A product user guide or manual can mean a great customer experience and a terrible one.  

It guides the user's onboarding process, helping them understand the product and how to use it. Older customers can also refer to product guides to refresh their memories.

So, writing a user guide shouldn't be an option to bypass. Yet, many people either overlook or ignore the challenge of creating user guides. 

In this post, we share details to help DevOps or Product teams understand a user guide and how to build external documentation for users.

What is a user guide?

A user guide or product guide is an instructional material that accompanies your product, service or system to the end users and helps them use it. It is also known as a user manual, product manual or instruction manual (see some instruction manual examples here). 

The goal of a user guide is process documentation to help end users better understand your product/service with step-by-step user instructions (or assembly for physical products). A user guides technical documents cover detailed information about a product's operations, functionalities standards and guidelines, troubleshooting and more. As such, it's the first document the user reaches before contacting your customer care. It also helps in new staff onboarding and training.

Because they're technical documents, end-user guides are written by technical writers. But they can also be written by product developers, project managers, programmers or technical teams with the help of knowledge base software.

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What information do user guides have? 

User guides are designed to be informative and help users understand a product. They cover all aspects of a product, including its design, operation, potential issues, problems and more. Some examples of process documentation details are:

• Product description content. 
• Explanation of product features. 
• Product installation and setup process. 
• Product use cases.
• Potential product risks and how to solve them.
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). 
• Product demos, video tutorials and walkthroughs.
• Troubleshooting tips and tricks. 
• How-to articles.

The type of information a user guide contains depends on the type of product, type of user manual, User guide system and other considerations the writer might deem fit.

What are the major benefits of a user guide?

Here are a few benefits of creating user guides.

User instruction

The first and major role of the user guide or process documentation is to provide step-by-step guides for product, service or system use. This can benefit users, staff and onboarding employees. 

Positive customer experience

User documentation is part of the customer experience. User manuals that are coherently written are helpful and easy to read and follow. They make your customers feel appreciated. Seventy percent of customers now expect a company's website to include a self-service application before they reach customer support. Great user guides contribute to your customer's satisfaction and overall product/service use.

Customer support

User guides have important content that the customer support team can use as a point of reference to help solve your customers' problems. This can save them time and reduce customer care tickets and increase.

Brand image

User manuals influence the user's impression of your brand. Providing customers with useful information and user-friendly layouts creates confidence and loyalty in your brand. Vague details turn off customers and make them look away to your competitors.

Staff onboarding & training

User documentation in business can help your staff understand your product/service better. New employees can study the material, and the customer service team can share links to user guides when responding to queries. You can also use the product guides as reference materials for staff training.

What are the different types of user guides?

User documentation materials take many forms.

For example, video game manuals tell you the buttons to push to shoot. Software documentation guides you on different purchase plans, lawn mower guides help start and use the engine, etc. Depending on your product, service, or system, the following are some common user guide types.

Instruction manual 

A tutorial or instruction manual is a user guide that contains basic and important instructions telling users how best to use a product or service. It's like a product/service description but explains the concept, context of use, problems it solves, structure, design and other important elements.

User manual (how-to guide)

A manual combines step-by-step procedures in a technical user guide that walks users through the operation of a service/product. It also provides ways of troubleshooting problems and solving issues. Many SaaS and software products create user manuals to help users/customers learn and use their products.

Training manual or tutorial

Training manuals or tutorials are a set of instructions with lesser detail than user guides or user manuals. They give users quick product overviews and how-to guides of basic features and functionalities. Tutorials are majorly designed for beginners, refreshers, onboarding new employees or customer training. 

Product tours

Developers can also make tutorials in the form of interactive product tours. These are detailed onboarding tours with the information imparted in sequencing events for customer or employee onboarding.

Tooltips & customer walkthroughs

When a product development team doesn't create a product tour, they create an alternative called an interactive walkthrough for every product feature. Instead of a predetermined product flow, walkthroughs involve popups that provide contextual help triggered by a customer's action on the product feature. Walkthroughs help them to build their product knowledge base simultaneously.

FAQs

Most product documentation guides include frequently asked questions (FAQs) and their answers. Technical writers brainstorm or work with the customer service team to identify users' questions and problems and answer them. They explain the answers in detail, often with a combination of instruction manual and text, images or videos.

Essential elements of user guides

What makes a good user guide?

Each product/service may be unique, but their user guides may share certain features for easy reference.

The features of users guides are:

Plain language

A user guide should have clear, simple and easy-to-understand language in writing. Even technical product documents need easy language to understand. Why? 

