Our Beginner’s Mistake: Too Much Developing and Too Little Explaining
As time passed, we grew substantially but noticed that our churn rate was quite big. We attributed this to the product being new and still having some technical limitations. Thus, we focused even harder on fixing bugs and improving functionalities.
Later still, we came to understand that our users were not using Smartlook to its full potential. Their lack of understanding caused them to miss out on a lot of opportunities. Daily interactions with our customers brought us to the realization that our help documentation was a bit scarce.
Some of the most reported difficulties related to understanding the features. Users often reached out to our support team requesting guidance and better explanations. Back then, we only had installation tutorials and a few technical FAQ articles.
From the User Guide to the Smartlook School
We discussed new strategies to improve the onboarding and offer a better experience for both new and existing users. The decision was to create a User Guide to help users get started with Smartlook and show them around.
This resource revealed itself very useful in helping users get up and running with Smartlook. The User Guide provided some important technical information. Despite this, our users still lacked the insights into how to get the best out of Smartlook. Users knew how to use our solution, yet we still failed to convey the “why” and “how” to reap the most benefits.
We needed to do more to educate our users, which is why we launched the Smartlook School. This series of blog articles sheds light on the practical side and best practices of using Smartlook’s features.
Teaching Users Through Practical Examples
Each lesson of the Smartlook School focuses on one specific feature of Smartlook. We explain how to use it and demonstrate, with a practical example, how it solves users problems. Every explanation is based around a use case, complemented with a detailed procedure.
The Smartlook School differs from our other content (User Guide, Tutorials, and Customer Stories) in the way it showcases the best use of Smartlook and the benefits associated. Smartlook School makes it easier to understand the features included in different packages. This means that, when users are upgrading their package, they can make an informed choice. Users now understand what exactly to expect, and how to invest their time and resources more efficiently.
The Valuable Lesson We Learned from Our Experience
All the content we have created has significantly enhanced our users’ experience. Knowledge is the key to enjoy the full potential of Smartlook! Today we have more and better information available to our audience. And we are able to deliver better customer support.
So, from our experience, we can say that educating users is a great way to engage your users. It improves customer relationships and increases satisfaction. It boosts your credibility and increases user trust and loyalty. From a marketing point of view, the content you produce can help to promote traffic on your website. Informative articles and step-by-step tutorials increase your search engine ranking. Besides, educational content can be recycled into promotional pieces, which can be shared under various formats across different platforms.
What about you?
What are you doing to educate your users? Let us know in the comments below!
