Tag: product documentation

12 Best Examples of Product Documentation and Help Guides

Karishma Sibal Leave a comment

Besides a good feature rich product and amazing support; Product Documentation also plays an important role in terms of customer satisfaction and revenue. If there is no documentation available on the product site, customers will be forced to raise a support ticket.

Getting response from the support team may take some time and it may delay customer’s work. Self help guides allow customers to go through frequently asked questions and general queries and help them resolve small issues by their own. A good documentation contains easy navigation and clean layout with better readability. Step by step explanation with screenshots helps too. In this article, I will showcase some user manual examples or product documentation example to help you set a good goal.

Get Inspiration from User Manual Examples

If you are thinking that, creating a product documentation or online user manual is a very technical thing, I would recommend to read this Ultimate Guide to Create Product Documentation. A good documentation will speed up your product’s sale as well as improves SEO too.

Checklist for a Good Product Documentation Example

  • Easy navigation with clean UI
  • SEO Friendly design
  • Visitor’s Feedback with Comment
  • Code Syntax Highlighter
  • PDF Support with Branding for offline reading
  • Easy edit of documentation with in-built text-editor

Great Examples of  perfect Product Documentation and Help Guides:

Before creating a good product documentation guide, it is always better to see some inspirations. I have listed some of the best user manuals and product guide examples in this article to inspire you enough to start making your own. Many of these examples are of popular product sites and you may think that building such documentation will be a costly and time consuming task, but please read till the end as I have listed some simple ways to build similar documentation.

1) Stripe:

Stripe is one of the well known payment gateway used by many merchants. It allows individuals and businesses to accept the payment easily over the internet. I have gone through the documentation that was offered by them and I should say that the way it was represented was in a clean and easy to understand by the visitors. The API documentation that was offered by them was really amazing. There was a Syntax highlighter that was used, that allowed to display the source code in different colors as well as fonts.

Towards the left there were different topics that were listed by it. If you are planning to build a website related to API or where the source code is give much importance than definitely you should visit the documentation that is offered by stripe. The way the documentation for it was represented was commendable. There were different topics or the categories that were listed towards the left which is indeed eye catching for the visitors.

stripe

Stripe Documentation Example
  • API Documentation
  • Ease of Use
5

2) MailChimp: 

MailChimp is an email service provider that allows you to create, send as well as manage email newsletters. The documentation that is provided by them is very eye catching. It allows to add the links for the documentation along with Syntax Highlighter. Towards the left there are different sections that are displayed for the guide and there is different URL for each of the section. The documentation provided by MailChimp is displayed in very appealing way also all the points and instructions are mentioned very clearly.

mailchimp_doc

 

3) Yoast:

It will help you for the optimization of the site and also provides with the complete solution for SEO. Yoast provides with clean documentation, below each document there is a contact us form that allows to contact the support team in case of any of the queries. It also provides with a proper pagination along with all the categories that is listed towards the left. One can easily locate the category through the Search option present towards the top. It will also provides with the information when the document was updated lastly.

yoast

4) Microsoft:

After going through the documentation that is offered by Microsoft, it is very appealing for the visitors. It includes videos and images along with the documents that allows the visitors to have a better understanding. There are different sections for each of the category and there is an in-depth documentation that is provided by it. The thing that makes the documentation of Microsoft to be very appealing is the images and screenshots used by it. As images are always worth a thousand words.

microsoft

5) Apple: 

The way in which the documentation of Apple is present is really amazing. There are different points as well as instructions that are covered in the guide that is offered by them. Towards the bottom it provides with the feedback option where the visitors can share their views regarding a particular document. Also the users can add the suggestion in order to improve the particular document. There are also screenshots that are included to have a better understanding of the document that is provided. apple

6) Ionic:

The guide for ionic is represented in a very elegant way with the linking to the next documentation towards the bottom. Each of the topic is distinguished by different chapters and there are different icons that are represented for it. There is a sticky sidebar towards the left that is provided by it. There is a search option that is present at the top that will help to search a particular document very easily. The document is represented in such a way in order to make it appealing for the visitors and also it is very easy to understand from the perspective of the visitors.

ionic

7) Twilio:

The guide that is provided by Twilio is easily categorized into different categories. There is a Quickstart, Tutorials, API Reference and Helper Libraries that is provided by it. Towards the left it consists of all the sections that gets displayed based on the category that is selected. There are also different links that are provided by the particular doc and also consists of the linking to the next document. There are large number of sections that are added for each of the document that helps to have a better understanding. In case of any of the source code there is a Syntax Highlighter that is used for it.

twilio

8) Skype:

