Are you new to Zendesk world and want to make it right from the beginning? Then you are in the right place to learn how you can customize Zendesk Guide and what to focus on.
Any online resource or tool, or, what’s worse, a help center, which is not customized to needs and demands, may look like an oversized dress on a CEO of the company. It can create a totally wrong impression or, in the best case scenario, will not achieve the desired results.
Furthermore, so many marketing leaders have acknowledged that the future of Internet marketing is personalization, which creates happy customers and obviously starts with customization.
Keeping that in mind, let’s see the practical ways to customize Zendesk Guide.
Zendesk Guide branding
Your brand and corporate style are what you want to engrave in the minds and brains of your audience because this single bond can drive you sales, recommendations and return customers. So the very first thing to consider for your Zendesk Guide is that it should not be any different from your official website. If you create a feeling that once your end-users go to your help center, they leave one resource and get to an entirely different one, you will fail in their eyes. Even if they assume that the help center is yours, you will have lost your professionalism already. In the worst case scenario, people may simply leave your help center assuming that they have gone to the wrong place.
Style consistency
The majority of customers will not sit and analyze every tiny detail of your site, email and help center, uniqueness of icons and so on, but it would be enough for them to feel that Something is not quite right here, or not consistent, or not professional, and thoughts like these can spoil the overall impression of your brand and business. You don’t want to make that happen, don’t you? Another negative aspect of having your online tools and resources look different is that they form a distraction for your audience.
Hence, it’s better to have all your resources branded and consistent in terms of design, which includes corporate colors, fonts, icons and many more. Luckily, Zendesk design options are ready to enter the game!
Logical structure
Zendesk Guide should be aimed to help instead of confusing someone who is already looking for the answers.
So if you want to provide service instead of disservice, it’s better to organize your Zendesk Guide in sections, categories and articles logically. You don’t want to have all your informational treasures presented chaotically on the main page either. If you have a lot of content, you can use tabs and accordion tools for structuring it. Also, simple, understandable and self-explanatory headings are user-friendly and therefore the most effective.
Simple and smart navigation
The main page should be resourceful, yet not messy. In order to achieve the best results, it’s better to use the most suitable layout options along with customized features for the main categories.
Also, navigation structure should be consistent with the use of the same options throughout all pages of your Zendesk Guide. Yet, the number of additional options in the menu should not be excessive; otherwise they will complicate navigation instead of simplifying it. In such cases, dropdown menus can come into play. They contribute to easier organization of the sections and do not overload the customers with long lists of options.
Coherent design
No graphic elements of your Zendesk design should be misleading. For instance, underlines in blue color are usually interpreted as links and if text is not clickable it’s not user friendly.
Table of contents
This Zendesk extension is perfect for long material, which allows for jumping from one section of the article to the other. And the main beauty of it is that it’s created automatically after identifying the titles.
Smart recommendations
Furthermore, you can show the articles from the same section next to the current article and thereby exceed expectations.
Additional formatting components
Interactive and clear content has a much greater value, engagement level and attraction to the audience owing to such simple additions as videos, highlighted callouts, interesting fonts, cool icons, tabs, accordions and etc. By the way, these components are already included in all Zendesk templates developed by Lotus Themes.
Zendesk extensions for building community
You cannot avoid positive motivation for cheering and raising your community leaders and actively engage them if you want to develop a strong community. Hot Posts are cool Zendesk extensions. If your community is pretty passive, you have two options—either to develop its engagement or remove it from your Zendesk Guide. Otherwise, low engagement will spoil your new customers’ overall impression of your help center and they will perceive your Zendesk Guide as non-helpful.
Final words
Hopefully, you’re now convinced about the importance of optimizing your help center and how you can customize Zendesk design, structure and layout from the beginning.
If time resource and quality are your top priorities then you can consider ready-to-go Zendesk templates and additional services as well as Zendesk extensions from Lotus Themes, the only authorized Zendesk solution provider that specializes in this field.
