Help Is On the Way: Essential Feature Support for HOA Websites
When you set up a homeowners association website, you really don’t want to go it alone. You may be the sole administrator of your HOA’s online property, but that doesn’t mean you expect to be left to fend for yourself with no technical help at all. In fact, it’s much easier to set up an online property when you use software that gives you cues and assistance at every turn. Some homeowners association website providers leave you to fend for yourself, but at HOAStart, we understand that readily accessible, thorough support makes the difference between achieving quick, attractive, satisfying results and struggling to make your way through choices and options.
We believe you have the right to expect us to provide that kind of help. Even though we design our software to offer you easy-to-use convenience, that doesn’t mean you don’t have questions from time to time. How does this feature work? Exactly what are the consequences of activating this preference? How do I set up our homeowners association website so it offers the greatest convenience, flexibility, and value for our entire membership, as well as for those in charge of the organization itself? These important questions deserve productive answers.
The limited support on some homeowners association websites may not consist of more than a Frequently Asked Questions page or a discussion forum on which you can post inquiries and get answers from other users. But if the FAQ page doesn’t address your specific questions—or doesn’t provide useful answers—or you’re not certain that the contributors on the user-to-user forum really know what they’re talking about, now what do you do?
Some homeowners association website administrators enjoy tinkering, trying out combinations of settings, seeing how they work, and making their own decisions about how to proceed. At HOAStart, we think you shouldn’t have to do that. When you use an office software suite, a graphic-design program or any other software, you expect a thorough, reliable, quickly accessible help system. Why should your homeowners association website and its software be any different?
That’s why we’ve built four levels of help into our software, and why we constantly keep these resources up-to-date as we make updates and add new features.
First, we’ve created an extensive system of help documents that describe each and every feature in detail. On every page of the administrative dashboard, a conveniently located icon provides single-click access to this context-sensitive help. The help system describes each and every step, preference, option, and consequence of the choices you make in setting up your homeowners association website. This guidance walks you through a feature or step from beginning to end, explaining every aspect of how you administer the process so you can complete it successfully. Some steps incorporate multiple sub steps, each of which may be triggered by a specific choice you make on a preceding page of a multi-page set of choices. The help system provides detailed descriptions of each of the various paths through the feature. Each time you access a help-system document, we give you the option of rating how helpfully it assisted you. Your feedback helps us ensure that our help system offers the best-possible support.
Second, if a help topic does not provide all the guidance you seek, you can use your help system account to submit further questions so our technical experts can respond directly to you with information about what you want to accomplish. You’ll receive replies via email, but you also can track the answers to your question through your help system account and look back through previous questions, all on one unified screen. If you simply want to submit a question and receive an answer, you can do so without signing up for a help system account or logging into it, but you won’t be able to track the replies in one place.
Third, in addition to online help topics and the ability to ask further questions for responses from technical support, we incorporate tooltip help on virtually every feature, element, and data field. You’ll see a small circle with a question mark inside it located next to the name of the feature. When you place your cursor on this question mark, you’ll see a description or explanation of what the feature or element does. These tooltips briefly explain the kinds of data to include in a field, the importance of a setting, and other preferences and options. Because you access them directly from the features themselves, they provide the kinds of in-context guidance that make features easy to navigate while you’re working.
Fourth, we’ve built a video library to provide step-by-step onscreen guidance through specific features, processes, and steps. These videos explain important administrative procedures and also provide information for non-administrative members, such as how to sign up for an account and how to use specific member features. Each of these videos tackles a single topic, with onscreen displays that show you the screens, windows, controls, and choices you use as you set up, customize, maintain, and add to your website through your administrative dashboard or your member view. We continue to expand this library with high-quality content that offers targeted tips and explains ongoing feature development.
We know that although virtually everyone wants at least periodic assistance with software, not everyone wants the same type of help all the time, so we provide multiple forms of assistance to ensure that you receive the guidance you expect. Whether you want a verbal description of a process, a step-by-step video to watch, the ability to ask further targeted questions, or contextual help with an individual aspect of a specific feature, HOAStart has you covered.
Our technical team always is ready to help. Along with answering your questions, they welcome your suggestions and input. After all, a responsive homeowners association website needs to consider the real-world feedback, as well as the real-world needs, of its subscribers. We develop our software to offer broad, useful, easy-to-understand features for users like you, and we support our customers with a cohesive, thorough help system to make sure that your experience is satisfying as well as successful.
