In this episode, I am going to walk you through how to create an
absolutely brilliant website user manual that you can recreate for every
single one of your website customers.
It's going to give them a brilliant experience.
It means that you're not going to drop the ball on making sure
that they know everything they need to know on their website.
And there's even a free download that goes along with this episode.
You just need to go to websitesmadesimple.co.uk/website-manual,
and you can download a template of your very own to get you started.
But in the meantime, let's get started.
I feel that's a bit of a crap beginning, but if you need
me to re-record it, we will.
I've got a confession to make.
When I first started building websites, I did not think about what
the user experience was going to be the other side of the website.
I mean, obviously I wanted the website visitors to come on
and have a great experience.
The websites looked brilliant and they performed well.
But so many people would then say to me, "How do I log into it?" Or, "How do
I change an image?" Or, "How do I add some text?" And I'd think, "Oh, God.
I've finished with that website now.
Don't you just know how to do this?" And even I knew that I couldn't just
say to them, "Go away and Google it." So after a few times of having this
happening, I came up with creating website user manuals for my clients.
And I have to say, hands down, it has been one of the biggest
successes of my business.
It consistently gets great feedback because it leaves no stone unturned.
The clients know exactly how to use their website, how it's built, and I've
got it through into a process that I now have it as a template, and actually my
part in now creating that user manual each time is really, really small.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through this So that you can have
a really cohesive system for your clients that empowers them to work
well on their website and it leaves you free to go and build your next site.
So let's get going So a website user manual, I would say some people do
use them and create them already.
Some people don't.
They are not created equally.
And all you have to do is to jump onto Facebook or a LinkedIn group, anywhere
where web designers are hanging out, and you'll see that people consistently say,
"How do you hand over your websites? What information and training do you do?"
Some people will offer like a 90-minute Zoom session where they walk people
through and they record the session.
Other people might be using an app like Tango where it records the clicks and
dictates it all, leaving a client pages and pages of information to work through.
I like to have a combination of video and written content.
I keep the written content for the really important stuff, and
I use the video content so that they can copy it click by click.
And today I'm going to walk you through exactly which videos I have
on there, how I do it, how I structure it so that you can recreate the
same every time for your business.
So the very first thing I want to cover is how we present the user manual to clients.
I create mine in Canva, and your user manual template that you're welcome
to go and download will be a link to a Canva document that you'll be able to
copy and then edit yourself as well.
I then export it as a PDF, and I send it to the clients in an email that
says Website User Manual Attached as well, because I don't want to run the
risk of hosting this in a space on myself and then one day forgetting
about it and taking down the URL.
I also have built hundreds of websites, so if I was hosting the
user manuals on my own website, every time I did a rebuild, I'd be having
to do hundreds of redirects as well.
So I like to create each one in Canva, download it, send it as a PDF.
Also a PDF, a client's not going to be able to go in and change that,
and it's a pretty universal document that they will be able to use.
And I'd like to just put a quick note in here as well.
And while I'll walk you through step-by-step what my user manuals
have in them, what yours should have in them as well, I just want to talk
to you about themes and licensing.
Now, I'm a WordPress website developer, so it means that we have themes that we use,
different tools, different plug-ins, and some of those will have licenses that we
pay for, and other stuff might be free.
So this section won't necessarily be very relevant if you're
building on a different platform.
But bear with me because you might get some little nuggets of information there
that inform your own practice as well.
On your client's website manual, you need to include details of the theme.
You need to tell them if it's built in WordPress.
You need to tell them it's a WordPress website.
You need to tell them the theme that's being used and
any plug-ins on there as well.
And you particularly need to let them know if there are premium licenses
and payments that they're going to need to make onward from this.
And if you run an agency model and you're licensing the theme and the
plug-ins off your agency platform and that's tied into hosting and
maintenance, that's absolutely fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But you do need to let clients know, and you need to let them know that
if they go on to move their website, that they will need to have their
own licenses for the website to ensure that it continues working.
Now, you can say as of the date that I'm building this website
user manual that this is how much licenses cost, but you don't have to.
