Best Practices

If you work with development or test environments, it’s a good practice to publish your content to the test environment first before it is made available in your production environment.

Adding relevant Tags is a great way to keep your guides accessible and easy to find for your users.

Use contrasting colors for Whatfix widgets, to make them stand out/noticeable on the website. Make sure that your widgets are not lost on your interface.

Use the contrast checker available on this site to help you decide - https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/.

Use words and simple sentences. Keep the description in your tip simple and to the point.

Use Beacons to highlight new features and UI changes. Link walkthroughs to beacons in case there is an associated procedure.

When inserting images in your content, ensure that they don't exceed the width of the tooltip or pop-up to avoid any distorted images.

Remember to configure Whatfix Analytics to find out how your content is faring. Are your users completing tasks? Which step are they getting stuck at? What search terms do not give any results? All such data can be tracked and used to improve the performance of your content.

When translating content in the UI, avoid copy pasting content. The formatting of the content could get copied and may generate sync issues. If you have to copy and paste, use the CTRL+SHIFT+V (Windows) or  COMMAND+SHIFT+V (Mac) to paste content. Using these shortcuts ensures that only the value is copied.

Use Walkthroughs for sequential actions. For example: Product tour, Tutorials, and UI guidance.

Name every walkthrough clearly for easy retrieval during search. Use simple descriptive words that your audience is likely to use. Keep the title short. Use gerunds.

Do not use special characters when naming a walkthrough. Special characters may cause issues when trying to download the walkthrough as a video.

Use easy to understand words and simple sentences. Keep the description in your tip simple and to the point. 

Create walkthrough on production/live website which is stable and is not constantly being updated by code changes. If the underlying code of your application is being changed, any walkthroughs that you may have created may be broken.

Limit the number of steps in a Whatfix guide to not more than 15 steps. This helps your users understand the value proposition of your guides quickly and easily. 

In case you can't keep the number of steps under 15, then consider splitting the guide into two and interlinking them. This keeps your guide crisp and simplifies user tasks.

When interlinking content, ensure that the button on the end message that links to the remaining procedure is titled appropriately. Use a short, action oriented phrase.

When interlinking content, ensure that the button on the end message that links to the remaining procedure is titled appropriately. Use a short, action oriented phrase.

Position the tooltips so that they don't hide any elements on your page. In certain cases, the tooltip could inadvertently hide certain important UI. 

Remove personal/sensitive information using the Blackout feature. While creating a guide, use the Blackout feature to avoid capturing sensitive information like email, phone number, username, etc.

Use the Spotlight feature to get the user’s complete focus on the element on which the tip is displayed. Users cannot interact with other elements when Spotlight tip is active. 

When inserting images in your content, ensure that they don't exceed the width of the tooltip. Exceeding 270 pixels introduces a scroll bar.

Animating Self Help helps increases the chance to catch users' attention and help them find answers themselves.

Segment guides using Tags so that users receive more relevant and focussed content.

Add links to your support articles in the walkthroughs steps to deliver more information. Use this wisely.

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Use task lists for user training. Task lists can be used to ensure that your users can all perform certain basic tasks. For example, you can use a task list to design an onboarding list of tasks to be completed by someone who’s new to your application.

Avoid listing more than 6 topics in the task list. Having a large number of tasks overwhelms users.

If the tasks have to be done sequentially, then enabling sequential tasks ensures that your users can complete each task only after the previous task is completed.

Tags Segment guides using Tags so that specific content is delivered to specific users.

The last task in the task list can also be used to introduce your users to self help so that learning becomes continuous.

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Position the tooltips so they don't hide any elements on your page. In certain cases, the tooltip could inadvertently hide certain important UI.

Avoid unnecessary tooltips
Avoid adding tool tips for fields that are self explanatory.

Add videos within tooltips for better user engagement. Adding a video to your tooltip is a great way to engage your newly signed up users or to explain a lengthy process. Videos can also within the onboarding pop-up. Add videos using the Rich Text Editor.

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Use Smart Pop-ups to present important messages that your user segment must see.

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