pitch the tone of your writing at the right level so it resonates with users, and provides them with enough information to accomplish the task.

Formatting your user documentation as step-by-step instructions means your content will be accessible to your customers. Instead of presenting users with a long wall of text, step-by-step instructions are laid out so that customers can follow one step at a time. This keeps them engaged in the task and avoids distraction.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Make your documentation more interesting for your customers by providing images, videos, and GIFs. Documentation that is broken up with images and video is a lot more inviting to users than a daunting wall of text.

Sometimes it will just plain be easier to show how something works using a visual representation, and you owe it to your customers to convey information in the most convenient way possible. Describing something in words can be a lot more difficult than simply providing an image that represents the same thing.

The advantage of having online user documentation is that you can make it searchable for your customers. Being able to search for a keyword in your documentation makes it easy for customers to instantly find what they need instead of wasting time reading through an entire manual.

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