You just need to say, "You will be responsible for doing this as well
for licensing your own theme." I use a theme that has lifetime license,
and so I license it for my clients, so it makes it quite clear, and I let
them know what that purchase code is as well in the website user manual.
So now that we've covered that, let's go through it step by step.
So the front page on your website manual should have your logo so it's very
clear which company has produced it.
Who's prepared the manual?
So mine will say prepared by Holly Christie, but I may have had a member
of my team prepare it, and I always like for me and for the clients to know who
has prepared it so that if we need to come back to them, then we can do so.
And the date that the manual was created.
And I just put the month and year.
We don't need to be really pedantic with the day.
I also put the company name that it's been created for, and I include a
screenshot in a fancy little iMac frame.
I include a screenshot of the homepage of the website I'm talking about,
just the above the fold section.
But I always think this is important because it really helps
us with from a branding point of view and a visual point of view.
But if the client does go on to the website and maybe mucks up that above
the fold content or something, you've got a real bonafide sign of what it looked
like when you handed the website over.
So that is really useful So the next thing that I do is I have a table of contents.
And so it tells people what's on each page, subsections of the page.
The main pages are linked, so it will say, you know, how to work on your website or
your website result or page speed results, all that sort of information is in there.
And again, I have this in the template for you as well, but having a very quick link
from that page makes it really useful.
So then we go onto the good stuff.
I create a screen recording of the website when we send it live, and it's of
the back end of the website, and I just call the video Welcome to Your Website.
And it's a walkthrough of the sides of it that the clients haven't seen yet.
So the client will have seen all of the front end of the website because
they will have approved the design.
This now shows them how it's built, where the pages are, where the layout sections
are, how to look at their forms or get any information from the forms, even
though it is designed to email them.
the plugins that are used, it has absolutely everything so that they can
find their way around their website.
And it doesn't have to be hugely detailed.
It's just a quick click around really, and it normally takes about
five minutes to produce this video.
I host it in Vimeo.
But I do understand that Vimeo is, like, really putting their
fees up, so people are talking about other platforms like Livvid.
So host it wherever you like and then click it through there.
I have, like, a video symbol button that I use to click it through.
And then the next thing I have below that on the next page is a screenshot
of the website results on Google from a page speed insights test
from when we sent the website live.
And within this screenshot, I include the date and time, and you can see
the email address where I've moved it from a temporary domain that
this website was tested as well.
And again, this really comes from experience, and you may have heard me
talk about this a little bit on the older episodes of the podcast, where
you might have an SEO person come on board, and SEOs can be a little
bit, let's say, upfront at times.
And they'll often come on and say, "Oh, the website's not fast enough.
Oh, it's not doing this," or, "It's not doing that." And there can just sometimes
be a little bit of discord around that.
And I find having screenshots that includes that information that's
been willingly and transparently handed over to the client just
really helps your cause here as well.
So that's the next thing that I have there Then this is the important one.
This is something that's quite a new addition for me, is a page, because
we're always learning, is a page that says how to log in to your website.
And if you have listened to my episode on checklists about how to sign a
website off properly, you will know that this is something that I have
dropped the ball on more than once.
I have sent the client everything that they need, and they're like,
"That's lovely. How do I log in?" So there's a dedicated page.
I have a little screenshot of the WordPress lo- login page, and
then o- that goes on the right.
On the left-hand side it says, "How to log in to your website.
This is the link.
This is your username.
The site will email you a link to, uh, set your password, but if not, go to this
page, click the forgot password link, and you'll be able to get that." And you
can use that link every time for logging in as well, not the forgot password one.
But that will save you so many emails, having a specific page dedicated to that.
So the next thing I have is the how to keep your website up to date page, and
this one I feel is really important.
Even if I am doing the hosting and maintenance of their website for
them, I always make sure that they know how to do this themselves.
And for that reason, these instructions are typed so they
don't have to watch a video.
They don't have to click into it at all And after that, I have a key
things to remember page as well.
Just stuff that we've normally covered in the welcome to your website video,
but it's stuff that they might need this information and they're not
going to necessarily think to go back to that video or, for whatever
reason, they're not gonna be there.
