Help pages…we need to talk.

If you’ve created something that causes so much confusion that there’s an entire page just to fill in the gaps, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Help pages have been around for ages. Just like leprosy, war, poverty, wasps and a load of other stuff we really should have abolished by now.

What’s up with help/FAQ pages?

If you have one, well done, you’re actually past stage one — learning what the user needs to know. If the user needs to know it, tell them. Tell them in your content, in an appropriate place. Test on real people and find out what they need to know, even find out what they want to know. Is there something that the user needs to be told, but might not want to see? Tell them that too, in a less intrusive place.

If we stop letting users come out the tail end of a service baffled by the information gaps we can get rid of that whole extra page, that whole extra piece of user interaction.

Help pages are lazy as hell. It makes the user search for information that you know you needed to tell them.