Most how-to and instruction producers would agree that, creating clear and concise instructions is important, and that the objective of the work is to support users to achieve a definable output. These bits of wood into a wardrobe, these cables and boxes into a surround system, these things from the larder into a cake. The definition of user success is straightforward: Has the user who is following your how-to been able to successfully complete the task? However, that goal is often forgotten.
The Best Laid Plans
While the goal of user success might seem straightforward and few of us would admit that we don’t care about the user outcome, as how-to and instruction producers we often forget to focus on this, at least as time goes by other things become the priority:
- Lack of visibility and feedback from the final user means it is not always easy to track, and so we pay less attention.
- For creators and influencers, while they start with a focus and passion on helping people they get distracted from their original goal by the day-to-day chores of making money: chasing attention and engagement.
- Companies invest lots of money designing, manufacturing and marketing their product, but too many times the instructions to build or configure are done at the last minute, or are outsourced to someone who is not on the production team. And the result is a PDF which doesn’t look good, is difficult to read, and varies from the finished product in different ways that creates a dissonance for the user (you can often see this vividly in TV subtitles, where the words spoken are different from the words written).
Why Should How-To Producers Value User Success?
You may respond: that sounds fine and there is nothing I can disagree with, but actually it’s going great why should you change the way I work when everything is going fine? Let’s break it down.
- This is your why (or is it?)
Do you create how-tos and instructions to help people do? You want them to create, bake, build beautiful fantastic things? You want to feel that you are empowering people, guiding them to new things? If so, user success should always be front and center. If it’s not then you are a content producer, entertaining people, building a different kind of following, which is valid and fine. But it’s good to be clear on which you are. - People work in different ways, take advantage of it
Some people prefer WhatsApp over Email, some people like to see the whole process on a video when others like to dive right in; users looking to do things have different preferences, and a well structured, step-by-step how-to will allow more users to get value from your how-tos and instructions. It doesn’t mean that you have to change your format overnight and throw everything else out, it means that it’s good to start thinking about these issues and experimenting with them. - You can preserve more of the value of what you do
You may be top of the ‘Gram, or your paper instructions for your product may rock, but a well-structured step-by-step how-to on a web page with your name, will live longer and be more available and get into Google much better.
How-to focus on user success?
We need to put user success back at the heart of what we do, remembering that ultimately, our reputation and brand will be judged by how we help the user complete the task that we are claiming we can help them do. We need to start by actively measuring success, asking our users to let us know if they completed the how-to.
- For creators, it is important to ask users explicitly and directly if they have completed your how-to, and for any feedback (good or bad) that might be useful in the comments.
- If you create paper instructions, make sure you add at least one way (email for example) for users to give feedback, and encourage them to do so. If your customers register with you, create a follow-up campaign that actively seeks out their feedback.
- Test your instructions better. This is always hard, as you can’t always use the same testers for new how-tos, because they become ‘experts’ in what we do and start taking shortcuts.
Once we start gathering our feedback, we can understand what we need to do to help our users be more successful. We’ll explore that in following posts, in the meantime, welcome to StepAlong.
