|
|
|
|
||
Home
Features
Order
Download
Samples
Demo
|
Screenshots
User reviews
Help
Resell
Press Kit
Versions
Blog
|
Contact
|
|
|
|||
Articles : A Dozen Techniques to Improve Your Software Online Help |
A Dozen Techniques to Improve Your Software Online HelpBy Dennis CraneFirst published in the ASPects (ASP Newsletter), November 2005.
There are several main reasons why putting your software manual on-line is
necessary. It makes your web-site attractive for search engine crawlers and
therefore brings you targeted traffic from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other
search engines. A good online manual presents your product as serious and
credible. Moreover, if a user faces difficulty using your software and asks
for technical support, you may easily resolve the issue by referring that
user to a certain page of your online help. Simply give the page's URL.
With just one click the user will see screenshots and explanations which
will help them to resolve the issue.
At first glance, using frames seems the perfect way to organize the internal menu of the help. Certainly frames are convenient for web site programming and maintenance because you may keep your menu in a single file and show it in a separate frame. Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages to using frames in your online help. When a visitor comes from a search engine to one of your help pages, they will see only that page's content but will see neither top-level navigation nor online manual menus because they were intended to be shown in other frame windows. The people who come from external pages will fail to easily jump to other sections of your web site and read about your products and related services. If you still prefer to use frames then you must use a workaround. One of the approaches is to plug a special JavaScript code into every page of your web site. The script will determine if the page is showing in the frame or in the browser's main window. If there is no frame detected then the script will build the frame structure, will load the menu pages in the corresponding frames and will finally reload the current page in the appropriate frame. So the user will see the target page along with other elements of the web site. Such dynamic redirection works for real visitors but doesn't work for web spiders that will crawl your online help pages. Most of them cannot parse JavaScript code and therefore cannot access menus to jump to other pages of your manual. For search engines your online manual's pages will look like separate files that are not linked to each other or to the corporate web site. As a result, your help pages will receive lowest page rank and will be shown in the end of the list when someone is looking for related info in a search engine. Almost all SEO and web design gurus recommend avoiding frames. They also recommend putting both menu and content into a single HTML file. Use direct links, not redirect scripts Like frames, using JavaScript in menu is another no-no for creating an online manual for your software. Using regular URLs in menu links instead of JavaScript redirecting helps web crawlers properly index your online manual and rank its pages higher. Assign unique addresses to help pages And the next important technical aspect of online help authoring is page address format. One of the key rules of search engine optimization (SEO) implies the use of static pages with unique permanent addresses without parameters in them. A page with address installation.htm is usually ranked higher than the same page with address page.php?id=348. Take this fact into account. Give screenshots Although one of your aims is to attract search engine web robots that like words you should not forget about real visitors who like pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words. Give as many useful screenshots of your software as possible. This will help current users understand better how your software works and will help prospects to see how it looks before downloading a trial or demo copy. Make your screenshots clear. Explain what each window does and how its controls and elements work. Use callouts, balloons, and special marks. Try to stuff as much information into the screenshots as possible. A reader should look at them and be able to say "Great! Now I know how it works." Make pages printable Most likely users would like to print out a certain part of your online help. Sometimes designs that looks great on the display look awful when printed, even on a good printer. Make sure your manual's pages are printable in black and white on at least the two most popular paper sizes: A4 and Letter. Check if there are no big pictures, no color background, the fonts are easy to read, all the content fits the page width, and so on. Make your help easily reachable So you have your help pages completed and even uploaded to the web server. How do you make them visible to web spiders and to live visitors of your web site? Most of the software vendors make the same mistake. They think the manual is something unimportant that nobody needs. They hide the help section so deep in the website that a visitor has to make a dozen clicks to reach the help index page. This is wrong! Your manual is important and must be reachable in two to three clicks. The best approach is to place several links to your manual in different sections of your web site: on any product description page, support page, and download page. These are the pages where users expect to find online help. Show them your help content masterpiece. Make your online manual searchable If your software is complicated and its help includes hundreds or even thousands of pages then you must add search capabilities to your online manual. From a user's point of view it's more convenient to search a required topic by keywords rather than to look through the endless list of topics in the menu. The easiest way is to add a third-party search script to your online manual. For instance, Google offers Free WebSearch script that you can copy and paste into your HTML code to allow people to search within your site. However, you won't have full control over the third-party scripts and their search results may confuse you and your users. It's better to write your own search script on which you will have total control. You can customize it according to your needs. This top-notch technique requires significant effort and may cost some money if you decide to outsource it. But the result is that you will have a powerful information resource that will effectively work for you and for your business. Create a word map of your help Make a special Index page that contains all the significant words with direct links to the pages where these words are in your help files. The Index page has two main functions. First, it simplifies the topic search by keyword for users. Second, the Index page will serve as a map of your online help for web spiders and will assist them to crawl all the pages of your manual. Make your help extendable You may be surprised to discover that your online help can become live. You can make it the center of an online community. Just allow your software users to extend your help pages themselves. A good example is PHP online documentation. It allows users to post their comments, code samples, and recommendations. Each page contains tons of valuable information contributed by users. This is a perfect example of how boring documentation may form a live community and promote the product accordingly. To summarize the above tips: You must consider your manual as an important part of your business model. This is just a set of general recommendations on how to get the maximum effect out of your online help. Most of the techniques are pretty easy to implement if you use good help authoring software. Apply this advice and make your customers feel happy, increase your web site visibility, attract new prospects, and generate new sales. Dennis Crane, the author of Dr. Explain software, specializes in vertical markets software development. He is online at http://www.drexplain.com Article Source: http://drexplain.com
You are permitted to reprint this text as long as it
includes copyright notice and link to our web site.
|
|
|
|
Home
Features
Order
Download
Samples
Demo
|
Screenshots
User reviews
Help
Resell
Press Kit
Versions
Blog
|
Contact
|
|
|
|||
What's new
April 04, 2008