The user manual or documentation that is provided by Skype can be considered as a step wise manual with a complete understanding of the query that you are struck. Towards the top, it displays the count for the total number of articles. And there are different articles that are belonging to the particular category. There are different images and screenshots that are displayed for the particular doc. Towards the bottom there is an option that tells that whether a particular article is helpful or not. The way in which each of the step is displayed, makes it easy for the visitors to have a better understanding.

skype

9) WHMCS:

The documentation or the manual of WHMCS gives you the clear vision of the document that you are searching for. On the Home page of WHMCS there are different topics that are listed and one will easily find the document that one is looking at through exploring the following topics. Towards the top it will list out the topics with different sub sections. Under the documentation there is a separate topic that is present for the Community forums. There is a step wise explanation given for each of the topic for the How To Guide. There is also a proper linking that is given for each of the topic.

whmcs

10) Blesta:

The user manual that is provided by Blesta provides with a very good documentation that is indeed very simple and easy to understand. There is a separate guide that is prepared for the Users as well as Developers. As there are lots of sections that are present under a single topic, so towards the bottom it gives you the option to Show More. For each of the topic, it gives the details of the writer along with lastly the particular document was modified. There is a Navigate space that is present towards the right where one can search the topic that one is looking for. There are also breadcrumbs that are provided for each of the page that helps the user for the easy navigation. There is a tree like structure that is provided by this document.

blesta

11) BigCommerce:

The manual that is provided by BigCommerce is designed and presented in such a way to attract the visitors to the site. There are also links that are given for Chat and Community Forum in order to contact the support team in case of any of the queries. It also allows the user to give the feedback whether the following topic was useful for the visitors or not. The documentation also provides with different links in order to help the user to have a better understanding when they are referring to a particular topic.

big-commerce

12) Freshservice:

The manual lists out all the topics along with the count and sub topics for each of the topics. On clicking on the particular topic the user will be redirected to the page that one needs to refer. Towards the right, it will list out all the related articles along with the option to print the particular article. There are also different links that are added for each of the topic, it also allows to get the feedback from the visitors whether the topic is useful or not. It is written in very appealing way to attract the visitors and that will keep them glued to the guide. There is a different section that is present where the visitor can directly download the guide and go through it whenever required (for the offline reading).

freshservice

Creating Product Documentation through WordPress:

If you are planning to build one such documentation for your website than this can be achieved easily through WordPress. I would recommend to read this Ultimate Guide to Create Documentation to easily build and publish a beautiful guide just like the mentioned user manual examples. I have listed few free plugins to create documentation and along with that, check some WordPress Themes to implement a nice design.

Documentor:

Documentor is one of the best WordPress plugin in order to create the online product documents. There are different content types that are supported by this plugin such as videos, images, code snippets, Tables, Google Maps etc. The WordPress plugin is bundled with many features and to list a few of them includes:

  • For the offline reading it supports Save as PDF option.
  • It allows the users to submit feedback for any of the documentation section.
  • There are multiple skins that are supported for it to make it appealing for the visitors.
  • There is also a print option provided in order to print the particular manual or guide.
  • As Social Media plays a very important role for building of any of the site, so it supports Social sharing option.
  • There can be number of sections and subsections that can be added for the particular document.
  • It also allows you to embed the videos, Google maps and tables very easily with it.
  • Full control over the settings panel in order to change the color as well as fonts.

These are just of few of the features offered by Documentor plugin. This plugin is bundled with so many great features in order to create a perfect document for your site. A good documentation will definitely help you to increase the sale of the product. Moreover the content, images, screen shots and videos that are included while creating a document also plays a very crucial role. All the features that are provided will surely help you to build a document of your choice. Hope this post will help the users to build a better documentation and help guide for their site.

Highlight Text or Use Marker in Product Documentation

Karishma Sibal Leave a comment

Highlighting of the text or using a marker for any product documentation can be considered as one of the marketing strategy that will compel the visitors to read a particular text. It can be considered as an effective means that will summarize the information from the particular piece of content. It will surely help to bring more visitors to your site and thus diverting more traffic that is surely very beneficial. Most of the blogging websites or any other established website uses this technique that highlights the text with some background.

Note: Create Product Documentation or Technical Guide using WordPress

Benefits of Highlighting text or using Marker

  • Highlighted text helps to retain the information easily from the particular content.
  • It will help to bring more readers to your site rather than the plain text.
  • Helps to save the time of the readers instead of reading the whole content.
  • It provides a better experience to the user or readers.

Methods to highlight the text in WordPress:

There is no separate option or button available in the WordPress editor to highlight the text. This can be easily achieved through installing plugins and other approaches.

1) CKEditor for WordPress:

cke

CKEditor is the text editor that will be used inside web pages. This plugin will replace the default WordPress editor with the CKEditor. It also allows to post comments with CKEditor to provide styled as well as colorful comments.

