July 11, 2022
The Top Changelog Examples to Learn From
Keep reading to discover some of the best practices for changelogs and our top examples of good changelogs from successful companies.
Keep reading to discover some of the best practices for changelogs and our top examples of good changelogs from successful companies.
Changelogs are a great way to help keep your customers updated on your product. But without the proper guidance, it's easy to miss out on some of their benefits.
Keep reading to discover some of the best practices for changelogs and some of our top examples of good changelogs from successful companies.
Changelogs (also known as product release notes) are chronological lists of all updates and made to your product. This includes new features, product changes, bug fixes and any features that have been removed.
As previously, mentioned, changelogs are chronological; this means the latest entry comes first, and all changelog files are dated. To keep things clean and skimmable, many changelogs contain short summaries of each release and link to longer entries if readers want more information.
Release notes make it easier for users and stakeholders alike to stay up-to-date with new releases, and are a great source of information for any company to have. Plus, having a central source for your product updates is an easy way to help create a feedback loop with your audience.
Here are some of our best tips and tricks to help you get started.
The people reading your release notes don’t want to have to read paragraphs on paragraphs of information to figure out what you’ve changed about your product. Keep updates as brief as possible, but make sure customers know why these changes were made and how those changes affect them. Why is the security update you just released important? How do your new features help their workflow?
Much like with roadmaps, you’ll need to find the balance between oversimplifying updates and adding in too much extra detail. Adding in humor and context can help make your updates easier to understand, but they are best used sparingly and only where necessary.
Remember, you can always summarize updates on the main changelog page and link to longer entries if you need to to explain things in more detail.
Your changelog is first and foremost a resource for your users. Your customers may not be able to understand the same technical jargon your development team will, and you’ll need to keep that in mind when writing up your release notes. Try and avoid overly-technical words whenever possible and use easy-to-understand phrases instead; where you can’t, explain what industry-specific words mean as clearly as possible. Having industry outsiders preview your release notes before you make them public can help you figure out the right balance.
Likewise, it’s important to make sure you’re not wasting their time. Like we mentioned earlier, keep it concise and focus on what they want to know about what’s new with your product.
Visuals are great resources for your changelogs. Long walls of text can be intimidating, and using pictures or other visuals to help break up these blocks can make your release note entries more approachable and reader-friendly. They’re also a great way to quickly summarize key details and information about any changes you’ve made or reinforce what you discuss in the entries themselves.
Disorganized changelogs can be as harmful to your product as long-winded, overly-detailed ones. Your users don’t want to have to search to find what they need, either within the main changelog page or within individual entries themselves.
One easy way to sort your changelog entries is to use categories. This could be based on the type of update (e.g. bug fix, new feature, etc.), or the area of your product they affect (e.g. interface, security, dashboard, etc.), or whatever else works best for your product.
There are many ways to help organize individual changelog entries as well. One of the best ways to do this is with text formatting; headings, subheadings and bullet-point summaries can all help make your changelogs more readable so your users can easily get up to speed on each new release.
Including clear CTAs and next steps in your changelog entries can help keep readers on your site and push them to explore what you have to offer, in turn making them more likely to try out your product and become loyal customers. Make sure you link to relevant pages such as dedicated feature pages and sign-up pages where it seems logical.
Release notes are great opportunities for further feedback from your customers. Allowing comments or including a feedback link is a great way to gauge your users’ response to new updates and figure out what they like and don’t like about them. Furthermore, this can also be a great way to figure out if they are any bugs that need to be fixed or whether certain features should be prioritized in the future.
Here are some of our favourite changelogs and why they work for their companies.
UiPath includes a table of contents within their changelog for ease-of-use. It’s a great way to organize release note entries so readers can easily find what they’re looking for without having to search by date.
Amplitute uses videos and screenshots in their changelog entries to better illustrate and explain new features. While a bit more work-intensive, short videos can be a great way to explain things to your users and can be a pleasant surprise for those who don’t want to read the larger entry.
Feefo provides their product release notes via in-app update announcements, so users don’t have to manually check a changelog page to find out about new updates. Users are notified within Feefo’s platform itself, where they can click on slide-out announcements to get more information if they want to.
Gorgias’ changelog is clean and simplistic, with sparing visual elements in the form of graphics and code elements to illustrate what's being changed. This contrast helps draw attention to what’s important, allowing readers to easily pull out key features and understand what they mean.
Chargify’s changelog is clean and presents the important information first. This is helped by their color-coded category system, which helps break up the monotony of the black-and-white test and allows readers to easily navigate topics. Like Feefo, Chargify also has an in-app release announcement system that summarizes new updates and links to dedicated changelog entries.
Amazon Business’ release notes page includes drop-down menus, so readers can easily navigate changelog entries based on category, product offering and date.
Our changelog does a good job of incorporating many of the features we've already mentioned on this list. Customers can easily access a summary of all recent product changes in chronological order via a custom changelog widget, and if they want to read more, they can click on individual changelog entries and view more information on our customer portal. We also have links to previous updates to guide customers through any changes, and users can subscribe to get changelog updates via email as well.
Likewise, our product also makes it easy for you to incorporate these features into your own changelogs. Within our all-in-one feedback management platform (which also helps you collect customer feedback and publish a roadmap), we help you manage all of your changelog entries in one place. This helps you successfully close the feedback loop with your customers and help keep them involved in your product.
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