Product documentation is often an afterthought for many founders. Done right, it can be used for lead generation.
In this lesson, you'll learn how to turn technical product documentation from collecting dust to a growth engine.
Natalie:
Hi everyone. And welcome to the session. My name is Natalie Luneva and the title of this session is, product documentation as a growth engine, In this session, I'm going to share with you how you can take your existing product documentation if you have it and turn it into a growth engine, if it's currently collecting dust. Or if you don't have it, then how to create it and why you need to create your product documentation. I know that for technical founders, product documentation is often an afterthought. It is not something that is worked on top of priority, of course, but I'd like to show you how this can be used as a lead generation. And with that let's get started.
Natalie:
My name is Natalie Luneva and I am a growth coach and consultant to SaaS founders, and I'm on a mission to help SaaS companies scale, clarify business priorities and grow high-performance teams. I've been doing this for over 10 years. I worked with over 100 companies and I help identify and implement high ROI opportunities, scale operations and clarify business priorities. The idea of this topic came to me when I was helping one of the SaaS companies identify high ROI opportunities. I know that a lot of founders fall into this trap where they think that I need more SEO help, or I need more content, or I need to start working on the PPC and they miss high ROI opportunities. And this is one thing that I help identify and implement.
Natalie:
So the idea came to me when I was working with one of the founders and they would spend a lot of time and money on SEO and on a lot of different marketing tactics. What I usually do is I come and look at it from a 360 degrees approach, trying to identify what lever do we need to pull to get the highest ROI from this activity. And so one of the things that I do is I dive into Google Analytics and I try to identify what can be improved. And this topic, this session actually came from me identifying this in Google Analytics, and in the session, I'm going to share how you can do that as well.
Natalie:
This is disclosure. I am not a product documentation expert or writer. I'm a marketer. So everything that I discuss here right now is more about growth and that really technical ways of doing things. So my promise to you is a few things that you'll learn in this presentation is number one, how to analyze your product documentation effectiveness, whether it's effective at all. Number two is best practices to ensure that it's not just sitting there collecting dust, but actually you can use it as a growth engine. And number three is ways to improve your conversion rate. At least by 10%, most probably more like 50%. And some I've seen improving conversion to 300%. So I know it's a big grind from 10% to 300%. Let's see where you're going to fall into, but I promise there is going to be benefits to going through this session.
Natalie:
So this is a screenshot from Google Analytics. I'll share with you exactly how you can get to this specific view. But I wanted to share with you that you can see, let's say that this company, I see that there's a get a free trial page and we can see what pages people visit just before landing on the get a free trial page. And I see that for a lot of people, it is their first entrance, for example. For some people you can see that number six here, it is actually a support page. So we can see that actually 18 conversions. And that's the conversion considered in this case is a trial completion. 18 came from this support page. This is interesting because I know that a lot of founders have not thought that support pages can actually proceed to a trial. And that's what I'm trying to prove that for some companies, this is going to be a growth opportunity for you, depending on what kind of product pages you have and what you're having on those pages. So let's take a look.
Natalie:
The benefits of going through this exercise is there are many, and there are actually a really big one. So number one is SEO and traffic. So potentially by optimizing and improving your existing product documentation pages, you can get more traffic, support volume is hopefully going to be decreased because people are going to get their answers right there without needing to contact you. Churn potential it can also decrease. And then oral customer happiness because we know that people don't want to talk to you, even though it seems like there are so many tickets and requests, people don't want to talk to you. They want to get the answer right there and kind of self serve themselves.
Natalie:
A few prerequisites that you need to have in order for you to fully benefit from this session is number one, you need to have Google Analytics set up. I know a lot of founders do not have marketing background, so it's not going to be technical, but hopefully Google Analytics is something that you have set up. Google Analytics is set up on your support and probably documentation pages, because a lot of times I see that Google Analytics code is missing from those pages. So if that's the case, make sure that it's set up. Number three is goals are set up in Google Analytics. And by goals, I mean, there is a conversion metric. So maybe for you, this can be a demo, someone's scheduled a demo or taken up on the trial offer or any offer like call to action that you have, you can set up all of those as a goal in Google Analytics.
Natalie:
And number four is your product pages need to be public. For some SaaS companies I know that those support pages are only available to those who are logged in into the system. Do not make this mistake. It is a growth engine. It is something that Google can see on your website. So make sure that you have those pages public and available to everyone.
