#1 Interactive User Manual Creating Software in 2022 — Why UserGuiding?

UserGuiding
8 min readNov 19, 2021

Insufficient user education is costing your business a ton of new revenue.

According to Wyzowl, 55% of people refund a product just because they didn’t understand how to use it.

I know that you don’t want your product to share the same fate — that’s why you’re here.

And I want to help you.

In this article, I’ll go over:

I’m sure by the end of this article, you’ll realize why you should steer away from outdated user education methods, and see the benefit of having UserGuiding by your side as you step into the future of user education.

So, let’s start by taking an honest look at the traditional methods.

Help Wikis, FAQs, or Online Manuals = Big Mistakes

I’ve been on both sides of these user education methods: creating my own traditional online documents for software, and also trying to make sense of Wiki articles to find my way around a new product.

For me, the traditional methods of user education are unacceptable, especially when we have better methods at our disposal.

Help Wikis, FAQs, and all sorts of online documents are not the best path to choose for many reasons, both from the user’s and your own point of view.

To see why, let’s take a look at each perspective separately:

But let’s say you like to be in pain and went ahead with creating online documents — the torture doesn’t end there! With every update and change that occurs on your UI and UX, you have to then update the document.

Do you really want to invest hours of work after software updates, to re-writing an article?

I would guess (and hope) not.

And second, they won’t enjoy these documents; nobody does. They are long and boring, and your users will want to do anything but read them.

So I’m here to offer you a better method, which allows you to craft quick, fun, interactive, and efficient experiences with more visual content:

Interactive User Guides: The Present and Future of Onboarding

According to research, 93% of marketers think that interactive content is a more effective way of educating users.

So why not turn your user onboarding, the part of the user’s journey where they learn the value of your product, into an interactive experience?

I’ll tell you why you should:

Adopting an interactive user manual software will not only save you time, but it will vastly improve your users’ experience — and these improvements will lead to increased revenue.

The downside to going the insource route is that the time you spend in development could instead be spent on improving and stabilizing the product.

Creating Interactive Manuals

Also, if you’re not convinced about buying a third-party solution, here’s our honest opinion on building vs buying user onboarding.

When it comes to creating interactive manuals, you have two options: go insource or adopt a third-party tool.

It all comes down to the product you use.

So I’d suggest you take a third-party user onboarding tool and create interactive user manuals without a single line of code: I’ll explain the benefits of this method below.

The best software for creating interactive user manuals

We’ve designed UserGuiding with the passion to help businesses improve their product adoption by educating users in a fun way.

UserGuiding is an all-in-one user onboarding software that can be used to create interactive user manuals and many other in-app UX elements. The product is a true no-code platform, which means anyone can sign up to the product and start putting together next-level user onboarding materials.

There are many reasons to choose UserGuiding for creating interactive manuals, so let’s dig deeper into it.

The no-code revolution has begun.

And I just wanted to mention, you can try UserGuiding for FREE with access to everything below:

No-Code, I Mean It!

Day after day, I see a new product that takes developers out of the equation, and I like it.

It’s as simple as dragging and dropping with your mouse. Here’s what I’ve created on Youtube in just a few minutes:

Developers’ time is precious, and should only be spent on creating beautiful products that we fall in love with.

That’s why UserGuiding is one of the best onboarding solutions — it requires absolutely no coding. Anyone on your team, even those without any technical background, can use the product to create amazing experiences.

That means your first guide will be up and running in a matter of minutes, without the need for any developer assistance.

Numerous Features to Perfect Onboarding

Online documents are one thing, and user onboarding experiences that delight every user are another. It’s a combination of many onboarding elements put together for you to push your user to the aha moment you have defined.

This is why you’re here, right?

And that’s just what UserGuiding offers. The main features of the product are:

Interactive User Guides

As I’ve mentioned above, an interactive user guide is the best way to educate users.

In UserGuiding, you can create step-by-step instructions and publish them immediately. These guides can be personalized and tailored to the needs of specific customer profiles so that each user can achieve the maximum value of your platform.

But UserGuiding will help you create much more than a user manual:

In-App Messages

Beautifully designed in-app messages that you can send to your users during their experience can increase engagement and vastly improve your feature adoption.

With UserGuiding, you can display different messages to various groups of users, which are triggered by custom events. Customization is limitless to help you reach the right user at the right time.

User onboarding checklists that will be displayed to your users during their onboarding process can help you do just that.

Onboarding Checklists

During their training and onboarding, users need a sense of progression.

In their onboarding, your users will check the tasks they have completed and go through a gamified experience. With UserGuiding, you can create custom checklists that trigger different guides, which will then lead users to different features.

The Resource Center

The newest feature of UserGuiding also happens to be my favorite.

Imagine that you’ve used UserGuiding to convert all your educational materials into interactive guides. Shouldn’t there be a database for these guides that users can access on-demand?

And that’s what the Resource Center feature is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not truly a database — it’s a widget that works right inside your product, so your users don’t have to leave the platform.

The best part is, you can also add external links to your Resource Center, which can be anything from CTAs and additional resources to your marketing materials and support articles.

Also, if you insist on keeping your existing knowledge base, you can connect it to UserGuiding’s resource center, turning it into a gathering point for your all educational content.

Being there for your users whenever they need, not just during a specific point in their journey, is crucial to establishing strong relationships with them.

Check out our Resource Center yourself at the right side of your screen 👉

Analytics

Chances are, your first interactive manual won’t be anywhere close to perfect.

Regardless of your industry, product, or audience… Personalization sells.

And that’s okay because you can improve as long as you know what to improve.

According to Epsilon, 80% of users are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.

With UserGuiding’s in-depth analytics feature, you can track the performance of every step of every guide and see what your users like. The dashboard is straightforward and insightful:

Segmentation and Targeting

Don’t believe me? Believe the numbers:

Your users are looking for an experience that is tailored to their needs, so provide it to them! With UserGuiding, you can create group users into different segments and target custom segments with personalized guides:

The end results for successfully implementing personalization to your product will surely make your jaw drop.

How You Can Get Started

UserGuiding is completely free to try, and since it’s easy to adopt, you’ll get started in minutes and master every feature of UserGuiding in just a matter of hours.

To avoid this, adopt interactive user guides as your main method of user education.

Getting started with interactive user manuals is just a click away.

Conclusion

Yes, your users can learn from an online document if they have to. But they won’t hesitate to switch to a competitor if they’re offered a better experience. 👋

A third-party tool such as UserGuiding can help you create interactive experiences that delight users. Don’t miss out!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an interactive guide?

An Interactive Guide is a product walkthrough where you teach a customer what every feature does by making them engage with your product.

How can an interactive user manual help my company?

They help drive customers to their “Aha!” moments which increase your conversion and activation rates at first, then your retention.

How long does it take to create an interactive user manual?

It takes only 5 minutes if you select a 3rd-party user manual creation software such as UserGuiding and many hours if you want to create it in-source.

How can I make my content more interactive?

For educational content like an instruction manual, adopting a 3rd party digital adoption solution can help turn your content into interactive guides that users enjoy going through.

What is UserGuiding?

UserGuiding is an all-in-one user onboarding software that can be used to create interactive guides and educational UX elements without any coding. The product is completely free to try for 14 days.

Originally published at https://userguiding.com on November 19, 2021.

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