Find ways to survey your customers and get their feedback on how you're delivering release notes and product changes. Try to target an array of customers, from those that have only been with you for a couple of months to those that were there from day one. Everyone will have interesting insights to share—if they have the time and incentive to share them.
There are some great release notes out there. It's a good idea to think of some from your favorite brands or try a Google search to find some specific to your industry. Whether announcing new keyboard shortcuts, updated color pickers, CSS changes, whatever it is your business does and is upgrading, we've collected a few top examples, inline with release notes best practices to help get you on your way. Codility , the recruitment platform to remotely hire engineers and developers, keep things simple with their product release notes.
Codility announces new features and product changes clearly and gives precisely the right amount of information their customers need. What's different about the way they do it? The power of the GIF. It's a simple tool that is greatly overlooked by many companies looking to spice up the visual elements of their campaigns. GIFs can be a great way to give a quick tutorial of your new product or feature release while being a low lift to create and having a minimal effect on a page load speed.
Slack has a fantastic reputation for communication, and so they should, with a mission attempting to transform business communication. Their release notes go a step further and they create entire campaigns around release notes. In September of , Slack released Slack Connect , a new feature that allows multiple organizations to connect in the same channel and work together in real-time—essentially eradicating emails.
However, just announcing this massive new feature wasn't enough. Slack built user cases around it with real businesses, landing pages for it, and a social media content plan supported by smart graphics and smarter copy. A great example of showing customers you care. Teamwork gives their customers a complete roadmap of the things they're working on.
They have an insightful combination of updates done recently, a short overview of them, and an option to click through and learn more.
Teamwork is actively showing customers that they're always working with this product roadmap. Their roadmap solution is for current customers wondering what's to come and potential release dates. Plus, these latest updates can act as a selling point for customers considering their solution over the competition. We're branching away from SaaS for a moment to take a look at how the B2C world creates release notes.
The gaming industry is massive, and many industries can learn a lot from the communities they're building and the enjoyment they're plugging into development updates. This is the opposite of what you want. Users have been moved to a detailed description of your product , possibly raising their motivation, but lowering their ability. This is the fate Trello is tempting with this kind of feature announcement. Instead, showing them what to do in bitesized chunks through tooltips , product tours , and in-app self-serve help is a more effective strategy to allow the user to understand the key new concepts and start using the features.
All Slack users have clicked that little giftbox icon when it lights up. It's packed full of important updates that you can dive into. Users can then go onto the blog to get the whole rundown—this is usually combined with an email and a social update to make sure everyone sees the news. Medium is known for having fun with their release notes, and it works because they still provide value to the reader. Release notes should be a key part of your product strategy so your customers are always in the loops with everything they can do with your product.
If you find you're not getting much traction with them, look into using in-product launchers so that people can learn and adopt features at the right time. Then use email and blogs to make a bigger splash with your audience. Tours Powerful flows for guidance and launches. Tooltips Tooltips provide in-line help to unblock users. Launchers Highly customizable in-product widgets. Microsurveys Contextual and targeted in-product surveys.
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Pulkit Agrawal 6 min read. A blog post, an unread notification, an email, and then Standard feature announcements are missing the mark—but they don't have to be. Why should you care about release notes? Release notes are the 21st-century version of this but without the information overload.
What should you write in a release note? The information you include needs to be concise and informative. Users want to know: What changes have been made to the product—and why What impact this will have for them If they need to do anything differently Apart from those three key pieces of information, there aren't any real rules to follow—but there are a few best practices.
Release notes best practices How do you make release notes that people will engage with? Engage your customers The one thing missing? Describing what version 4. Release notes are an important way of communicating updates made to a platform to the end-user and internal team. Release notes also act as a direct line of communication with your power users and loyal customers.
Add the title of the new release. This may be just the version number or a specific name given to the update. Make it short and catchy and try to name it something that conveys what the update is about.
The reader should clearly know which product is being updated in the release. Add details about the credentials for the release version. What can they expect from the new release? How will it impact the current product and its users? Mention the Date that when the new version will be available to the general public.
If there is a beta version coming out, mention when it will be available and who will eligible for beta testing. Include the new features that were added during this release.
Be descriptive and add media like images and videos of the new features to substantiate the text. The readers should really get an understanding of what the new features are so that they get excited to download the new release! Include any enhancements and improvements made from the previous version. This is the most important part as this section gives the readers incentive to update to the new version.
Include any resource manuals, videos, etc. To create release notes, you need a proficient tool that can make the process of documentation more efficient. This is where Bit comes in! Bit serves as a central hub where collaborators, content, and knowledge can be accessed in one all-inclusive document.
The purpose of the notes can be for either internal or external consumers. Typically, these notes should include material such as changes appearing in the latest version of the product, why the changes have been made, how this is going to affect the consumer, and what the consumer might need to do differently. It is integral that the notes communicate the change, even if there is a reduction of some sort to the product as opposed to any additions.
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