Footer for Zendesk Guide created by Lotus Themes. Source: support.clearcover.com
Tools like Zendesk help you create the best user experience by means of a help center. However, there’s one thing that may ruin the impression that it makes — a footer.
Seems ridiculous? Let us dissuade you.
We all know that most users pay more attention to the top of the page. That’s why we tend to put everything important on top and hide less critical stuff somewhere below. But a study showed that the most-engaged users engage with the website more at the bottom. The below the fold space is thus viewed for nearly 3 times longer than the above the fold space.
This discovery turns your footer into an essential part of the website that helps customers find the right information quicker. If the research inspired you to improve the footer on your website and help center, here are 20 great examples.
Three things to remember while designing a help center footer
For most people, the footer is the last thing to think about. But if you want to keep it neat and useful, there are three things to remember:
- A knowledge base’s footer must have the same design as your main website. Otherwise, your customers will be confused. Is it the same company? Can I trust it? This little thing may turn your users off.
- A footer should have a responsive design. Thus the links will be the right size to work with from mobile devices, and customers won’t need to zoom them.
- Your help center and website’s footers are not synchronized. It means that you will need to create menu items, texts, logos, and other stuff separately for both of them.
Although you manage a website and a help center separately, your customers don’t care that they’re different resources. They just look for information and often use the footer for that. That’s why your knowledge base needs to fully meet their expectations.
Two approaches to make your help center footer work
Are you hesitant about what to include in your Zendesk Guide footer? Let’s study two different approaches, and when you need them.
Identical content
This approach means that a help center footer is identical to the main website. If you don’t have tons of support materials or want your users to be able to get to the main site from any page on the help center, go for this approach. Check out Slack’s help center — their footer remains the same on every web page.
Slack has the same footer for the main site and the help center. Source: slack.com
Support-related content
If you have dozens of products and a way more support materials, the help center's identical footer may overload users and distract them from finding the answers. See how Squarespace solved this issue — they kept the design but took only links related to support and community.
Squarespace website’s footer. Source: squarespace.com
Squarespace help center’s footer. Source: support.squarespace.com
Fortunately, Zendesk Guide is a flexible platform. You can opt for a theme and easily add your logo, brand colors, fonts, and layouts. It will be enough for a start.
But suppose you’re looking to make your knowledge base functional and cohesive with your main website. In that case, you will want some more customization, including the footer. This task requires advanced tech skills, such as designing a responsive look and coding.
Sounds long and hard, right?
That’s why we at Lotus Themes create custom footers for Zendesk Guide (and headers) that look exactly like your website and don’t confuse your customers.
Provide your customers with seamless user experience — contact Lotus Themes!
