Abstract (summary): Investing in documenting your bioinformatics software well can increase its impact and save your time. To maximize the effectiveness of your documentation, we suggest following a few guidelines we propose here. We recommend providing multiple avenues for users to use your research software, including a navigable HTML interface with a quick start, useful help messages with detailed explanation, and thorough examples for each feature of your software. By following these guidelines, you can assure that your hard work maximally benefits yourself and others.