The objective of the 24-7 SupportSuite is to provide top quality after-sales support to your customers, distributors and agents! It needs an easy, intuitive interface to guide users to the right technical information.
Let’s dive into website usability and explore design ideas you can use with our 24-7 SupportSuite to boost user experience, readability, and positive feedback.
Where the heck am I?
Most people get to your website through search, they can end up ANYWHERE on your site!
- Breadcrumb trails tell people where they are, and help them navigate back up to categories.
- Use obvious labels on buttons and forms – this is not the time to be minimalist or clever.
- Simplify your menu with clear high-level categories.
User-Friendly Layout
- No walls of text. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.
- Replace “and”, “but”, “although” and “because” with a full stop. Make a 2nd sentence.
- Use different levels of headings, subheadings, and bullet points. BTW, that is also good SEO.
- Images that are viewed together must complement each other. Be cautious about mixing photo styles on a page.
- If you have a lot of images, make a gallery with a pop-up slideshow.
- Make pages user friendly for the webmaster – if it’s hard to maintain, it won’t be maintained.
Don’t make people wait
Speed isn’t just good for readers, search engines appreciate it too.
- Make use of browser caching. Some caching plugins are so hard to set up, and if you guess at settings you may not achieve your desired speed benefit. It’s worth reading the manual.
- Trim down image sizes. Try to use a professional tool because WordPress isn’t great.
- Host videos on YouTube or Vimeo, then link to them with a static thumbnail (and caption)
- Never set a video or music to play automatically.
- Minify your code – there are plugins for this.
- Keep visitors engaged – give them something to look at near the top, while bigger files load below.
- Use “on-scroll” animation to draw attention to featured items.*
Avoid video unless it’s for education.
Mobile Design
I don’t say “mobile first”, because a good design considers ALL devices.
- A grid layout gives people an overview of about 9-16 items and gives priority to featured items.
- A horizontal panel layout is best to give priority to the most recent items.
- Use “sticky” to keep critical information at the top.
- Use touch-friendly elements i.e. buttons not text links. It you have a panel, make the entire thing clickable.
- Bigger fonts, more line spacing, avoid letter spacing for text.
Who is using your 24-7 SupportSuite. If your technicians are in the field, they will be on mobile. If they are retail distributors, they are more likely to be on a desktop or laptop.
Feedback and Help forms
- Focus on getting contact details so you can call back.
- Keep forms simple, it gives you something to discuss when you email or call.
- One form, one objective. Forms should not multi-task (it leads to irrelevant questions).
- Use trust indicators like testimonials or security badges near the form.
- Don’t misuse their information. Not ever.
Don’t guess, engage
- Ask users to rate your answers, it tells you where installation problems occur.
- Use analytics to see what pages are working, and how long people stop on a page.
- Create alternative landing pages using categories and tags.
- Do polls and surveys, a quiz, something fun and interesting
- Keep improving
- Don’t stress if your engagement is low – that is a sign of a good product. The few customers who ask for additional help, should be valued and thanked.