What Is a Quick Start Guide?
Every technical writer is eager to help customers use this or that product or service. It means that user manuals must answer every single question and solve every problem. No wonder a user manual may be a huge, 100 pages long document, and it will take customers time to find relevant information. Sometimes, customers need just a short instruction to start using a product. In this case, a quick start guide is the best solution.
Quick Start Guide — Definition
A quick start guide is a short version of a user manual that tells users only how to start using a product right away. It can be a set of steps, installation instructions, etc. In some cases, a quick start guide can be based on pictures. As a rule, this type of document is very short, and it describes only one scenario.
What Problems Does a Quick Start Guide Solve?
A quick start guide is the best type of onboarding documentation for beginners. They get simple instructions on how to start working with a product. That’s the primary problem a quick start guide solves.
The value of a quick start guide is its simplicity and the ability to speed up installation and customers’ first steps. It contributes to case deflection giving the Support Team additional time for more important tasks. This short document improves user experience and allows customers to feel that vendors care a lot about successful onboarding.
Any product can have a quick start guide, for example, a dishwasher or a robotic vacuum cleaner, to say nothing of complex software products. Customers get simple instructions on how to turn them on and use them for the first time. But a quick start guide is not supposed to give them other kinds of information: let’s say, how to fix the product or what kind of errors may appear.
How to Create a Quick Start Guide
Creating a quick start guide is not a difficult task, but it requires following certain steps:
- Think of your audience. Define what might be difficult for your customers and provide them with clear information. Look at your product the way a beginner would look. Some features of a product can be used in a simple way to solve primary tasks — that’s what you are to describe.
- Use clear and concise language. A short instruction should not cause ambiguity. It should be as informative as possible.
- Provide customers with illustrations and images. They work perfectly in short manuals. It would be great if you could create them yourself. But not all technical writers have skills like that. You can ask an illustrator or designer for help.
A quick start guide is a perfect solution for customer onboarding. That’s vital for better product adoption and long-term relations with a product and a company in general. You, as a technical writer, can make this process flawless if you know what should be kept in mind.
