Why How You Design Your Knowledge Base Articles Matters [VIDEO]

If you have ever watched the Great British Bake Off, you know that HOW you do something is just as important as WHAT you do.

In the show, contestants are given basic recipe instructions to perform a technical challenge. Then they are set loose to bake — and the results vary.

This same thing happens in business when we provide vague instructions on how to complete standard operating procedures (SOPs). Employees have a general idea of what they need to do, but sometimes they miss critical steps.

Even as the Director of Transformational Services at ScreenSteps — a knowledge base software company — I'm not perfect at creating the perfect help guide every time. I've definitely learned from our mistakes. 

In this 3-minute video, I share an experience about when we wrote a help guide that wasn't so helpful for how to set up single sign-on. Plus, I'll explain what we changed to make it be more helpful.

Then I'll go into the importance of designing the experience by creating clear SOPs and job aids for your business. I'll also share where ScreenSteps helps you provide clearer guides and employees make fewer mistakes.

Design clear help guides that help your employees avoid mistakes

Designing the experience does take effort. But the payoff is huge. You see fewer mistakes and a lot less frustration. 

When you write clear help guides, it makes it easier for your employees to follow your guides. It prevents your employees from getting stuck at any point in the procedure. 

If you are noticing that people are making mistakes even after using your procedures, consider whether you can improve how you’ve designed the guide.

With ScreenSteps, you can include foldable sections, screenshots, pop-up frames, and more to help clarify your instructions. 

Want to see how you can design an article in ScreenSteps? Watch this video example of how to build a basic help guide in ScreenSteps. If you want to see more of ScrenSteps' authoring tools, explore the pre-recorded demos.