Master this essential documentation concept
The practice of dividing users into distinct groups based on characteristics, behaviors, or needs to provide targeted content and experiences.
User segmentation transforms how documentation teams approach content creation and organization by recognizing that different users have vastly different needs, contexts, and goals when accessing documentation.
When conducting user research and developing segmentation strategies, your team likely captures valuable insights through customer interviews, focus groups, and stakeholder meetings—most of which are recorded as videos. These recordings contain critical information about how to divide your users into meaningful groups based on behaviors, needs, and characteristics.
However, when user segmentation knowledge remains trapped in lengthy video recordings, teams struggle to quickly reference specific segments, share standardized definitions across departments, or efficiently update segmentation criteria as user needs evolve. A product manager needing to reference the key attributes of your 'power user' segment shouldn't have to scrub through a two-hour research debrief.
Converting these video insights into structured documentation transforms how you manage user segmentation knowledge. By automatically generating searchable documentation from your recordings, you create a single source of truth where teams can instantly find segment definitions, criteria, and examples. This approach ensures consistent user segmentation across product development, marketing, and support teams while making it easier to maintain and update segment profiles as you gather new user insights.
A single API serves both mobile app developers and web developers, but current documentation treats all developers the same, leading to confusion and longer implementation times.
Segment developers by platform and experience level, creating targeted pathways through the same core API information with platform-specific examples and implementation guides.
1. Survey existing users to identify primary platforms and experience levels 2. Create user personas for each segment 3. Develop platform-specific quick start guides 4. Add filtering options to code examples 5. Create separate landing pages for each developer type 6. Implement analytics to track segment-specific success metrics
40% reduction in developer onboarding time, 60% increase in successful API implementations, and significantly higher documentation satisfaction scores across all developer segments.
New users get overwhelmed by advanced features while power users can't quickly find complex configuration details, resulting in high churn during onboarding and frustrated advanced users.
Segment users by their journey stage and product adoption level, creating progressive disclosure of information that grows with user expertise and needs.
1. Map the complete user journey from trial to power user 2. Identify content needs at each stage 3. Create journey-based navigation structures 4. Implement progressive content disclosure 5. Add 'experience level' indicators to all content 6. Create cross-links between beginner and advanced versions of topics
35% improvement in trial-to-paid conversion rates, 50% reduction in basic support tickets, and increased feature adoption among existing customers.
Enterprise software serves multiple departments (IT, HR, Finance, Sales) but documentation is organized by features rather than departmental workflows, making it difficult for users to find relevant information.
Create department-specific documentation views that organize the same underlying content around departmental workflows and use cases rather than software features.
1. Interview representatives from each department to understand workflows 2. Map software features to departmental processes 3. Create department-specific landing pages and navigation 4. Develop workflow-based tutorials for each department 5. Add role-based content tagging 6. Implement department-specific search and filtering
70% faster task completion for department-specific workflows, 45% reduction in cross-departmental confusion, and improved software adoption across all business units.
Open source documentation serves both users who want to implement the software and contributors who want to develop it, but mixed content creates confusion and barriers to both adoption and contribution.
Clearly segment documentation between end-users, contributors, and maintainers, with distinct information architectures while maintaining connections between related concepts.
1. Analyze GitHub issues and community questions to identify user types 2. Separate user documentation from contributor documentation 3. Create clear pathways between user and contributor journeys 4. Develop contributor-specific onboarding flows 5. Add contribution difficulty indicators 6. Implement community feedback loops for each segment
60% increase in new contributors, 40% faster user onboarding, and improved community satisfaction with documentation quality and organization.
Effective segmentation begins with understanding actual user behaviors, needs, and pain points rather than making assumptions about how users should be categorized.
Users often belong to multiple segments simultaneously or move between segments over time, so your segmentation strategy should accommodate this fluidity.
Start with broad, obvious segments and gradually refine them based on user feedback and behavioral data rather than trying to create perfect segmentation from the beginning.
Different user segments will have different definitions of success, so tracking generic metrics across all segments can mask important insights about segment performance.
While segments need targeted content, users also need clear pathways to discover relevant information from other segments as their needs evolve or expand.
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