But, obviously, all of those are very different applications. Learn your audience’s needs and expectations and then create the content they need to succeed.
Help your users get up and running quickly with your product.
Similar to a quick-start guide, but offers an overview of how to use your product or service’s most basic or core features.
Once your users are ready to take things to a new level, use a quick-reference guide to introduce them to other functionality or features.
Did your software recently update? Use a quick-reference guide to walk your users through the changes.
Got a process you need to explain? Show it!
If your product doesn’t require a huge manual, a quick-reference guide may be all the documentation you need.
Essential elements to creating a great quick-reference or quick-start guide
The more of these blogs I write, the more I become aware of consistent themes. Creating the content your audience wants (and not necessarily what you want to tell them) is one of the most consistent.
As noted in this article about how to create more effective customer education content, there are a number of ways to figure out exactly what that is, including online forums, customer surveys, or even from your own technical support staff.
Website Template Color CombinationRegardless of how you get it, delivering content your customers want and need will go a long way in ensuring the success of your quick-reference materials.
The whole point of a quick-reference guide is to make information easily and readily accessible, so be sure it’s simple to understand.
Avoid huge blocks of text as much as possible Instead, use visual elements such as screenshots with markup, icons, or product photos — and just enough text to ensure your points are clear.
Keep it to one or two pages. Don’t try to cover everything from your full user manual. Think about it — a quick-reference guide that needs a table of contents probably isn’t all that quick.
Choose the most important information to accomplish a particular task or that otherwise conveys what you want to show. Boil down complex concepts into their most basic form.
Know what to leave in and what to leave out. Remember, you can always create another quick-reference guide to cover other important topics.
If your quick-reference guide isn’t visually appealing and easy to follow, your users won’t find it useful.
You don’t have to create a total work of art to make a good quick reference guide. Sometimes a simple screenshot annotated with arrows, text, etc. can be enough to get someone the information they need.
Website Templates Free DownloadI feel like I can’t emphasize this enough: Your quick-reference guide just won’t be as effective, engaging, and useful as it can be without good images, icons, screenshots, or other visual elements.
Images draw the eye and help provide anchor points to your content, helping your users quickly and easily identify important points of information.
In fact, our Value of Visuals research found that people learn better with images and text vs. text alone.
Infographic showing that 58% of people believe they remember information better when it's visual, that 67% of people complete tasks better when instructions are provided with visuals or video, and that employees absorb information 7% faster when communications are visual.
You can learn all about how valuable visual communication can be with this awesome infographic.
And, have you ever heard the terms a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, it turns out the best way to show something is to actually SHOW it.
A good image can convey a ton of information and help reduce the text density of your content and make it more user-friendly.
Our friends at Venngage have some more information on the importance of visual content.
Quick-reference guide dos and don’ts
Not all quick-reference guides will be as simple as the one I created. Some will need more text, others will need more images. Some will need more complex layouts. Depending on the subject, it may be longer.
There is a wide range of types of and uses for quick-reference guides, and it would be impossible to cover them all here. But, there are some common dos and don’ts that are pretty universal:
Quick-reference guide dos and don'ts. Text is repeated below the image.
Charity Website TemplateDo
Use a sensible, easy-to-follow layout, with clear headings and subheadings as needed.
Make it stand on its own. Users shouldn’t have to look in your manual to understand your quick-reference guide.
Cram in too much information. You’re not trying to fit your whole user manual into this one guide.
Make your font sizes so small no one can read them without an electron microscope.
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