5 Tips for Structuring Product Content

Oye
Oye
Nov 4 · 4 min read

Many products today are not only aesthetically designed and easy to use, but they also come with high-quality content and self-help options.

Well-structured content enables better customer experiences through convenience, rather than challenging the cognitive skills of end-users. Reading and processing information, understanding what the information means and how it can be utilized for carrying out specific tasks, or get the most out of the product is essential when delivering a great content experience.

1- Create a content plan

Before you think of structure, identify the kind of information your content represents. This helps with creating various content types and categories.

I find a Content Spec Sheet to be really helpful. Essentially gathering all of the appropriate testing and research for the product, and the strategy around structuring and delivering the content.

A plan includes:

Insights

This helps identify what is relevant, useful, redundant, outdated or missing in your database. You may receive this information from Subject Matter Experts (SME) or self-driven tests and research. There are also tools to help provide helpful data for curating and strategizing the content.

Writing Process, Templates and Style guides

The style, tone, and delivery are very important. Consistent design and structure will help keep your experience aligned with your intended vision. Work with your team and develop writing, editing, and review processes that work best to ensure each piece of content meets expectations prior to delivery. Creating a custom checklist each member follows as a guide when creating documents is helpful.

Content Tool

To help streamline and deliver your content creation, your tools and techniques should center around the product development and content creation processes. This is critical for not online converting and publishing the content — meeting formatting and translation requirements, but a key for team collaboration.

Feedback

A solid feedback mechanism is essential for gathering end-user feedback or ways to identify knowledge gaps, inaccuracies, or errors that arise. Being on top of that ensure end-users are provided with the best, up-to-date content.

2- Understand the audience

Identify and understand the dynamics involved with how your content will be used by the end-user. A big part of structuring the content consists of aligning the tone and delivery — making the content easy to use, find, and navigate. Consider integrating logical flows and patterns that your reader will be able to consume and digest in a simple user-friendly method.

Example: Understanding what verbiage to use…

documents — technical audience

content — customer audience (I’m writing to product end-user audience in this article using a customer-friendly tone)

3- Provide a robust resource center

A well-designed landing page is a great way to create an entry point for end-users and teams.

  • Accessibility — Is the platform easily accessible to the public or is it a private-like environment?
  • Content types — How-to guides, tutorials, user guides, FAQ, troubleshooting guides, and etc.
  • Resources — Templates, examples, pieces of training, case studies highlighting how other users or projects use your product, links, and etc.
  • Support — How can users get additional support? Are there any communities or other channels that can be useful?
  • Other — Contribution guidelines (or licenses) for products and authors that are open to content collaboration and/or visibility.

4- Utilize version controls

Versioning helps keep the content history accessible while maintaining the health of the documentation. Version controls inform product users with “last updated” statuses to ensure you’re using the latest version related to the product. This also helps eliminate duplicate efforts and adding a feature like “send an alert after 30 days” to keep an eye out on the status of the content relevancy, accuracy, and style.

5- Build an intuitive layout

Avoid putting the end-user through multiple ‘hoops’ and barriers. A logical approach to delivering content is key to connecting the end-user to your product and/or service.

  • Aim to reduce scrolling, clicks, and long paragraphs to name a few.

There are various tools in the market to help with this effort.

It doesn’t matter how good a product is. If it is not intuitive to use or if the content is there but not useful for the target audience, the product will not be used effectively. Well-structured content can significantly lower the product adoption barrier and improve the product experience.


Hope this helps!

Feel free to chime in and leave feedback.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade