Campfire #36: Don’t give a FAQ. How to improve user retention with proper documentation?
Companies spend tons of money to get their users. But when the user signs up for a product, they're usually left with an FAQ, if not even worse — left alone to discover the features on their own.
The truth is that 40-60% of free trial users never return[1]. People try out the product, find it hard to use, and never return.
But this can be changed with good onboarding and documentation.
Good onboarding is a continuous process of leading users towards successful usage of your product, not just introducing new signups to its features.
Long-term focus on ensuring people succeed with your product always results in higher customer retention, which is the foundation upon which thriving businesses are built.
Customer retention is the new conversion. It's critical to have a solid plan that recognizes how users will achieve success not just now but in the future.
Create best practice content instead of a series of how-tos for your users. Consider connected strategies that assist users in getting the most out of your product rather than isolated help content.
If you do not educate your users, you allow your competitors to fill in the gaps.
Always remember the importance of training users to use your product more effectively. The better they are, the more likely they will become long-term, loyal customers.
As UX expert Samuel Hulick says,
"People don't buy products; they buy better versions of themselves."
So provide your users with what they signed up for — a way to thrive.
Intercom came up with a fantastic framework for user onboarding — C.A.R.E.[2]
This simple framework enables you to form an onboarding strategy. Here’s what it stands for:
C. Convert trialists to paying customers
A. Activate newly paying customers
R. Retain paying customers
E. Expand their usage
Implementing this framework requires aligning the customer’s end-to-end experience with your product.
While building a long-term strategy is beneficial, you can immediately implement a few things to improve user retention.
Give the entire lesson
Address the entire job that the user wants to do. Don’t give an answer to one question, but send your users elsewhere to find the next.
Cultured Code (the team behind Things 3) does this really well by providing in-depth tutorials on app features, such as Using Notes in Things.
Start by providing some context of the feature:
What does it do?
Who is it for?
How do you start using it?
Next, dive deep into the feature. Show the most common usage examples, then move to move advanced and complex workflows. But don't just leave a user with full-page paragraphs of text – break it down by sections and allow quick navigating between them.
Use real-life examples
Talk to your users and listen to their stories. They’ll have real-life examples, not abstract use cases to which no one can relate.
Todoist gets it to the point. They give real-life examples of people using their features, such as the Board view.
A lot of products use fake data when presenting their features. And this is fine when you're testing the product in the initial phases. But when the product is out there, and people use it daily — fake data won't work.
People need to see examples of how the product can be used so they can try to replicate the process for themselves.
Write about how you use the product
You’re an expert in your product. And chances are your team is already using it in creative ways. Share it with your users.
Notion did really well in explaining how they use their own product in their blog post from 2021, How Notion uses Notion.
If you're not using the product you've built – I have sad news. Great products were built to solve a problem founders had. If the team behind the product doesn't use it – why would external customers do?
Just like Notion, write and showcase the different ways your team uses the product. This will build trust and gain authority among your customers.
Talk your customer’s language
Translate your product’s concepts into customer-friendly language, so they don’t have to. Take note of the keywords they use.
This point is not only related to documentation and support, but to the entire branding, marketing, and customer success.
When your product speaks the customer's language — you removed an extra barrier to using your product. And because the tension for using your product becomes lower – more customers can start using it.
Revisit your content often
Just like you iterate on your product, revisit your help content regularly and look for opportunities to provide more value.
Customers get upset when the documentation doesn't reflect the current state of the product. If you re-designed the feature, sunset, or added a new one – be sure to revisit and update the documentation.
Your customers will thank you!