Categories

Article design

If customers can easily navigate articles about your products or services, you get the benefits:

  • the audience becomes more loyal — growing sales, you are recommended,
  • support department spends less time on simple questions — they simply do not exist, or employees promptly refer to articles from your Knowledge Base instead of painting details.

We tell you how to design articles in the Knowledge Base in such a way that your clients and employees were most comfortable to work with them.


Structure

A good material structure is half its success. Divide the article into sections, sections into subsections, text into paragraphs, long sentences into short sentences. The more structured the text, the easier it is to read.

Create clickable content at the beginning of articles if the articles are long. This can be done with html anchor links in the «HTML» mode.


Anchor link — html code <a href="#example"> and <a name="example">. With the help of an anchor link, a user who reads your article can immediately move to the section he needs.



Here is the code of this content:



An anchor is a bunch of the <a href="#example"> and <a name="example"> html tags. Instead of the word «example» there can be any word created by you. The <a href="#example"> html tag makes the word after it clickable – and when clicking the user will be taken to the place where the <a name="example"> html tag was set.

Logically that a few places in the article – let`s say, points A, B and C, can refer the reader to point D. But it’s impossible to refer from A, B and C to two points at once. Therefore, one can use the <a href="#example"> tag in an article several times, while the <a name="example"> tag can be used only once.

The most convenient way to name anchors is according to the section’s topic. For example, if you are directing the user from the content to the «How to create a task» section, the anchor tag could be like <a href="#creatingtask">. Therefore, the <a name="creatingtask"> tag is needed in the place, where the user will be redirected.

Html code is case sensitive. For example, the <a href="#Viber"> anchor and the <a href="#viber"> anchor are different. It is important to keep this in mind to make the anchors work correctly.

If you send the link to the specific section of the article, you will see there the anchor name you specified earlier:


Literacy, clarity and comprehensiveness

  • The text should be literate — errors and typos will reduce the confidence of clients.
  • Headings should clearly reflect the essence of the article/section/subsection.
  • During the writing of the article, think about what questions may arise for clients, and consider them in the article. The finished material can be read by an external person. After reading the good material, the customer should not remain questions.
  • If the text mentions functions/services/other things about which you already have an article in the Base — be sure to make a hyperlink to this article. This way you motivate users to study your product and eliminate unnecessary questions.
  • Give examples. It is important to tell not only how to use something, but also why to do it. The reader must understand how your product/function/service/etc. will benefit him.
  • Illustrate the text. The Knowledge Base Editor supports inserting images, GIFs, and YouTube videos. It’s almost always better to show something once than write a few paragraphs.
    • You can insert an image or a GIF by clicking the «Image» button and selecting a file from your computer or by inserting an html code like in the «Code» editing mode of an article. The quotation marks ( https://site.com in our example) should contain a link to your image/GIF — you can copy it by right-clicking an image/a GIF and select «Copy an image address»;
    • You can paste a YouTube video by right-clicking a video and selecting «Copy an HTML code». Paste a copied code into your article in the «Code» editing mode;
  • To make text easier to read, use formatting — highlight important information in bold, italics or color like this or like this, don’t forget about the ability to create numbered or bulleted lists.
  • The sequence of information is also important. Think about what order of presentation will be most appropriate for your product or service.

For example, we first talk about how to connect a function, then configure it, then - the possibilities, benefits and cases, that is, we maximize the utility of the function, including examples.