4 Top Release Notes Examples for Beginners

Release notes are an essential part of the software development process that helps your business communicate with users.

They are a multifaceted tool that can be used by several teams, including marketing, support, sales, and DevOps, to nurture engagement and increase customer loyalty.

The main purpose of writing release notes is to communicate changes made to a particular product. They offer guidance on how to address known issues and fix bugs. You can also use them to announce new features or software updates.

It's easy to tell that any and every software team uses release notes. However, they might not be aware of this because of the discrepancies involved in who writes the notes.

Although anybody can write release notes, we believe the project or product manager is the best person to take on this responsibility. This is because they have the best technical knowledge of the issues at hand and can present them in an easy-to-understand manner.

There are a few key aspects that'll help you provide your customers with useful release notes that they'll appreciate:

• The notes should clearly communicate any changes
• Users should be the main focus of your notes
• Use visuals like images and screenshots to illustrate the changes made
• Although they don't have a standard format, release notes need to be structured and organized

Below, we’ll provide you with tips based on successful examples from top software companies to help you with your own release notes. With these tips, and the best release notes software, you’ll have your customers sold for the long term.

1 - Slack: Delivers Clear and Concise Release Notes

Release notes need to help the users of your software understand:

• The changes appearing on the latest version of your product
• Why you made the changes
• How the changes will affect them
• What they'll need to do differently to adjust to the changes you've made

As such, it's not enough to simply announce that changes have been made. Users need to understand why you’ve added, fixed, or reduced some features of your application. This knowledge will help them feel that you’re listening to their feedback and are actively working to improve the product for them.

Slack understands this important tip and leverages it to provide their customers with detailed yet simple-to-understand release notes.

In their Slack for Windows Release Notes, they include a detailed description of changes made to each version of Windows. They go one step further to categorize the notes according to the type of changes they make: what's new, bug fixes, and security guidelines. They also group these changes according to the date they are made.

However, Slack doesn’t go into the minute details of what the bugs were or how they were solved. They keep things short and interesting, and avoid using complex technical jargon.

Under the "What's New" category, they discuss the changes they’ve made and why. For instance, there’s talk of adding the most common Apple and Microsoft file extensions to their approved list in order to spare you one more approval.

2 - Apple: Ensures Release Notes Are User-Centric

Apple is notorious for being extremely user sensitive. It's always clear that their customers come first in whatever they do, and their release notes are no exception.

Apple’s release notes provide solutions for their users to ensure that they have the best experience with all Apple products.

They use simple and concise language that proves they empathize with their readers. Their tone is also very friendly and personable, making it clear that they’re a company that cares for their customers.

Apple also provides its customers with links to additional resources to ensure that they solve all issues exhaustively.

The following tips will ensure that your customers appreciate how you communicate new changes as effectively as Apple does:

• Leave out technical lingo and jargon
• Avoid the assumption that your customers know what you’re talking about—it's also best to avoid using acronyms
• Don’t hide your release notes behind authentication or deep inside your app; they are useful marketing and sales tools
• Keep release notes concise and easy-to-read, ensuring they speak directly to your customers

You can add something personal by thanking your users for their time and patience and, if you can, let them know when to expect the next release.

3 - monday.com: Uses Visuals to Explain Changes

Allow us to be cliché and say that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Using images and screenshots in your release notes will help illustrate the changes and fixes made to your software better than words alone can.

Here’s a good example:

The first thing that we notice and love about monday.com's release notes is the positive voice and tone they've used. Their first sentence is short, sweet, and includes an emoji, which makes you excited and unintimidated to read what they have to say.

This is only made better by the images they have plastered across their release notes page. They’ve used graphic images and videos to illustrate the exact changes they've made to their platform.

These visual guides help illustrate the exact steps required, making changes appear easy to adapt to.

If you're especially sharp, you'll notice that the graphics are only available with the first note every month. We'd like to assume it's either the most complex or most significant change monday.com has made in that month.

Leave it to monday.com to capitalize on the power of visuals. In addition to images and screenshots, they also plaster links across their pages. These links lead to more detailed descriptions of specific problems, or their solutions, and include user guides, detailed walk-throughs, and video tutorials.

They also appeal to customers’ visual interests by making sure the notes are:

• Colorful, but with a lot of white space
• Easy to read, thanks to their font and text size
• Categorized per month
• Brief
• Indicative of the company’s bubbly personality

4 - Samsung: Produces Structured and Well-Organized Release Notes

Release notes may not have a standard format, but they should always be well structured and segmented. This improves the users' experience by making it easier to navigate to the changes that affect them.

You can make your notes organized and appealing to your customers using:

• Subheadings
• Bullet points
• Paragraph breaks
• Drop-down menus
• Tables

Samsung makes their users’ lives as easy as possible by incorporating most of the above elements into their Samsung Internet Release Notes.

At the top of the page, you'll find bullet points detailing the release version and release date of each change.

This is followed by a table containing the release content, which is sectioned into two columns. The first row details the specific changes or updates made, and the second column directs customers to linked documents that provide more detail on the changes and updates.

Following the table, users will find a list with drop-down buttons that link to previous changes that have been made and documented.

Keeping your notes organized will show empathy to your customers and help arrange your thoughts in a logical manner.

Expert Tip: Remember to ensure that notes are easily accessible to your new, existing, and prospective clients.

Share Your First Release Note With ReleaseNotes

You don’t need to hurt your head trying to write and design the best release notes. Instead, leave the work to a release notes software that can simplify this technical writing task for you.

ReleaseNotes is a tool that can help you create clear, organized, and user-centric release notes (with minimal effort from your side) and deliver maximum impact to your customers.

Our software presents you with various ways to create beautiful and engaging release notes and even more ways to get them in front of your audience.

Our product offerings are highlighted in the table below.

We’ve worked with many established software companies, including Clause, Shutterfly, and Stitch Labs. Every one of them has been happy about how we were able to help them reduce the hassle of communicating their changes and updates to customers.

“Releasenotes.io massively streamlines our communication channels and has helped reduce the hassle of keeping all of our customers up-to-date.” - Wolfgang Reinhardt, Chief Product Owner, wescale

Let us help you start working on your release notes today.

Simply pick a plan that works for you; this will depend on the branding and size of your organization. As a beginner, we’d recommend you get started with our 14-day free trial to get a feel of what we can offer.