Customers don't understand the technical language of products. So, the simplicity of the user guide language is important for a positive customer experience. Customers feel frustrated when they read things they can't understand. Using plain language, short sentences and simple words when writing a user guide make it easy to understand. 

Document flow & logical hierarchy

The user manual needs a logical flow and hierarchy to give users an easy time finding content. This means including a table of contents, titles, headings, subheadings and document sections. 

Visuals

Including visuals in your user guide is how you catch a user's attention reading the manual. Without visual work instructions, your user manual is just a long boring block of text. Include visuals like videos, images, screenshots, diagrams, etc., to make the documentation interactive.

Searchable content

Initially, most user guides were printed, and users needed to scan-read them for information. Thanks to the Internet, you can make a user guide searchable for easy navigation. Also, delivering your user guide as a document in a digital knowledge base with a distinct and prominent search bar makes it easy to find. The document's search support and search bar should be able to predict search terms and deliver them as searched.

Relevance & focus 

A good user guide must have clear topics and relevant information articles organized to deliver great user instruction. The topics in the user guide must make sense to the user, and the articles must be relevant to each user's needs. Having too many topics or sub-topic levels in product documentation can overwhelm users. 

Feedback & reviews

You can't create a great user guide until you've listened to the people who've used the product/service (internally or externally). You need to use feedback to know what to include, what works and what to improve. So, actively seek user feedback on your product and consider their suggested improvements in the user guide. 

Links to more resources

The user guide isn't the only resource or documentation you create for your users. Include links to other internal resources and pages to help users improve their product knowledge and get a great user experience. This can include links to a demo, website, tutorials, user forums, FAQs, phone numbers and others.

Examples of user guides in action

User guides are a crucial part of product development. They're a reference point for users to understand how to use a product. This is why user guides are also called knowledge base customer service in digital services or products. 

Here are some examples of user guides in action.

Scribe: Process documentation 

Scribe is a process documentation tool and knowledge base software for individuals, teams and companies.

Scribe's user guides and knowledge base combine how-to guides, resources, blogs, videos, release notes, images and more.

For example, this "Show how it's done" use case shows the whole process documentation steps, telling you everything you need to know to use Scribe.

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Furthermore, Scribe Help Center answers all user questions about their product's use, with links and videos. Read more about it here: how to use Scribe to automate process documentation.

Mind blown 🤯 by what @ScribeHow can do.

You do a web screen recording, and it does the rest. I did this in 26 seconds! Then spent less than a minute updating it to my liking.

Then with the free version, you can share it as a PDF or URL 👇https://t.co/oAKfIAE0Uz pic.twitter.com/lZxx1BdFdo

— Carl Storms (@theBIMsider) December 8, 2022

‎Google 

Google, the most successful digital company, is one of the best use cases for user guides.

Whether it is Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, etc., Millions of people who land on Google services daily use their user guides.

With thousands of tools and products, almost each of the company's products has a user manual and user documentation page. And the Google Help portal and community portal carry users' feedback, common questions and knowledge base.

Stripe

Stripe is one of the best online payment processing services for businesses and individuals.

Stripe also has one of the best user documentation and guides for its customers. Its clean and uncluttered user interface has a products page and resources page that immediately welcomes customers to the user guides with a prominent search bar.

You're then taken to handy guides to learn more about Stripe and how to use it. Every resource section invites customers to explore Stripe's knowledge base and learn more.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a renowned SEO software SaaS used to build links, conduct competitor analysis, research keywords, track site rankings and more. The Ahrefs' selling points are ease-of-use and user guide documentation, including their blog site for product and industry guides. Ahrefs Help Center is a repository of straightforward answers right from getting started with Ahrefs to how to use its API.

The help center has a search bar for easy navigation. Ahrefs blog page also has detailed articles, case studies and more for user learning.

Microsoft 

Microsoft is the most successful technology company for productivity software, Internet, personal computers and related services. Its brands include Microsoft Office, Windows, Microsoft 365, Internet Explorer (now Microsoft Edge), Surface laptops and more.

It's also the best company with user guides and product documentation for all its products and services resources pages, installation manuals, instructions for use, product updates and training and code samples.

The Microsoft Knowledge base, called Microsoft Docs, houses all kinds of articles and resources for all company products and services.

Read this article for more user guide examples. 

Challenges of creating & socializing user guides

User manuals can be challenging and tricky to write. Why? 

Large, long, substantial documents

A user manual is a user-oriented document that contains instructions (maintenance, operating, technical), descriptions, diagrams, flow charts, drawings and more. This means they need to focus on the problem and the detail of the instructions. Yet, writers often find it challenging to balance the two when writing user guides.

Time consuming to create 

The process of writing a user guide is time-consuming. You have to get everything right, or your users will find difficulty using the product. You also have to review the guide, which also takes time persistently.

