Guider Creation Style Guide
Introduction
This style guide is meant to help you make your Guiders as effective as possible. The guidelines will help you achieve consistency and improve user readability and understanding of your Guiders.
Your Guiders will be most effective for users when they have proper punctuation and spelling. Consistency in your text also improves the user experience.
Choosing a Guider Name
The name of your Guider should concisely describe its purpose. When someone sees the name of the Guider, they should know for whom it’s intended and what it’s about. This is especially important if you expect other people to link to your Guider with External Guider links.
Examples of good names for Guiders:
Kenmore Washer Selection Guider
Delta Kitchen Faucet Guider
Cabela’s Men’s Insulated Footwear Selector
Information Security
Guider names should be no longer than 34-40 characters.
Guider names should not be written as a question. They are meant to describe the Guider to your visitors.
Guidelines for Questions
Questions should be phrased to address the user in the 2nd person (“you”), either:
Explicitly: “Which style do you prefer?”, “Do you want a pull-down faucet?”
Or implicitly: “Which of these finishes is most appealing?” (the “for you” is implied)
Questions should never be phrased in the 1st person:
Q: “The finish I prefer is:”
Answers should be phrased to allow the user to answer in the first person or 3rd person:
Q: What style do you prefer?
A1: “I prefer a modern style” (or “A modern style”)
A2: “I prefer a classic style” (or “A classic style”)
Do not formulate answers in the 2nd person:
Q: What style do you prefer?
A1: You prefer a modern style
A2: You prefer a classic style
General question style characteristics:
Questions should be punctuated with either a question mark at the end (if a complete sentence,) or a colon if the answers complete the sentence.
Answers do not have punctuation at the end even if they form a complete sentence on their own or by completing the question to which they refer.
The first letter in answers should be capitalized, even when the answers complete the sentence to which they refer.
Examples:
Q: Do you prefer:
A1: A hardware firewall
A2: A software firewall
Q: Do you want a high power burner?
A1:I want a high power burner
A2:I do not want a high power burner
When possible, strive to keep questions to one or two lines of text. Likewise, it’s important to keep answers relatively short. The effectiveness of a Guider is reduced when the user must read a large amount of text before making a selection.
Tips for writing strong questions:
The best questions do two things: they do a good job of discriminating among the possible results in the topic, and they make it clear to average users what is being asked of them.
Each question must be clear and concise, with correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
To do a good job discriminating among a topic’s results, a question should generally have between 2 and 6 answers that are mutually exclusive. Remember that a Guider is meant to narrow a user to a specific result, so make certain that the sequence of your questions and answers progressively refines the user towards that goal.
Strong question:
Q: Would you prefer a camera which is:
A1: Basic and easy to use
A2: More advanced, with many features
Weak question (answers are not mutually exclusive):
Q: Do you prefer a camera that is:
A1: Available at many stores
A2: Frequently on sale
Good questions should force the user to make trade-offs by using two or more functional dimensions.
Examples:
Strong question:
Q: Would you prefer a restaurant with:
A1: An amazing setting and ambiance, even if the food is only about average
A2: An average setting and ambiance, but with amazing food
Weak question: (seems like there’s only one decent answer for most people, plus there’s no logical trade-off for things like price, setting, location, etc.)
Q: How good should the food at this restaurant be?
A1: Really good
A2: Pretty good
A3: As long as it’s edible
Someone using a Guider makes a single answer selection, so it’s important to make sure that each selection encompasses the right factors.
Price questions should usually be phrased using a combination of “less than”, “up to”, and “more than”.
Q: How much are you willing to pay for this camera?
A1: Less than $100
A2: Up to $200
A3: Up to $500
A4: More than $500
iGuiders recommends using 3-4 price brackets in most cases.
Any prices greater than $999 should include commas. ($1,000 is OK, $1000 is not)
It’s also important to take care that questions with numerical ranges do not containing overlapping numbers.
Bad question (it’s unclear how someone wishing to pay $200 should answer):
Q: How much are you willing to pay for this camera?
