Is poor documentation holding back your sales?

No modern computer application is so self-explanatory that it gets by without comprehensive documentation and interactive help. This is particularly true for shareware marketed via the Internet, where direct contact with the customer is either impossible or too expensive.

Good help cuts costs and boosts sales

It’s a myth that users don’t read the help. Maybe the ones that drive your hotline nuts don’t, but the majority do. If they didn’t your support staff would have to deal with every single user on an ongoing basis. Everything you fail to explain in the help will cost you in support. Not just once but every day of every week of every year.

Users like a program that’s easy to understand. Instead of hitting Uninstall they buy it and use it. That’s why good, professional online help generates much more money than it costs -- it boosts sales and radically reduces your support overheads.

Good help enhances your image

The online help is the interface between you and your user. If it’s frustrating, incomprehensible or fails to include the necessary information the user is going to have a low opinion of you. By the same token, good online help makes the user think, "Wow, these people are really taking the trouble to tell me what I need to know!" Good help radically enhances the usability of your application and the impression it creates -- and a bad first impression is almost impossible to correct.

Why programmers shouldn’t write the help (on their own)

For programmers, writing the help is normally an unwelcome chore that they want to put behind them as quickly as possible. Also, most of them write documentation designed for other programmers. That’s fine if your product is a C++ compiler, but most normal mortals start foaming at the mouth and climbing the walls after just a few minutes of trying to understand what the average programmer writes.

Programmers are an expensive and valuable resource. They shouldn’t be wasting their time and your money producing documentation that will drive your users nuts and reduce your sales.

If you’re not Microsoft you’d better be comprehensible

Microsoft can get away with creating frustrating and confusing online help. There is a whole industry that makes an excellent living out of explaining Microsoft’s products, so the folks in Redmond could probably sell their applications without any help at all if they wanted. This makes it easy to think that any software can get by with this kind of documentation, but it just ain’t so. At least, not unless you happen to have your own support industry.

The myth of the pros who don’t need help

Producers of professional-grade applications sometimes assume that anyone who uses their programs will be so computer-literate that they don’t need much explanation. Big mistake. Working pros don’t have the time or the inclination to spend a lot of time figuring things out for themselves. They want to concentrate on their work, and they are very single-pointed in their interests. I often encounter pros who are magicians in applications like Cinema4D or Photoshop, but who know nothing at all about their computer’s operating system, for example. Help aimed at this audience should be just as clear, supportive and informative as the documentation for neophytes.