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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part VI ONLINE PRODUCT MANUALS We are moving to paperless offices and homes and that means we need reliable product manuals from vendor websites with useful information in a format that we can read, see, and understand. You Gotta Be Kidding Right? 1. Where's the manual? No manual? Oh oh. This has to be the worst sin for a vendor site. If you sell, support it. At least have the manual online. 2. Get Out The Magnifying Glass!! Who drew this micro-diagram where I can't tell what's what? Why is everything labeled "a", "b", and "c" without a legend? We probably have all been dumbfounded by do it yourself manuals and "some assembly required" products where the diagram looks more like a hieroglyph than anything remotely useful. Do better. Have step by step instructions. Don't leave out steps and assume that we will guess what you did next. Use pictures - lots of pictures. We need to see what you are doing. Make them big enough to see and understand. 3. Don't Oversimplify!! A two page manual with a page and a half of disclaimers and four lines of text is not a manual. It is a joke. Where's the beef? Give useful information upfront. If you don't know how it works well enough to write a manual, well maybe you shouldn't be selling it. 4. PDFs! Wow isn't it easy to scan a paper manual into a nice PDF file and just whip that up on the web??? Sure is. But let's suppose I'm trying to read it from a web browser on a PDA? Not so good. Suppose I'm visually impaired and am using a screen reader program? Useless. Screen readers do not read pictures. And scans of pages are usually done as guess what? Pictures! Doesn't work. If you are going to do a PDF, do it right so that it is accessible to the visually impaired or make it a total html production that is easier to navigate. 5. Really Lazy! Some sites have a link to a product manual that brings up an image of a page with a link to go to the next. Same deal. Make it accessible and adaptable to more user agents than a computer monitor. Do it right and your customers will thank you . . . or at least won't pester your help folks as much. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/27/2004 06:09:00 PM 
Permanent Link: http://www.webnme.com/2004/08/web-disasters-sites-we-hate-part-vi.asp SHARE: 
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