Before you start writing, even before you think about content, format and technical details, you must first identify your audience.
Your typical users
While you can’t imagine every reader who may eventually pick up your manual or consult your online support, you can profile your ideal or typical user, a kind of avatar who summarizes who you want to address.
To start, list (in order of importance) the types of people who use your product. Are they tech-savvy developers? Product distributors or salespeople? Factory floor managers? Technicians or repair people? Figure out who they are or at least who most of your users will be and start with that group. Remember: this avatar can profile real users, but it should be aligned with your marketing goals to also represent the potential users you want to attract to your product.
Do your homework
Now, get to know these typical users. Making sure your document addresses them directly is key to creating effective documentation. To find information on your ideal users, take a look at your target industry and think about who your current users are (perhaps marketing surveys and other sources of consumer information will also be of help). You’ll want to learn about their:
- Socio-demographic profile (education, age)
- Professional life (years of experience, sector of activity, specific expertise)
- Concerns and goals (What are their major challenges? What problems do they encounter that your documentation can solve?)
- Expectations (What are they looking to get out of your documentation? How much time do they want to spend using it?)
- Usual source of information (Where will they look for an answer? In printed or electronic format?)
On their terms
When you understand who you’re talking to, you can also adjust to your audience’s comfort level. For instance, when addressing experts in the field in a manual, you’ll use industry-specific terms and imply advanced concepts. But explaining user-friendly procedures in simple terms will be a better strategy with a consumer who is a beginner or a one-time user. Creating documentation adapted to your users’ comfort level will also support your sales team, since hesitant buyers won’t be convinced by highly detailed technical documentation and your typical engineer will be annoyed with a flashy user-friendly graphic interface, for example.
Product maturity
How you orient your documentation will also vary according to where your product is in its lifecycle, since different types of users will be attracted by different versions of your product. For instance, if you’re documenting brand new software, early adopters—maybe programmers on the cutting edge looking for new solutions—won’t need the same level of support as the less-savvy users of a mature and market-tested item. Often, early adopters are the kind of users who like to play around with a product, try to understand it on their own without reading documentation on the how-to of specific tasks. A general explanation of the concepts will suffice. However, a more “general public” user may need more detailed information and hand-holding through procedures.
More is better…
Now that you have a clear idea of who you’re writing for and where they’re at, consider creating one document per typical user. Called “segmenting,” this is an especially useful technique when your documentation is long or complex. It is applied intuitively in some cases. Rarely are distributor and user guides combined in one document, for example. However, many times, you’ll need to make a conscious effort to simplify your documentation. In fact, a common mistake is creating general documents that try to cover everything for everyone. And, as a result, they don’t do anything for anyone!
Though segmenting content for different audiences may seem like more work, it will make for much more effective documents. And, don’t worry, if you use the proper content management software to create your documentation, you’ll be able to recuperate and reuse chunks of content in other documents, like building blocks.
…except when less is better
This said, you may have reasons not to split up your document. Perhaps it’s short and sweet already or limited budgets or human resources make managing various versions more trouble than it’s worth. That’s okay. You can still apply the segmenting principle. Just divide your content into specific sections, clearly focused on specific readers. That way, your ideal lusers will identify their needs and go directly to the information that is relevant to them. For example, when the content is well structured and labeled, administrators will flip to their section, while operators know that it won’t be relevant to them
Targeted documentation
By thoroughly identifying who you’re talking to and addressing your ideal users clearly with several audience-specific documents, you’ll provide what your readers need and help them find it quickly. Who would have thought identifying your users could have so much impact on your documentation?