Start each article with a two to three-sentence introduction into the purpose of the article and set the user's expectations. Ensure the reader knows how the article will help them and how it fits into the overall ezeep setup routine if you're adding to the user/admin guide categories.
Below are a few reminders of things that are vital to these articles.
Delete this text and everything below to start writing your article.
Thank you for adding to the ezeep knowledge base!
Henning
Knowledge Base Requirements, Purpose, and Goals
- Customers expect to be able to help themselves, the purpose of each article is to avoid us being contacted about the topic by
- With the slightest difficulty, KB should fundamentally help visitors and employees find the answers they're looking for.
- It acts as the source of truth for the product or service to its stakeholders like customers, employees, and partners.
- Understand user pain points
- Write for the average user
- Cater to different kinds of learners
- Eliminate the writer bias
Style Guidelines
- Use the default fonts and font sizes from the article template. Use the paragraph presets like "normal," "code," or "Heading" if useful but keep the text consistent within each section.
- For longer articles, use the built-in table of content feature
- Talk like your users talk
- Be straightforward
- Feature trumps benefits
- Bullets and tables are your best friends
- Always state the prerequisites
- Nothing is too apparent. Assume the reader knows nothing
- Do not sell
Writing/Technical Guidelines:
- We distinguish between articles for the User/Admin Guide and troubleshooting articles. Each article must fit into one of these three categories. For User/Admin guide articles, consider using a button at the end of the article to link to the next step if your article is part of a multi-step process like signing up and doing the initial setup.
HTML Code: <p data-identifyelement="493" dir="ltr"><a class="btn" data-identifyelement="494" dir="ltr" href="LINK TO NEXT STEP, USE LINK THAT ENDS IN THE NUMBER e.g. https://support.cortado.com/…/43000630587"> BUTTON TEXT >></a></p> - When you add a new article, consider which existing articles it might relate to and add links to those articles to increase the chance of seeing the recent article.
- Do not duplicate content, link to content that already exists
- Use Insert Link -> Solution Article, do not copy and paste from your browser's address bar so articles can be found when their title changes
- When linking to another article, do not use "Click here" as the text tagged with the link but use the article's title.
- Make sure articles are not just one or two sentences yet easy to read and concise. People's time on a site is part of its search engine ranking.
- When describing features and how to use them add context to explain what they are suitable for, what they can be used for etc. If we were writing a knowledge base for a car, assume that the reader has never seen a car before. Similarly, assume users don't know anything about printing or are excited about engaging with the subject.
- Consider if an article can be written to include non-ezeep specific terms (e.g., Cloud Printing with Xerox printers) where appropriate to increase the chance of people finding the article when they are googling non-ezeep particular topics.
- Use How, Why, What, etc. questions for the article headlines, leave categorization like "Tutorial" or "Getting Started," etc to the tags and category titles.
- Images need to have Alt attributes. Once inserted, tap on the image, and select the "i" and enter the alternative text to explain what is in the image. Use the article title for all images within the same article, we're looking for the article to be found, not the image itself.
- Ensure a consistent layout, make sure Desktop screenshots are always the same size, and make sure mobile screenshots are always the same size.
- Mobile screenshots should be 295 pixels wide, so three fit next to one another.
- Desktop screenshots should be 500-600 Pixels wide.
- Avoid screenshots of the whole desktop but "zoom in" on what's important
- Make sure that screenshots are clean, no content, button, etc., is cut off, or have awkward line breaks.
- Check the length of your article title (https://app.sistrix.com/de/serp-snippet-generator)
- Add Meta description in the SEO Optimization section of the article and ensure it's not too long or too short using the guidelines FreshDesk provides.
- Do not use identical title tags.
- Set Hreflang (use the </> button in the menu above the text to add )