How to Write Clear and Concise User Manuals
What is a user manual?
There are various names for a user manual. Technical documents, maintenance manuals, and instruction manuals are all names that refer to the same item. A user manual is made to help customers use your product or service correctly or solve issues that happen during use. They may be made available in print, digital, or both formats.
Use manuals provide the end user with comprehensive, step-by-step instructions and some support for problems. A table of contents should be present in every user manual because they are reference materials rather than books that should be read from beginning to end. You should add a quickstart or startup tutorial in your user manual so that users may readily feel at ease starting to use the product.
kinds of user manuals
For a variety of subjects and objectives, user manuals can be produced. Here are some of your possibilities, so let’s look at them.
- Instruction Manual
An instruction manual is a type of user guide that offers straightforward instructions for using a product in the way it was intended to be used. - Training Manual
This kind of user guide offers a list of guidelines for finishing a certain task, project, or job. - Service Manual
Service manuals are user guides that describe how to look after and maintain a piece of machinery or equipment at different stages of its lifespan. - User Manual
User manuals are technical publications that explain how to use or operate a product properly. - Operation Manual
Roles, duties, and procedures specific to a business or organisation are described in operation manuals. - Organizational Policy Manual
An organisational policy manual is the documentation defining a company’s policies, practises, and best practises. - Standard Operating Procedures(SOPs) Manual
Users benefit from a standard operating procedures manual’s detailed instructions for carrying out established procedures.
Why does your business need user manuals?
People are better equipped to handle problems on their own with the support of a user manual. A decent user manual may give your customers the tools they need to swiftly and effectively achieve the value they desire from your product or service in today’s immediate gratification culture.
Excellent customer service needs to be supplemented with user manuals. Writing excellent user manuals will provide the following advantages for your company:
- To make onboarding and training simpler
Well-written user guides can make the onboarding and training procedures simpler. That’s correct, by developing and implementing top-notch user manuals, both your employees and your consumers stand to gain.
Your company can use user guides to help new hires go through some of the processes and systems that are part of their new roles rather than only setting up difficult in-person training sessions, which have significant time and financial expenses. Because employees can learn while carrying out the duties related to their positions owing to the user guides, there may be less hours lost during onboarding. - To Reduce Support Expense
User guides are a great addition to your customer service efforts for the consumer, but they also serve the business owner well as a component of the customer support system.
Customers are more likely to find solutions right away and are less likely to need to contact a technician or representative for specialised support when you give them quick access to a searchable user guide. - To conserve time
Both your customers and your employees, from entry-level staff to management, can save time by using user manuals. When user manuals are available to your clients, they won’t have to waste time trying to find information about how to use a product because they will have direct access to that information right away.
When your employees are equipped with useful user manuals, they don’t have to waste time independently looking up solutions or monopolising the attention of their coworkers and managers with inquiries because they have access to the solutions right in their user manual! - To Minimise Liability
One approach to demonstrate that you have tested your product thoroughly and know how to use it securely is to write and distribute user manuals. This can significantly lower any obligations connected with producing something for the general public.
Having warnings and safety precautions written down and made accessible to users via a user guide is an effective (though not foolproof) way to avoid legal trouble related to injuries or other damage caused by misuse if the product you sell could be dangerous to users (think space heaters, power tools, etc.).
What components make up the best user manuals?
There are some end user documentation best practises to adhere to no matter what, even though each product is unique and will need distinct components to generate truly excellent user documentation.