So I have that, and that information will be your website is using this theme, your
form entries can be accessed from here, how to do this, that, and the other.
It's … You'll see on the templates, it's quite a short but very useful page.
And then I have the actual tutorials.
So this is the section that the clients go back to time and again.
And I am gonna give you the biggest tip here because trust me, as someone
who used to create this for every single website really uniquely,
it took a lot of time and energy.
And then I realized what I could do is I could have standardized
videos for the standard information I was giving across people.
So record once, use everywhere.
And so I created videos on how to add or change an image, and that
includes like labeling it properly, compressing it, saving it to
WebP format, that sort of thing.
How to use titles and headings, how to use Yoast, how to add a blog post,
how to add to portfolio, how to add or amend menus, how to use form elements.
And so I created these videos once.
I, again, I recorded them using Vimeo where I had closed captions
turned on so people could see the transcript side of it as well.
And I also put like a front cover and a back cover on there.
I did this for my Simply Sites websites, so it looked really, really professional.
I also set up a showcase in Vimeo for these so that if there was maybe
a video someone wanted that wasn't in the manual, I could just send
them the link to the showcase, and they could see all of the videos on
how to work on your website as well.
So within the template, I then click onto … So you can click onto any of
those videos, and you'll get that there.
So the only customized video in the template is the welcome to your website
video, and that makes it really useful.
If there is something I've done specifically for a client, like a
specific booking plugin or, you know, I've used ACF for something, then I
will create an additional video in there and add that into this overall section
of how to do this, that, and the other Next, I put a troubleshooting page on.
And again, this was a later addition, but oh my goodness, I cannot
tell you how useful it has been.
And basically, if you're listening to this, you're a website designer, so you
know every single form of troubleshooting basically comes down to clear your cache.
But this just says it in different ways.
So it says, "I've added a blog post and it's not showing," clear your cache.
"I have," yeah, "added something to the basket and I can't check
my basket," clear your cache.
"I'm trying to use WooCommerce on a mobile and it's not showing the checkout
page," disable your caching plugin.
Yes, you have a troubleshooting page.
And I suggest you look at the most times that your clients get in touch
with you and, know, look at what it is that they're asking and put
that page in there for you as well.
I then put any additional resources as well, and clients
can find this really useful.
So the majority of my websites are built using the Avada theme.
They have incredible support and documentation.
So I put a link to the Avada support docs on the website 'cause they've
got their knowledge center there.
There's also a really good Avada Facebook group where one of the, uh,
developers of Avada is in there as well, so there's a link to that group.
I usually use the Yoast plugin for SEO, so I put the links
to the Yoast Knowledge Center.
Anything you use where there is a knowledge center that might be quite
useful where a client can go and search an issue that they're having, put
that into your additional resources.
And then finally Include how to get in touch if they need to get in touch with
you, because it may be that you actually have different email address or different
process or ticketing system or something for websites which have been built as
opposed to websites which are in process or when you're handling new inquiries.
And being able to separate that out can be really useful because I do support my
clients, but I do also have some website support people who work with me as well,
who I might be really busy and say, "I'm going to reroute the suppor- support
email address to you so that you can handle this." So make sure you know if you
need to get in touch with me about your website, this is the address to do that.
And that's it.
You now have a complete website user manual, or at least you'll
have the complete template.
And I will remind you of that address, which is
websitesmadesimple.co.uk/website-manual.
Now, I would love to hear from you what your experience is and what
your sign-off process is because just because I do something one way,
it doesn't make it the right way.
It's turned out to be the right way for me and my clients.
But I love hearing from how other people in this self-taught industry
have really overcome and tackled them.
Or at least if you've had those screw-ups like I have, like forgetting
to send people how to actually log in to their brand-new website or whatever,
and I wanna hear about those as well.
And if you leave it as a voice note, we might even read it out on the podcast.
So you can get in touch with me through email at hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk.
That comes directly through to me, so if you email me, I will email you back.
You can also reach me through the website, websitesmadesimple.co.uk.
The contact page allows you to drop a voice note in there or type
a message, and you can find me on LinkedIn at Holly C Christie.
So enjoy, and I will see you next episode.