Natalie:
So right now the next step is going to be, I'll show you how you can analyze your product documentation pages effectiveness in Google Analytics. It's not going to be technical. This is going to be just a few screens and they're easy for you to go and check for your own. So the first step is going to be to go under behavior. So you log in into your Google Analytics, analytics@google.com I think, and then you go on their behavior and then on their side content and then content drill down. So this view is the first view that I suggest you take a look and just backing off a little bit. So many founders do not regularly log into their Google Analytics. And it's just such a wealth of information that you just don't know how to dig for it, but it's there. So this is what we're going to do right now.
Natalie:
Hopefully you are able to open this view and then the next thing is analyze what kind of folders do you have here up top? Like the first is always going to be most probably your homepage. So this is what it is here. I've hidden here, blur the few information so that it doesn't bother us. The next one is, and this is interesting. All the support content that this SaaS company has on their website is actually getting a lot of traffic. And this is number two for all combined all traffic on all the support pages. And then all the... I think they have couple of price and pages, all of the price and pages combined generate number three is how much traffic they generate. And so you can see that. Hopefully you're able to identify it in your Google Analytics.
Natalie:
So the next view that I'd like you to check out is you go under conversions goals and hopefully they're set up and you are able to see how many trials people take on your website. And then you click on reverse goal path. And then one of the goals that you want to check is how many trials you're getting. And so this is one of the previous screens that I showed you before, but you can see that get free trial page is our goal completion location, basically. And a few steps prior to that, you can see that there are a few support pages here.
Natalie:
So try to identify those pages. If you can find them, maybe they're not even support, hey, maybe there is something else like integration pages or information about your comparison, you versus your competitor. Take a look, if you can find some interesting patterns there. So this is the second view and the third view, this is where we're going to be able to see what pages bring how many conversions, so trials in this case, and we're going under behaviors, site content, and then landing pages. And so under landing pages, now we're able to see page by page. So not clusters of pages, but page by page, what page brings how many conversions and you can choose here if you have those goals set up properly, you can choose here how many create a free trial, for example.
Natalie:
And in this case, you can see that those pages marked in red generate... Again, I hide on some of information, but you can see that 4% of all trials are coming from this page. Almost 8% of all trials come from this page. And then less than 1% comes from this page. So you can see what pages get you the most trial sign up conversions, which is very interesting for you to see what pages first of generates a lot of traffic. So you can see here. So here it is sorted by sessions. You can also sort it by how many conversions you actually get. But in this case, it's sorted by sessions. And so this is how many conversions would get from those pages.
Natalie:
So overall, if you combine this in this particular timeframe for this particular SaaS company, they generate almost 12% of all of their trials from three support pages. Only three support pages generate 12% of all of their their conversions to trial, which is amazing, right? That means that we need to optimize the heck out of those pages and see, well, the next step for you, probably going to be to check out if you have any city call to action buttons there, because for this particular client is so interesting that conversions are happening on those pages and from those pages, but they didn't even have call to action on those pages. Imagine if we would add call to actions on those pages, how much more conversion can be improved, just imagine.
Natalie:
So right now, I want to share with you how you can create your product documentation pages. And they're a little bit contrary to what you expect it to be, which is you're sitting down with your team maybe you have a support team, then you just write down all the questions that they're getting asked. And then you're creating those pieces of content. Which is, yes in the beginning, this is probably the best way to do that when you have zero support pages. But then when you have at least a few, I would recommend two things.
Natalie:
Number one is when someone sends you a request or question, instead of answering this question right there in the email, you create a content for that answer and then you create a separate page for that particular question. And then in the email, you don't paste the text, but you actually add the URL of that answer and then you send that to them. This helps you ensure that you don't need to do the same thing over and over where you just paste this content that is not available for everyone and only available to those people and you answered privately. And instead you answer it publicly, allowing Google to find that. So hopefully more and more people, if they have this question, they can find it.
Natalie:
And number two is weekly Q&A sessions. This is goldmine. I think very few companies take advantage of that. But if you set up weekly Q&A sessions with your clients, your leads, your trial takers, everyone, maybe even some of your partners and invite everyone to this weekly live session, which basically going to be you answering all of their questions. So the way that we structured it at our SaaS company, we also have a SaaS company. So the first 20 minutes is more a presentation where we talk about a specific topic and we do a presentation and then the rest 40 minutes is going to be just pure Q&A, which can be Q&A about the specific topic, or it can be about anything that your clients or prospects have questions about.
