Don’t let your help center fall victim to bad design

70% of online businesses fail because of bad usability

Source: Uxeria

Poor visuals and confusing Zendesk design can ruin your content efforts and keep your potential customers from buying. Your visitors won’t stay long if the text is hard on the eyes, and the knowledge base is difficult to use. 55% of consumers think that help centers aren’t user-friendly, but most of the time, they won’t tell you what is wrong.

91% of customers would use a self-service portal if it was tailored to their needs

Source: Zendesk
Here are some of the most common design flaws that keep your customers from using your Zendesk help center. Watch out for them on your knowledge base.

What's wrong with this Zendesk design?

Design flaw #1

Category blocks overlap each other because of the poor adaptability of the design. The page looks messy and unprofessional.
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Design flaw #2

Buttons don’t fit in one line on a small screen of the phone and look cluttered because the mobile version isn’t well thought out and tested thoroughly.
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Design flaw #3

The search bar is too wide, and the button doesn’t fit the same line.
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Design flaw #4

The mobile version design isn’t well thought out, so custom blocks aren’t aligned.

The short lines of text on a small screen make the eye jump too often from one line to another and annoy readers.

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Design flaw #5

Low contrast between the text, icons, and background makes the items nearly invisible.

Navigation buttons don’t take into account page padding (spacing), so they look inconsistent.

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Design flaw #6

The text is hardly readable because of the low contrast with the background.
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Design flaw #7

There are too many different fonts on one page and they don’t match.
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Design flaw #8

A mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters and buttons of different heights makes the design look chaotic.
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Design flaw #9

The gray color is usually used for non-editable fields and thus looks misleading for users.

Low contrast between the field titles and the text makes them hardly noticeable.

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Design flaw #10

The background image doesn’t fill the whole page on some screens and looks unprofessional.
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Design flaw #11

There are no bullets that divide different pieces of information. Everything is collapsed into one text, and the data is difficult to digest.
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Design flaw #12

The horizontal section divider is shorter than the content width. Sections don’t look easily distinguishable, and the content is less legible and enjoyable.
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Design flaw #13

Small space between the title and the author makes this information harder to read and understand.

There is an ugly vertical line on the left that is aesthetically annoying.

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Design flaw #14

Top and bottom spacing (vertical padding) on the button is too small. The button looks too narrow, and it’s difficult to click on some devices.
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Design flaw #15

Multi-column form layouts make it difficult for users to scan fields and fill them out. They may skip some of the fields because they don’t notice them, complete the wrong ones, or spend too much time thinking about how to continue.
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How to build a help center capable of reducing tickets?
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