Quick summary: This is the final part of a three-part article on improving the quality of online help.
In part 1 we discussed making help highly visible to users, and how to present it site-wide and in context. In part 2 we looked at ways to determine what types of help are most needed. In part 3 we’ll look briefly at the importance of good copy writing and the need for a feedback loop between you and your customers.
4. Pay attention to your writing
It should go without saying that help content needs to be clear and concise. Yet I’ve seen a lot of help content that takes far too long to get to the point, or presents information in a way that’s vague or inconsistent. It’s difficult to write really good help content, but it’s important. Good help content:
- Gets to the point quickly and is easily understood by your customers even if they’re new to your product or service.
- Avoids jargon, abbreviations, and anything that might cause confusion.
- Is presented in the order of a newspaper-style “inverted pyramid” where the simplest and most important statements come first, followed by successively greater detail.
There’s a lot more to say about writing help content – too much to cover quickly. So in this article I’ll be concise and will address this more thoroughly in a future segment. For now I’ll just add that there are professionals who specialize in writing online copy, and there are numerous resources online that explain the basics. Either (or both) of these are worth looking into if you have any doubts about the effectiveness of your help copy.
5. Create a feedback loop
This is important but often overlooked. Even if you’ve done your homework and crafted your help content to prioritize the most likely issues there’s a good chance you’ll miss something; Murphy’s Law dictates it’ll be something important. So it’s smart to enable users to rate your help and suggest new topics. This can be as simple as a link on the help page along the lines of “Didn’t find what you wanted? Let us know.” along with a form or mailto: link. Or it could be more involved such as the rating system seen on Microsoft’s support website:
Of course if you’re collecting this information you should ensure that someone in your organization is tasked with reviewing and summarizing it so that it’s translated directly into improvements.
Hope that helps
One final thought – consider reviewing all your online help periodically to ensure that it’s effective in addressing the most common issues and resolving them quickly. Why? Because common issues and questions often change over time as your product and customer base evolves. What works well today might miss the mark 6 months or a year from now.
I hope these thoughts on help have been… helpful. And I hope you’ll agree that by paying attention to the quality of your online help you can enable your users to solve their own problems when and where they ecounter them – without them feeling a need to to escalate or give up.
Photo credit: romulusnr. Creative Commons licensed.
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