Natalie:
And so what you do is you take this recording and then you create a piece of content out of it. You have a video, you can use audio as a podcast, for example, and then you can also transcribe it and add it as a blog post or support page that also has a link to this video. Which is really, there are so many benefits in doing just this weekly session where you're creating the content, not just written, but video content, which we know Google loves. You, connect them bond with your existing clients, prospects, you hear their questions, and you're there to answer those questions. And you are put on a whole new level. This is one of the piece of feedback that we received where a lead said, if I am able to get a hold of you or at least once a week. And I know that for sure, this is going to happen. I am signing up because no one else is doing that. And if you are as this approachable to your clients and prospects, it puts you on a whole new level. So this is as far as the creation process.
Natalie:
What to include in your piece of product documentation page, or support page. So number one is I highly encourage you to create a video about that. Like I said, you can create a weekly Q&A session and then you use this piece of video as add on to your written content. A bunch of screenshots are always helpful and then video screen share. So this is where you are doing a walkthrough off your system and explain it when recording your video. Structured texts. Google loves when the text is very structured and not just the pile of content. Needs to be bullet points and things like that. So be careful. Plus it's also it makes this content very readable where for people, it seems like approachable piece of content, otherwise it's just a wall of text, then it's very difficult to approach it.
Natalie:
Next, case studies. Include pieces of case studies or quick quotes from your customers. Interlink this between your other pieces of support pages, which is very important for Google also and for your SEO. This is important because this, any internal link to your other page is counted as a back link to this page, which is really important for Google. But also it's also very useful for the people who read this piece of content or this page. They know that where it's coming from and where they can get more information if they're interested in neighboring topic.
Natalie:
Next breadcrumbs, both for Google and for user experience, add those breadcrumbs so that they understand that this section is coming from this section for example, and this is where you talk about, I don't know, integrations or whatever you want to talk about. At least people understand that this is how this content gets into your whole scheme of a bunch of different pages.
Natalie:
The last one is call to actions. Like I shared before, some of the companies do not have call to actions and contrary to just thinking about this, right? Why do we need call to action? Most probably support pages are just for our existing clients. Well, I showed you a previously example from a Google Analytics. Then it's not just for your existing customers. And people actually are landing on those pages and having call to actions is going to bring them so much closer to taking up on your free trial offer.
Natalie:
There are a few problems that I see a lot of founders make, and I just wanted to call it out. And hopefully this is going to be helpful for you as well. Number one is they do not have Google Analytics code. Number two is no call to action on those product documentation pages. Number three is they do not do keyword research prior to producing this pieces of content. So this is something that we have not touched on just yet, but if the topic that you're writing about is more or less searched by people, then it's very beneficial for you to do a keyword research to see, let's say for one of the companies, it is a payment integration for let's say HubSpot, or maybe it's a review platform for Shopify. Then you just search those keywords and terms and see what people are searching for. And then you try to use those keywords, do not stop those keywords because Google is very smart.
Natalie:
But we want to include those keywords because a lot of times I find that founders think that they know what people are searching for and they use very technical terms. So to just try to find those terms that people are actually typing. Next, they do not have breadcrumbs. So I mentioned that it's very important, no interlinking. And the last thing here is they're using sub-domains versus a folder. So it shouldn't be a sub-domain. It should be a folder. So it should be your website.com or .io, whatever, /support or whatever you call it. But it needs to be slash instead of sub-domain. This is important because for Google purposes, we know that we want the benefit from your main website to go to the support pages. Otherwise, if you have it as a sub domain than the benefit of your main domain is actually not carried through.
Natalie:
So as conclusion right now, hopefully you are able to identify percent of your traffic that goes to those product documentation pages. You're able to identify what support pages and product documentation pages contribute to how many trials you are getting. Next, hopefully you have a plan to improve your pages. Next. I hope that if you just one piece of information, if you forget everything else, then add a call to action to your product documentation. The product recommendation pages is vital. So be sure to do that.
Natalie:
Next. Hopefully I convinced you and you were able to see the value of creating those weekly Q &A sessions. And I encourage you to try and do that because this way you are going to be able to hear all of your client's problems and concerns. Even if you are the founder who is answering all of those tickets, things are still... Some things are just missed from translation and typing, so. And this personal connection is always very, very positive. And I encourage you to share this session with your customer support team and customer success folks so that they can also listen to and breathe the session. I think it's beneficial to everyone.
Natalie:
If you'd like to connect with me, natalieluneva.com. I'm also known as a SaaS boss. I have a podcast. I run a bunch of Q&A and live expert talks. And this is something that you would be interested to check out, go to natalieluneva.com or we have a Facebook group SaaS Boss and a few different things. Thank you so much for giving me 20 minutes of your time. I hope this was helpful. And I see you again soon.
