One of the most fundamental rules of user experience on the web is that developers are rarely qualified to evaluate it. As developers, we know far too much about the web in general, and intuitively grasp details that mystify people who spend their days contributing to society in other ways. For this reason, it’s all too easy for us to build websites and applications that are hard to use. Good user testing during the development process can mitigate the problem, but in many projects, the testing budget is limited if present at all.
A person who has trouble using a website to accomplish a task will quickly grow frustrated. At best, a frustrated person will leave the site; at worst, they will complain about the experience to others. When our users hit a roadblock within a website or application, effective help content is our last chance to transform a negative experience into a positive one.
If content is the red-headed stepchild of web development, help content is even less popular. No one wants to create it or maintain it. When it does exist, it’s frequently hard to find, poorly written, and not terribly helpful. But done well, help content offers tremendous potential to earn customer loyalty.
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