A1:$100-$200
A2:$200-$300
A3: $300-$400
A4:More than $400
Qualitative vs. Quantitative Questions
Guiders are most helpful when they go beyond the features of products and focus on the benefits those features deliver. So, instead of asking quantitative, feature-oriented questions (Ex. “What internal capacity do you want?”, “How many pixels do you want?”), try to re-think your questions as qualitative, benefit-oriented questions. Use your knowledge about the topic to make your users’ lives easier.
Example:
“What internal capacity do you want?” may not be a helpful question because it requires a person to be knowledgeable about capacity. If you are a refrigerator expert, you know how much internal space or capacity is needed by family size.
So, try asking instead:
“How many people are in your family?” You know that a family of 4 needs roughly 20 cubic feet of internal space, so when appropriate, consider replacing your quantitative answers with more effective qualitative ones.
Example:
Instead of asking:
Q:“How many megapixels do you want?”
A1: Up to 8
A2: 9-11
A3: 12-14
A4: More than 15
Try re-thinking the question to suit lifestyle choices and ask:
Q: What do you plan to do with your photos?
A1: Share over e-mail, social media
A2: Print 3×5 images, use on my computer, share with family
A3: Print larger portraits, edit with photo software
A4: Use for large format imaging, make prints greater than 12” square
Guidelines for Answers
An answer should be a short and succinct selection or product name in plain English. There is no need to list a product’s entire name but a user should be able to search for the product’s name you give them and find more information if they choose. Try to avoid using product numbers or excess marketing language in the answer’s name. If your Guider consists entirely of products from only your company, you do not need to include your company name. Proper product names should be capitalized, but terms used to describe the product should not.
Examples of good titles:
BMW 328XI
Victorian bar sink fixture
VaultLock wall-mount combination lock
Red oak finish
Examples of sub-par titles and why:
Samsung LN40A650 40-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color (This includes far too much information. Remember, you can link someone to a site where they can see more information about the product.)
Stainless Steel RFID Blocking Passport Sleeve -special price -discounted- limited stock (extraneous marketing information in the title.)
Guidelines for “What’s This”
“What’s this” text is meant to help clarify information that users may have trouble understanding. It is well suited to explain technical or marketing terms. While building your Guider, it is beneficial to determine the terms you will likely need to explain. This is typically dependent upon the level of knowledge your users have about your product, or their familiarity with a topic. If the only people using your Guider are ones who are very familiar with your terminology, then you may not need to use this feature in the Guider. However, if it’s likely your Guider will be used by novices, first time visitors, or people shopping for infrequent purchases (such as a home appliance,) you will likely need to make use of this feature.
Good “what’s this” text explains a feature or term in plain, friendly English. You shouldn’t use jargon to explain jargon. You should use full sentences and be sure to use proper spelling and punctuation.
Example of good “what’s this” text:
Impact drills are excellent for drilling faster into heavy materials. If you do a lot of drilling into hard wood, metal, or masonry, an impact drill will make the job easier. Impact drills work by “hammering” on the chuck from inside the drill, resulting in much greater available torque.
What’s this text can also be used to explain a product in greater detail, or to list special features. This is the place to list specifications.
“What’s this” text is best used when you only need 1-4 sentences of explanation. If you have more information than that, consider using a solution page instead.
Guidelines for Pictures and Images
Attaching images to your Guider is a great way to increase user engagement and to help users make a more informed decision. Before you attach images to your Guider, consider if they’re appropriate. If you’re using your Guider to help people navigate your website, or to sell a large number of similar-looking products, including images may not be helpful or appropriate.
iGuiders recommends using only product and product-related images in your Guider. Using clip-art, stock images, or icons tends to make a Guider look less professional.
Your images will look best if they’re as uniform as possible. Use either a white or transparent background, and try to crop all images to roughly the same size.
iGuiders uses standard image sizes, defined based upon the look you select for your Guider.
Square- These images are 153 pixels wide by 153 pixels high
Tall- These images are 114 pixels wide by 234 pixels high
Wide- These images are 234 pixels wide by 153 pixels high
iGuiders strongly recommends using a professional graphics editing program (like Photoshop or GIMP) to resize and edit your images. This ensures both consistency among your images and more professional results.
There are also several different strategies you can use to attach images to a Guider. You can attach images just to the products to which they apply, or you can re-use images on answer spaces that are not destinations. By re-using images, you can show people a representation of what they might receive by selecting a particular option.
