5 Tips for Designing a Knowledge Base
Customers want to do it on their own! The latest trend in customer behavior is their desire to help themselves and solve problems on their own. A stunning 90% of consumers want a company to provide them with a way to do self-support.
Unfortunately, a plain old knowledge base is not enough. A portal with articles is not enough. The design of your knowledge base has a huge impact on how your customers experience your brand. If it’s poorly designed, the impression will be similar.
A well-designed knowledge base that is simple and easy to navigate through is the best way to go. Here are the 5 best practices and tips for designing a knowledge base.
1. Crisp and clean content categories
When designing a knowledge base, the starting point is simplicity. A simple design, user-friendly navigation, and (almost) everything just a click away is the best practice. Customers want just that.
A fancy design is redundant if they cannot find what they’re looking for. They’ll hate it even more.
Make it clear, concise, and consistent. Why would customers need to go several extra, unnecessary steps when they want to handle the problem on their own?
2. Short and sweet titles
In the vast ocean of content — the internet, nobody actually likes or has time to read everything. People scan through the content, always have that in mind when writing and formatting your next article.
Short titles with the most important keywords can help them find the one paragraph they’re looking for. Try to keep everything short and simple and think about formatting — make it scan-friendly.
3. Flaunt what you got: your search bar
The search bar must be the most direct, obvious way for customers to look for an answer and solution to their problem. It’s the number one thing that provides low-effort experience, and customers love that!
When planning a new design of your knowledge base, place your search bar in a way that nobody can miss it. Right in the center of the front page, if that’s what it takes.
4. Stop clicking around
Are your customers frequently asking you about your frequently asked questions page? Do you see the paradox in it? FAQs are there for a reason and even though it is obvious that they need to be at a visible place, many customers are struggling with finding them.
Eye-level placement and one-click access is the way to go when placing an FAQ page.
5. Don’t play hard to get
Yes, companies want to empower customers to help themselves. However, that doesn’t mean you should hide behind walls and watch as your customers struggle to find a way to solve their problem.
That’s why your contact page must also be available. It shows that you let them handle things on their own, but if that doesn’t work, you’re there in any given situation and ready to help.
A well-designed knowledge base will create a low-effort customer experience and help them find answers to their questions. An amazingly designed knowledge base, however, will solve the problem before it even occurs, it lets your customers know what can go wrong.
A portal with self-service that also has support agents available to help will help you grow and establish a strong relationship with each of your customers.
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