2) WP Emphasis:

wp-emphasis

This plugin is used to highlighting and permalinking text of the emphasis script. One need not set anything for this to work, tap shift twice and one can start highlighting the text.

emphasis-highlighting

3) Through CSS:

If you are familiar with the code then you are able to highlight the text through the CSS code by following the below steps:

Step 1] You will need to create a class in the CSS file and give it a unique name say “content-highlight”

Step 2] Create a child theme and put the class (created from step 1) in the CSS file of the child theme.

.content-highlight { background-color:#FFFF00; }

Step 3] One can choose the color from the color picker and easily switch to text view in the WordPress editor and wrap the text in the way you want it to be highlighted in the following way:

<span class="content-highlight">… text to highlight …</span>

You are done by following the above steps.

4) Inline Styling:

It is also possible to insert the code into the post for the content that is to be highlighted. One can view the post in the text editor add add the below mentioned code.

<span style="background-color:yellow;"> … your text here … </span>

Though there is no separate option given to highlight the text in WordPress but the above ways will definitely help you to make your documentation approaching for the visitors and definitely come up with a good one.

Hope this article was really useful to you guys. And feel free to contact us if you find some more ways to highlight the text.  As there is a great saying that “Knowledge increases by sharing and not saving!“

How to Create a Good Product Documentation

Karishma Sibal Leave a comment

It is really hard to imagine and use a particular product without knowing how actually it works. It becomes very hard to shoot your query at the support each time and then one should wait for the support team to revert on the same. There are times when you are asked to wait in a queue for at least 2 days (approximately 48 hours). During such situations you are forced to delay the work unless the query is sorted. In order to avoid such situations that is affecting the growth of the company, it is always good to have a documentation of the product and all the queries will get sorted very easily by just referring to the documentation.

Types of Product Documentation:

  • Guides – Guides can be considered as a stepping stone in order to use a particular product.
  • Feature Documentation – It will list out all the features that are supported by the particular document along with the settings related to it.
  • Knowledge-base – Knowledge-base will consist of forums and frequently asked questions that are put forth by the visitors. Different issues along with the cause and resolution will be mentioned here.
  • SDK – SDK will contain the coding of the product along with its API. This documentation will be very useful for the developers.
  • Case Study – It will consists of various detailed documentation of how a product is implemented for different businesses in real life.
  • Internal Documentation – This documentation will be referred only by the staff members that will be used by the team for future development.
  • Marketing Documentation – This document will focus to attract visitors to your site, that will list out the cost and general features of the product.

When you are building a documentation for your website, it is very important that the documentation is categorized in the following way as mentioned above. It is very important that the documentation should cover each aspect of the product though you will find some of the aspects to be very simple. While writing a product documentation it is necessary that you should target to the newbies who are totally unaware about it.

Things to include for Product Documentation:

Depending upon the type of document that you are building, there can be different factors that can be included and those are:

  • Screenshots and Pictures – A picture or screenshot will help the visitors to understand the product in a better way as compared to the words. There are many visitors who will prefer to go through the images instead of reading the doc line by line.
  • Examples – In order to help the visitors to understand the product in a better way it is always good to include examples and that will also help them to relate with the situation.
  • Settings Flow – Instead of writing long paragraphs for a particular setting, one can include the flow for the settings of the product. For Example : Adding a Post in WordPress, you can give the flow as: Admin Panel >> Posts >> Add New
  • Documentation Update – Keep a check on the new features and modification that are added for the product. And accordingly there can be the changes that can be added for the documentation. If the changes for the document is not done than the visitors will keep on referring the old documents and will be confused.

Key Factors to be included for Product Documentation:

  • Installation Process – It is essential to start your documentation with the installation process that will be a great help to the clients.
  • Feedback from Clients – It is good to include the feedback and suggestion place for the visitors where they can suggest an edit for the document. This will help to represent the document in a better way.
  • Offline Reading – For the offline reading of the document, one can generate a PDF for it and can directly share with others for the offline reading.
  • URL for each section – The whole document can be divided into different sections and there can be different URLs for each of the section. Instead of reading the whole doc one can directly refer to the URL of the section and thus it will be time saving.
  • Simplicity – No one likes to read the long documents, one always prefers to have the document which are simple and easy to understand. Also it is good to explain each of the section point wise so that clients will find it easy to understand.

Besides the above mentioned points there are many product documentation plugins that will indeed ease your work and allow you to build a better documentation for your site.

