And showing that you’re working on them makes you look transparent and trustworthy. Social media is an excellent platform for distributing release notes because it is an easy way to reach many people. You can post them on your company’s Facebook page, Twitter feed, or LinkedIn profile.
Release notes are documents that communicate to the users the changes in a product and the steps necessary to update it. The technical details (if included) in release notes such as test automation results, build time, build failures and environment responsiveness help keep track of metrics. In this article, we’ll look at what release notes are, who should write them, and how you and your users benefit from good release notes. And don’t worry, we’ll be diving into real examples and a template you can steal for your own release notes.
But you want to do it in a way that is effective, gets the point across, and is interesting and engaging for your SaaS customers. Its corporate brand voice doesn’t match its irreverent writing style, but GoodRx makes it work by consistently using this tone in its in-app updates. Release notes https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ pave the way for building trust and confidence in your product or service. The second is from Discord, a community discussion platform. It describes upcoming changes to the platform’s software, and is a bit more technical, but not nearly as technical as KeepaChangeLog.com’s example.
Use visuals
Companies must distribute release notes to keep their customers updated and aware of new changes. It also helps them in avoiding customer complaints about bugs and errors. The more readable it is, the more likely it will be read by customers who want to know about changes to their favorite products or services.
Still, try to publish most of your updates as release notes. People appreciate your updates – they’ll feel like they’re with you on your journey. Our changelog lets you easily tie your feature requests with product updates and notify your users. HTML provides a bit more flexibility with styling and layout.
Release notes briefly describe the changes in an update or what a new product is supposed to do. However, ChatGPT cannot completely take over release notes generation and these tools must be used with caution. Due to issues like information inaccuracy and privacy, AI tools are best used to come up with the first draft of release notes.
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Use this free release notes template and start writing release notes that elevate your brand and your customers’ experience with your product. Announce your latest product updates, feature releases, improvements, or general announcements with a changelog tool. See why Rapidr is the release notes tool of choice among SaaS companies. Release notes are the published updates that detail recent changes to a software product. Release notes can cover anything from new updates and feature launches, to regular improvements and enhancements, to bug fixes of every kind. Release notes have been, and continue to be, the standard vehicle for delivering this crucial information to users, customers, and stakeholders.
They’ll give you prompts for your release notes, changelog entries, and some examples to spark that initial motivation. Now that you know what makes good release notes and changelogs, let’s illustrate it with examples. If you’re using Canny for your product announcements, your users will get automatic notifications when a new changelog is published. From minor design improvements to major feature enhancements, your tool will go through many iterations.
You can use release notes as a way to promote your brand messaging, but don’t overdo it with heavy self-promotion. Too much self-promotion can erode a customer’s trust in your brand. But can you sneak a little self-promotion into your release notes to help boost your brand’s messaging. Keep explanations short and simple, but don’t oversimplify.
What should be the Format Style of Release Notes?
Beamer is one of the most expensive solutions compared to other changelog tools. Even all the user feedback solutions and reactions fall into a higher plan ($99/month) than Rapidr($49/month). It also provides an extensive template library that includes release note templates to help speed up the process of creating and publishing your changelog. Release notes are important because they drive awareness of new features and help people stay updated on the latest updates.
Release notes describe what has been changed in a new software version. These are usually distributed on a company’s website or via email. Release notes are one of the most overlooked aspects of product development.
Traditionally, this task has fallen to developers or technical writers, giving release notes a reputation for being dry and boring. Our software allows you to generate both private, team-only release notes and those suited for public presentation to your customers and potential buyers. We believe that the last two rows are possibly the biggest and most important differences that set release notes head and shoulders above changelogs.
The goal of release notes is to inform new and existing users about changes made to the product. The purpose of release notes is to help users understand how the new features work and how they differ from the previous software version. Release notes, commonly known as product changelog, are crucial to understanding what has changed in a product. It is a channel to convey upcoming features, product changes, improvements, and bug fixes to enhance user experience and increase transparency.
- Excessive communication like this will not bring users back to your product but numb their sentiment towards your brand.
- Markdown is a lightweight markup language that helps you format text quickly and easily.
- Product updates can be written and posted in real-time through a widget that’s embedded inside your product, but updates can be shared individually as well.
- Do you average user really wants to know about the technical details or do they just want to know in plain language what’s new?
- Organization will allow even those readers that quickly read release notes scanning the page for interesting keywords to get a sense of what the post is all about.
Organization will allow even those readers that quickly read release notes scanning the page for interesting keywords to get a sense of what the post is all about. Even though not every all the release notes can achieve the three purposes at once, try to incorporate them each opportunity you can. Make informative release notes also educational, or educational notes also engaging. It can be difficult to take in all of the advice on release notes when you’re just starting out, but you can find inspiration by studying examples. Here are some stellar release notes you can look to for ideas. They know that developers and designers will need the technical information a changelog has to offer.
When you do include CTAs, make sure they come with an actionable next step and take customers to where they need to be to take action. Let them know how their work has improved and show them how to use it – that’s all you need. The earlier you present your notes, the better — if your tech allows, display your update messages right after users log in to make sure they see them and start to explore their viability. Your entire team needs to be kept in the loop on all revisions your product goes through without having to wade through the technospeak of your developers. All changelogs are ordered in reverse chronological order, with the newest changes at the top. Before we get started, let’s get crystal clear as to what a release note actually is.
