3 Ways to Understand Your Audience Better & Create Effective Documentation

No matter how good your product is, if you do not deliver good customer service, people may move to other better options.

And you definitely don’t want that.

With everyone expecting immediate answers, having strong user documentation puts you ahead of the competition.

In fact, 73.7% of customers find documentation to be more helpful than videos, user manuals, or salesmen when searching for information about products they are contemplating buying⁽ⁱ⁾.

Your documentation guides people through the initial learning process and teaches them how to use your product more successfully. It is an excellent way to boost customer experience and drive conversions, especially if your documentation meets the demands of your target audience.

So, in this blog post, you’ll learn the need for user documentation and how to understand what your users are looking for in your documentation.

Why Do You Need User Documentation?

While many people associate product documentation with assisting consumers who have already made a decision to buy, effective product documentation may also assist you in acquiring and retaining more customers in the first place.

Although its main purpose is to help customers, your product documentation can benefit you in many ways. Let’s take a look at some benefits:

• Fosters Customer Self-Help: When evaluating a product purchase, more than 40% of people frequently turn to product documentation rather than packaging, salespeople, in-store signs, or videos⁽ⁱⁱ⁾. Documentation helps existing customers expedite, simplify, and eliminate problems they might encounter while using the product.
• Enhances Team Efficiency: Product documentation can be a valuable tool for your team members, not just for customers, to learn about your product and refer to it when necessary.
• Works as an Effective Marketing Tool: Product documentation is a veritable gold mine of long-tail SEO keywords that you can rank your documentation for from a marketing standpoint.
• Increases Sales: Product documentation can answer any pre-sale inquiries customers may have and persuade them to buy your product.

Now you know the benefits of user documentation, let’s see how you can understand your customers better and discover what they are looking for in the documentation.

3 Top Ways to Understand What Your Customers Are Looking For in a Documentation

Your documentation should be thorough and offer accurate assistance to your users. The data presented in the document should be reliable for your customers. It can only be accomplished by working on all facets of the content, from its quality to its design and presentation.

Here are the top 3 ways to understand what your customers are looking for in your documentation:

1. Customers Feedback

The easy way to learn what your customers need from your documentation is to take their input. Ask them how beneficial your knowledge base is to them. You can also implement a rating system for your content to assess the user experience. Alternatively, you can encourage users to post their thoughts in the comment box.

2. Analytics

Get in-depth details about what your customers are seeking and whether they were successful in finding the solutions they were looking for by examining your documentation. Track each customer’s journey and see how each article assisted them in resolving their issues. These metrics will help you outline your areas of strength and identify the gaps in your documentation.

3. Surveys

You can strengthen your company’s relationships with your current customers by using surveys. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys to get more specific data. Include inquiries on how to expand your documentation based on the needs of your customers.

How to Create Effective Documentation?

Knowing how to produce effective, helpful documentation that truly provides its users with what they need can make your life a whole lot easier.

Here are a few ways to improve your user documentation.

Structure Your Data

You have to manage the content in sub-topics instead of giving all the information under one topic. Small pieces of data process easily. You can categorize your content as per your users.

Address Customers’ Pain Points

You have to think about the customer’s pain points. Include topics that help them resolve their problems. When your content answers precise questions, you’re more likely to target qualified traffic.

Make It Accessible

Make content that is easily accessible. Many of your customers read your documentation to understand and use your product, so make sure they can quickly find the information they seek.

Conclusion

Creating outstanding user documentation can help both the users and your team. It makes life easier by improving your users’ product experience and reducing the workload of your support staff.

Additionally, you can learn more about your customers’ thinking processes and product usage by keeping track of the searches they make in your documentation. This information is essential if you want to improve your service, which will eventually lead to more customers and increased profits.

Want to Create Effective User Documentation? Talk to Us!

Statistics References:

⁽ⁱ⁾ Docsie
⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ D2WorldWide