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Step-by-step guides are a crucial content format for B2B businesses, serving as the cornerstone for user education, onboarding, and support. These guides simplify complex processes into digestible, actionable steps, enhancing user experience and facilitating smoother adoption of software solutions.
However, creating effective step-by-step guides isn’t as straightforward a task as it may seem. From identifying the most relevant content to presenting it in an engaging, easy-to-follow manner, creating effective guides is no small feat.
Moreover, with the need to cater to diverse learning styles and the constant updates in software features, maintaining the relevance and effectiveness of these guides can be daunting.
In this article, let’s look at four simple yet effective action items that can help you create engaging step-by-step guides that drive user action.
Creating a step-by-step guide that resonates with your users requires meticulous planning and a deep understanding of their needs and skill levels.
Begin by identifying the specific goals your users are looking to accomplish with your software and consider the technical proficiency needed to execute these tasks. For instance, does it require the user to write prompts or code?
This initial assessment will guide you in customizing the content to fit different user personas, from novices to advanced users.
Start by outlining the main goal, then list all the subtasks required to achieve this goal.
Video tutorials and interactive platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent, but still, well-crafted text guides continue to hold significant value for B2B customers and audiences. The demand for good-fashioned text guides stems from their accessibility, ease of use, and the convenience of quickly scanning through content to find specific information.
To create step-by-step guides that are truly effective, it's crucial to use simple language and avoid industry jargon. Break down complex ideas into easy-to-understand concepts, making your guide user-friendly and inclusive.
Also, start each step in your guide with a clear action verb, conveying exactly what the user needs to do.
For example, instead of saying "Initiate the program," say "Click the green 'Start' button at the top right corner of the screen." This precision eliminates ambiguity, guiding the user through the process with confidence.
For B2B businesses, investing time in crafting step-by-step guides that adhere to these principles is not just about creating a product manual; it's about enhancing customer experience, reducing support queries, and ultimately, fostering user success with your software.
Zoho Books, an accounting tool, empowers its users to explore the tool at their own pace based on their requirements with well-structured guides:
Note how they have only used a visual where it was necessary. Adding a visual at each bullet of the step-by-step guide would have made it lengthier without adding any additional value.
Speaking of visual elements, let’s take a closer look at how you can enhance them.
Visual elements such as videos, GIFs, images, screenshots, and diagrams play a pivotal role in clarifying instructions and enhancing the retention of step-by-step guides.
Videos offer a dynamic way to walk users through procedures, GIFs can highlight specific actions within the software, and diagrams provide a clear overview of workflows or system architectures. Images and screenshots offer concrete examples, educate about common error messages and warnings, etc.
As you can deduce from this article so far, judiciously used annotations bring the attention of your reader to focus points such as buttons and navigation icons.
Take a look at how Hootsuite’s step-by-step guide to setting up Google Analytics does the same to provide clear directions to the reader:
However, as you might recall from experience, creating perfectly annotated visuals (GIFs or images) that make your guide better is a tedious task. And so is writing concise bullets that don’t scare your readers away.
Creating step-by-step guides that adhere to all the best practices we have touched upon so far requires a fully dedicated team — something only a few growing businesses and teams can afford to build and maintain.
Fortunately, Clueso offers a friendly and scalable solution.
We all have explained things to others. Whether it is showing a coworker how to use a new tool you discovered or getting a new team member up to speed with your processes, sharing your screen and walking them through the steps is something that comes naturally to us.
Clueso takes that raw screencast footage and converts it into a ready-to-publish step-by-step guide within minutes. The platform transcribes the audio from your footage and writes the instructions in simple terms while adhering to your brand and tonality guidelines.
For instance, if you want your future team members to know how to create lists on HubSpot, you can record the screen while walking through the process. Then, upload that unedited video to get a concise and easy-to-follow step-by-step guide:
All the tips we mentioned above such as keeping the steps short and using perfectly trimmed, zoomed-in GIFs — Clueso will follow them for you.
With Clueso in your tech stack, you can save hours on writing the steps, collecting the visuals, and editing the content — and create step-by-step guides, literally, in minutes.
Book a demo and we will get you started in 15 minutes!
Keeping step-by-step guides current with product and policy updates and changes is crucial to providing users with accurate and helpful information. An outdated guide can lead to confusion, reduce user satisfaction, and increase support tickets, undermining the effectiveness of your self-help resources.
It is a good practice to revisit your most viewed guides after every major product update such as UI improvements or feature launches. Furthermore, consider updating the help guides first and then announcing the SaaS product enhancements to your audience and customers.
Clueso’s platform allows SaaS businesses to publish their step-by-step guides at their own help center and knowledge base making it easier for teams to distribute, update, and manage their product-led instructional content.
Additionally, the version history feature allows creators to track and access all versions of saved articles and videos. This capability is invaluable when you need to update your content to reflect product changes or when reverting to a previous version becomes necessary.
Finally, encouraging user feedback is another vital aspect of maintaining your guides. Feedback provides insights into areas that may need more clarification, uncovers topics that require additional guides, and informs future updates.
Step-by-step guides are invaluable assets for B2B brands, facilitating user education, onboarding, and the overall customer experience. These guides explain software functionalities, enabling users to leverage full capabilities with confidence.
It is crucial to craft these while considering the needs and preferences of all users and audiences by breaking complex tasks into simple steps.
Using simple and jargon-free language while illustrating the steps with visuals like GIFs and annotated screenshots can greatly enhance readability and recall.
As you may expect, the creation, enhancement, and maintenance of step-by-step guides require thoughtful planning, clear writing, strategic use of visuals, and ongoing updates informed by user feedback.
Creating multiple step-by-step guides on a variety of topics while adhering to the best practices for optimizing engagement and information recall can be challenging, particularly for budding companies with limited resources.
Clueso, by converting raw screencast explainer videos into ready-to-publish step-by-step articles, can help teams save hours in this workflow. The intuitive interface of the tool will get you going within minutes!
Interested?
Drop us a line and we will get you started.
What are the steps to create a guide?
Identify user needs, break down the process into clear, actionable steps, use simple language, incorporate visuals like screenshots and videos, and ensure your content is easily navigable.
How do I make a step-by-step guide online?
Choose a user-friendly platform like Clueso designed for creating and hosting polished guides in various formats from scratch within minutes. Plan your content, write concise instructions, add relevant visuals, and publish on your chosen platform.
What makes a good step-by-step guide?
A good guide is clear, concise, and user-centric. It uses simple language, logical sequencing, includes helpful visuals, and directly addresses the user’s needs and challenges.
How to create step-by-step instructions with screenshots?
Outline your process, capture relevant screenshots at each step, annotate images to highlight key actions or areas, and accompany each image with a brief, descriptive text.
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