How do you write knowledge base articles that are easy to read and understand for diverse audiences?
Knowledge base articles are a valuable resource for your customers and your support team. They can help answer common questions, solve problems, and reduce the need for tickets. But writing effective knowledge base articles is not as simple as copying and pasting information from a manual. You need to consider how to make your articles easy to read and understand for diverse audiences, such as people with different languages, cultures, abilities, and preferences. In this article, you will learn some tips and best practices for writing accessible and inclusive knowledge base articles that meet the needs of your customers.
Before you start writing, you need to know who your audience is and what they want to learn from your articles. You can use data from your customer feedback, support tickets, analytics, and surveys to identify the most common questions, issues, and goals of your customers. You can also create user personas or profiles that represent the different segments of your audience, such as their demographics, backgrounds, motivations, and challenges. This will help you tailor your content to their level of knowledge, expectations, and preferences.
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My belief is that it is key to get into the mindset of the client. What information would they like to access, some articles are general information, some are how to’s. A lot of knowledge bases are designed to deflect a client to self-serve, rather than seeing it as an additional value channel. Too recently on chat with an agent I’ve asked a question, only to be sent a link. Our chat platform is designed to give clients a choice of articles or speak to an agent. My team are built to help the client resolve their issue and in addition, send the link afterwards - if it’s pertinent to do so. All articles have been peer reviewed and then reviewed by marketing to ensure accuracy, clarity and remain on brand. Then use feedback to improve.
One of the most important aspects of writing knowledge base articles is to use clear and simple language that anyone can understand. Avoid using jargon, slang, idioms, or technical terms that may confuse or alienate your readers. If you need to use an acronym or a term that is specific to your product or industry, make sure to explain it or provide a link to a glossary. Use short and simple sentences and paragraphs, and break up your text with headings, subheadings, lists, and images. Use active voice, present tense, and second person to make your articles more engaging and direct.
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Screenshots and videos enhance knowledge base articles by simplifying complex concepts and catering to diverse learning styles. They reduce user errors with step-by-step visuals, increasing satisfaction and self-sufficiency. Capturing attention and maintaining engagement, visually appealing content makes learning enjoyable and promotes information retention.
Accessibility is the practice of making content accessible to people with disabilities, such as those with visual, hearing, cognitive, or motor impairments. Not only is accessibility a legal requirement, but it also ensures that content reaches the widest possible audience and provides a positive user experience. When writing knowledge base articles, some basic guidelines to follow are using descriptive and meaningful headings and subheadings to structure content, adding alternative text (alt text) for images, videos, and other non-text elements to describe their content and purpose for screen readers and other assistive technologies, using contrast and color combinations that are easy to read and distinguish for people with color blindness or low vision, utilizing fonts and font sizes that are legible and consistent across articles, and including captions, transcripts, and subtitles for audio and video content to make them accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
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In more ways than you can imagine, Accessibility also makes for a better learning environment overall. Multi-sensory experiences can not only allow for those with physical or cognitive limitations learn along side everyone else, but also engages different areas of our brains together, helping to cement new ideas and simplify complex concepts. Other ideas can be simple to implement but impactful like dark/light mode, having a dyslexic typeface option, or the option to have the article spoken aloud.
Diversity and inclusion are principles that value differences and similarities among people, such as their culture, language, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation. Not only are these ethical and social values, but they can also help build trust and loyalty with customers. To embrace diversity and inclusion in your knowledge base articles, use inclusive and neutral language that avoids stereotypes or assumptions about readers. Incorporate examples and scenarios that reflect the diversity of your audience. Additionally, provide options for language translation or localization for your articles if you have a global or multilingual audience by utilizing tools such as Google Translate or WordPress plugins.
The final step of writing knowledge base articles is to test and improve them based on feedback and performance. You can use tools like readability tests, grammar checkers, or accessibility checkers to evaluate the quality and clarity of your articles. You can also ask your colleagues, friends, or customers to review your articles and provide suggestions for improvement. You can use metrics like views, ratings, comments, shares, or tickets to measure the effectiveness and impact of your articles. You can also use tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar to track the behavior and satisfaction of your readers. Based on the data and feedback you collect, you can update, edit, or delete your articles as needed.
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When asking for feedback make sure to avoid making it a 'tick box' excercise. They might have tick boxes, but they need to be useful in shaping the document based on that feedback. Avoid general questions and be as specific as possible, with open questions where appropriate for more 'free form' feedback content.
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