- Plain language
Nothing will irritate your customers more—aside from not offering one—than discovering their user manual is replete with jargon and difficult-to-understand language. Your user instructions are difficult to use because of these language choices, which also don’t promote outstanding customer service. Making ensuring you are writing for the user, not the developer, is a crucial component of creating great user guides. Don’t assume that your end user knows or is familiar with anything. Acronyms, jargon, and office terminology will make your clients feel misinformed, frustrated, and unprepared. The sweet spot for producing a user manual is striking a balance between not writing as though your consumers are children (unless, of course, they are!) and giving them the extra help they need to completely understand how to use the product, in simple language. - Simplicity
Writing a user handbook requires keeping things simple. This concept should be reflected in both the content and the design. If you overstuff your documentation with intricate pictures and long passages of text, it will appear too sophisticated and difficult to understand. This kind of user manual is likely to intimidate your user and lead them to call your help line rather than try to figure out their issue on their own. - Visuals
The maxim “Show, don’t tell” is a cornerstone of user manual writing. Annotated screenshots, movies, and other visual content are extremely helpful in understanding concepts. It is frequently much more useful to see something in action than to read about it. Visuals not only break up long passages of text, but they also reduce the amount of text in user manuals that can be scary. It has been demonstrated that people retain visual information 7% more quickly than they do written information. In a Techsmith study, it was also shown that 67% of people performed tasks more effectively when given instructions that included annotated screenshots rather than words alone to convey information. - Focus on the problem to be solved
It’s quite likely that someone bought your product to address an issue. It is essential to stay focused on this issue when drafting the user manual that will be included with the product. Instead of enumerating and discussing all the features your product offers or the intriguing design elements you’ve incorporated, inform your users about them in a way that facilitates the product’s use. Put the problem being solved in the context of your product’s features and benefits when describing them. - Logical flow and hierarchy
To make it apparent to the user what they will learn from each section of your user manual, utilise headers and subheadings that follow a clear hierarchical structure. In order to effortlessly lead your customers through all they need to know from beginning to conclusion, the hierarchy you choose should follow a logical flow. Make sure you start with the fundamentals and incorporate a logical progression towards your product’s more sophisticated features. - Contents list
Your user guide will be most helpful to readers if it begins with a table of contents. Without having to dig through many pages of information unrelated to the current problem they are facing, it is a familiar approach for someone to quickly and easily explore a document. - Make it searchable
Even if you might print out your user manuals, it’s probable that digital documentation will be your main priority. It is quite likely that your user manuals will be utilised the most frequently in a digital format in a world where the majority of people have a smartphone with them at all times. Adding a searchable feature to your digital user manuals will promote a delightful ease of use for users looking to solve an issue by accessing it, similar to how a table of contents serves to direct users to the proper place in a print document. - Accessibility
It’s possible that some of the people who require your user manual could benefit from extra assistance to ensure that it functions properly. Regardless of whether they are required by law, accessibility requirements are generally good practise. Maintaining accessibility requirements in your user manuals is just excellent business practise. Designing user guides with content that is accessible for users who could have visual, audible, or cognitive challenges is crucial. - Well-designed
Consider your audience when creating your user guides. They will be far more inclined to use it effectively if you make something they enjoy looking at! Avoid using lengthy text blocks and provide plenty of white space. Combining these two characteristics can help consumers seem less frightening and make learning anything new seem exciting rather than threatening. The “show, don’t tell” approach we described earlier also applies here. For both print and digital user manuals, adding visuals and photos to the text is a terrific alternative. For digital user manuals, videos and GIFs offer interest and a helpful element. If your company has a style guide, your design should follow it; otherwise, if you’re operating without one, it’s crucial to keep your user guide consistent. The font and colour schemes used throughout the paper, and ideally across all of your user guides, should be consistent. - Comments from actual customers or beta testers
You won’t be able to determine whether or not the user guides you have prepared are as successful as possible until you have sought out and listened to feedback from the people who will actually be using your product. The user guides you develop for your product should take into account the problems that people have with it. You might learn something that seems extremely apparent, but there’s a lot better chance that you’ll learn something that will help you understand the needs of the customers you’re trying to reach.
How do I write a user manual?
Making a user manual is a crucial task that can have a big impact on both your company and the consumers you want to serve. We’ve simplified the process of developing a user manual so you can easily follow along because it can be overwhelming.
- Identify the users
Finding the recipient of your communication is an essential initial step, just like with any other communication you generate. Your user manual’s intended audience will help you decide on issues like the tone, the level of detail to provide, and how to deliver the content. Writing a user guide for the end user of your product is significantly different from writing one for a tech engineer. The very first step is to determine your audience. - Focus on the problem
User manuals are made to help with problem-solving or instructing someone on how to do something new. You must determine precisely what your user manual is intended to do and make sure to maintain that focus.