Important Product Documentation Plugins:

WordPress provides with many of the plugins related to product documentation. They will indeed help you to create the online product documentation very easily. To list a few of them are:

Documentor: This plugin will help you to create an online product guide or the help document very easily. It allows you to add the sections and change the colors for them very easily. It will help you to publish a professional looking documentation with a very unique design.

documentor

WP Documenter: One can create a documentation in a very easy way using this plugin. It will also allow you to create document’s single page template for the front-end. It provides with a draggable menu according to the section title that is used.

wp-documenter

Simple Documentation: It is one of the very important plugin for the product documentation that will allow the developers to provide documentation from the WordPress Dashboard. It also allows the backend users to pin the items in order to highlight them.

simple-documentation

Easy Documentation: This plugin provides with a built-in editor and a step wise instructions to add the content for the website. It is a good plugin for any non experienced users as it allows to create any of the document step wise.

easy-doc

A good product documentation will indirectly help to improve the sales of the product, also there will be lots of errors and mistakes that will be avoided due to accurately written procedures. The above points and the documentation plugins will surely help you to write a good product documentation.

How a Good Product Documentation Improved Sale by 70% in Just a Month

Karishma Sibal Leave a comment

Launching a new product for your business involves the team work, hard work, efforts over months. No matter you are running a small business or a larger one there are lots of hopes and dedication for the same to excel. There are lots of factors that are incorporated to build a successful product. It is also very necessary to take a note of the targeted audience for the product, response channels and their expectations. It is indeed important to take into consideration the goals and objectives before the successful launch of any of the product.

Factors to consider when launching a Product:

  • Customers Needs and requirements
  • Unique Features of the Product
  • Easy to understand
  • Appropriate Cost
  • Good Support
  • Detailed Documentation
  • Building a Community
  • Marketing through different Social Media platforms
  • Strong Product Management
  • Easy to Customize

All these factors plays a very important role for building a good product but it may vary from business to business.

product1 (1)

                                                   Factors to build a Product (christianwig.com)

Though all the above factors plays a very vital role for the product. But I personally feel that Detailed documentation plays a vital role among all. It is one of the key factor that will also effect the other factors and definitely benefit you.

Product Documentation for a Product:

Product Documentation can be considered as a way or language in which the product speaks for you. It is in fact not easy for the support representatives to be around the customers when ever they have a query. There are times when the query is very simple to be sorted, but if they are not getting the timely response for it, there are higher chances for the customers to get frustrated and opt for some other product. So it is necessary to have an alternative so that the clients can go through it without contacting the support. This is the only one scenario that I have discussed but there might be different reasons that are pulling them back to raise their queries. In order to avoid all these problems, It is good to have a detailed product documentation for the customers to refer when ever they require.

Impact of Product Documentation for the Sales:

Being a representative of Slidervilla Sales team, how will the customers get a good user experience is one of the main concern for the Sales. Placid Slider is one of the very important product of SliderVilla that will help to display the responsive logo slider for WordPress with the scrolling images. Our team decided to include the documentation for the slider that will help the visitors to refer it in case of any queries. The documentation of this product was included in October last year. And believe me we have noticed a drastic change over the sales of the product in just 3 months. There was an increase of 40-50% Sales of the particular product. There are many who will feel that How can a product documentation improve Sales of the product? But it is true!

Role played by Product Documentation to improve Sales:

  • Allows the customers to access the information anywhere and anytime without relying on the support team.
  • Saves the time of the customers and also reduces the work of the Support team.
  • Helps in creating a good impression among the new customers.
  • Making the customer aware and familiar with the product.
  • When the query of the customer gets sorted easily than they will give a good feedback that will definitely attract more visitors.
  • It will help the customers to set up the product very easily that will help to avoid the errors initially.
  • If the document that is prepared is keyword rich than it will help to improve the SEO for it. It will also help to divert more traffic to your site.

Other Plugins to build a document for your site:

WordPress provides with many plugins that will indeed help you to create a documentation for your site very easily. To list a few of them:

Documentor: A plugin for the product document will help you to build a guide or the help document for your site very easily. There are different content types that are supported by this plugin that will help you to present the document in a better way.

documentor

W3 Total Cache: In order to improve the experience and optimize the performance of the site than W3 Total Cache is one of the important plugin that is provided by WordPress. It will also help to improve the server performance by reducing the download times.

w3-totalcache

Yoast SEO: This plugin will be very important to improve the SEO for your site. It will also help to have a better content and also fully optimized WordPress site. It will help you to select the focused keywords.

yoast-seo

VaultPress: VaultPress is one of the very important plugin to take back up of the site. There are different security scans that are performed by it, to review and fix the threats. It is one of the best plugin to provide security to your site.

vault-press

Depending upon the needs the plugins may vary, but the one which are listed above are some of the important plugins that will surely help you to build a better website.

Including a documentation for the product will definitely help to improve the sale of the product and you will see a vast change in the figures of the sale. There are also various product documentation plugins that are available that will indeed ease your work.  Documentation can be considered as one of the factor to increase the sales, besides this the marketing strategies that you build will also play a very important role for it.