Precision 

When writing user guides, you must be precise to make them useful to the user/customer, who'll only likely refer to them in moments of frustration. If the user fails to understand your guide during these moments of frustration, then what's the point?

For example, if your product can run on multiple operating systems, you'll need more than one user guide version, or the user won't find it useful. A simple task on Mac may require a different approach on Windows or Linux. 

Product updates

Most products (especially SaaS) are constantly updated. So, when writing the manuals, you must leave room for updates.

The problem is that you're not sure which part will be updated when at the point of writing. For example, a product's version of Windows 10 needs an update to work on Windows 11, which requires different system requirements. 

Technical language and abilities

Most user guide writers have technical knowledge — developers, programmers, program managers, technical writers, etc. — and don't know how to write in simple language. Yet, users want the product guides in simple, easy-to-understand language. This makes writing great product documentation for a wide audience with differing technical abilities challenging.

9 Steps to create a userguide

Here's a summary of important steps to include when creating a compelling and useful user guide.

Identify your users/audience. 

Who will use the guide? You're likely writing your user guide for a diverse group of users.

Identifying your audience should be the first thing you do when writing your user manual. This includes knowing their technical knowledge, demographics, needs, common problems or frustrations, requirements and related information. This will tell you how much detail your user manual should have and how to present the document in terms of form, style and language.

Focus on the problem

What's the aim or your user guide? All user manuals aim to solve a user's problem. You must identify what problems you want to address in the guide to position it as a solution to user problems. The guide should fix the problem rather than simply give users workarounds. Use user manual software to quickly build your documentation.

Use ordered or sequential steps

A user guide is like an instruction manual. And every instruction has steps to follow. So, break down your instructions into sequential steps in order, such as a numbered list, steps, etc. This organizes your guide so that it's easy to understand and apply. Also, keep one point per step to make the instructions easy to follow. Tell users what the completed step will look like before they move to the next step.

Map the user journey

How do users use your product? Find out the user journey and make your user guide to capturing every user's touchpoint along the journey. A user guide tool or writer must see the product from the user's perspective to produce a user-based guide. Sometimes, you may need to categorize your users into segments based on their product use cases to develop a complete guide that caters to every use-case.

Choose or create a template

Your documentation needs to be consistent. This requires you to create a template for your user guides.

If you have a user documentation software like Scribe, you can choose a user guide template and apply it consistently across all your user guides. A template you create or choose should be clear and easy to follow, with vital components such as:

• Introduction space. 
• Sections and subsections.
• How-to and Sequential steps.
• Provision for links.
• FAQs.
• Conclusion space.

Other consistent considerations are font size, text, background, contrast and color coding.

Simple language & easy-to-follow content

Can your users understand your content and follow it? Any content challenging to understand or follow isn't worth the user's time. If you understand your audience (users), you'll write your user guide content in simple language and a clear, compelling manner. Also, streamline your content to include only the most essential elements for the user's needs.

Language choice also means you treat all users as laymen when writing a user guide. You must assume that all users lack the technical background to use the product, avoiding jargon and specialist terms in the document.

Write concise & comprehensive

A user guide must be concise and comprehensive. Although it uses a technical writing style, it needs to be conscious of the user's needs. Here, you must focus on transmitting maximum detail in as limited content as possible.

Do not be wordy on a process that needs a two-step procedure. But be comprehensive and explain every step in detail, figuring out each huddle a user may face.

Structure & format for easy readability

A well-written user manual needs a conscious structure or format for easy navigation, readability and convenience. Here are some suggestions to format your content.

• Divide the content into sections, titles, headings, subheadings and categories.
• Use bold and italics to separate different information. 
• Use Capital words or underline what needs to be stressed. 
• Create a table of content for the whole document and on each section for easy navigation.
• Number the steps and consider double columns for scan reading. 
• Explain symbols, icons, graphs and codes early, so your users aren't left scratching their heads when using the content. 

Creating a good structure is important to allow both easy navigation and scan reading. 

Validate document steps & proofread the content 

Before you release the document for use, you must test the instructions alongside the product, assuming you're a naive user or use naive users. If it works for a user who's never used the product before, then it's a good document. In the process, note where users get stuck and revise the content accordingly. Make sure that users can use the documentation without reaching out to support. 

Use Scribe to Start Building Your Own User Guides Today

User guides are challenging to write, both for technical writers and programmers. Programmers understand the product but lack the test-language (not code) to explain it to users.

Technical writers often have difficulties transcribing programming languages into plain words. An alternative is to use Scribe product documentation software to automates the process of writing user guides.