It can be tempting to broaden the topic and discuss numerous features or applications for your product. This may frustrate users and lead to calls to your customer support line by clouding the genuine answer they require.
If your customer is a consumer learning how to use the product or a technician who needs to fix it, concentrate on the precise solution they will require. - Employ a sequential approach
Your user manual’s instructions should be laid out in the sequential order necessary to finish the work at hand. List each step in order to start. Then, make an effort to do the assignment while adhering to the precise steps you have outlined in the given order. As you go through your original list, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that you will find any stages that are missing. Additionally, you might find that something you once believed was a single task actually has to be divided into several activities for the sake of clarity.
Make sure you have specified a clear outcome for each sequential step you have allocated before moving on to the next phase of writing a user guide. Before moving on to the next level, the readers should be completely clear about what they want accomplished and how it should seem. - Map user journey
Understanding how your consumers plan to use your product and making it simple for them to do so are the goals of producing a user guide. You must put in the effort to comprehend the issue the consumer is trying to solve or the objective they are trying to accomplish by utilising your solution, as well as how they engage with your business. You can plan out the steps necessary to guide the customer through the process using these details to visualise their journey from problem to solution. - Choose a Template
The task of writing and developing user manuals can be made much simpler than you might expect by creating a series of templates. Your procedure may be streamlined, and consistency would become a much more realistic objective.
In your user manual template, in addition to defining details like fonts (type and size), contrast requirements, and colour schemes, you should also include the following:- Area allotted for an introduction
- Distinct subsections and sections
- Your chosen format for conveying a series of actions
- Cautionary notes and warnings
- Area allotted for a conclusion
- Write simple and easy to follow content
Your user manual’s material should be as straightforward and simple to understand as feasible. It is important to think about and analyse the format and content for clarity and convenience.
Make sure that each phase of the process only outlines one task and employs as clear and short a language as feasible. Make sure to properly modify your text until you have a user manual that contains only the information that is really necessary. - Approach every user like a novice
Assume that the reader of your user manual has no prior knowledge of your product when creating it. Write as if you are speaking to a layperson.
Any use of jargon or technical language should be avoided. Naturally, there will be times when it must be avoided, but these should be the absolute exception. - Test the product’s instructions with novice users
The testing phase of the user manual creation process is crucial. The subject of the experimentation has a significant impact on the outcome.
Testing should ideally be done on people who have never used your product or seen the documentation. As you move through the user manual, watch them as they complete the process and record where they get stuck. Then, the information should be updated appropriately.
Only the help of the user manual should be necessary for your testers to operate the product. They shouldn’t need to ask for more assistance. The USSR Guide should have all the information they require. - Build content using a practical approach
Every effort should be made to offer concrete examples and detailed descriptions of any outcomes that users might experience after following each step in the user manual. The user should be aware of any feedback they might get from the product, as well as any potential sights or sounds they might encounter along the way. - Explain symbols, icons and codes early
You might need to employ icons, symbols, or codes while writing a user manual to help provide the necessary instructions. In order to prevent reader confusion or frustration, it is crucial to identify these as early as possible in your user manual.
User manual FAQs
What exactly is user manuals?
User documentation is information provided in the form of user manuals or user guides and is meant to assist end users in interacting with a product successfully.
- What kinds of user documentation are there?
Physical documentation, such as booklets or manuals, has traditionally been used to offer user documentation. These days, user manuals are produced and distributed more frequently digitally. - What is contained in user manuals?
An instruction manual or user guide uses good design, clear writing, and a problem-solving focus. I must have a table of contents, adhere to a logical hierarchy and flow, and offer content that is accessible. Additionally, a good user manual will be searchable and take into account user reviews. - How is a user document made?
Simple steps can be used to develop user manuals. The user guide’s objectives must first be determined, and a strategy must be developed to enable their accomplishment. The user manual must be tested and updated as necessary before being published. Finally, it is important to keep the user guide updated, making changes as new updates or editions are added.