In 2021, FamilyTreeDNA set a quarterly goal to improve customer education around its suite of products. A growing number of users' complaints revolved around a lack of understanding of the products' contents and how to properly use them.
To help tackle this problem, I led a team of 12 for two months to plan, design, and develop a new and improved Help Center website using Zendesk for FamilyTreeDNA's web-based application.
As Design Lead, I was responsible for managing several aspects of the project while collaborating with a team of content writers, a branding designer, developers (in-house and sub-contractors), QA team, and upper-level managers.
I was in charge of the project's timeline, worked cross-functionally with the teams to execute the design vision for the website, tracked ongoing projects that overlapped with the Help Center, and delivered weekly status reports to the CEO and other managers.
FamilyTreeDNA offers testing for autosomal DNA, Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA to individuals for genealogical purposes.
Because genetic genealogy is highly technical in nature, the redesign of the Help Center was based on a quarterly initiative to improve education around product offerings and customer's end-to-end experience. From prospective buyers (marketing) to customers being able to interpret their DNA results (product).
The tasks were to:
Zendesk as New Help Center Platform
Education was provided through an existing WordPress website, but the theme lacked advanced search functionality and had over 1,000 pages that needed to be updated or consolidated.
We chose Zendesk as the platform, because it met all of the content team's and website features' requirements for an optimal user experience.
Contracting Initial Development Work
Because we only had about two months to launch the Help Center, we contracted out the Zendesk website setup. I coordinated with a contract Zendesk developer to create a Scope of Work that detailed exactly what needed to be implemented on their end.
Figuring it Out as I Went
It was my first time working with Zendesk, and I learned how to use it quickly. It was a learn-as-you-go process, from how to add content to Zendesk to updating the code for custom design features and assisting with team onboarding. Familiarizing myself with Zendesk's backend functionality helped me understand what was feasible to design and implement.
Best Practices for Help Centers
With only a limited amount of time to conduct research, my priority was to investigate how other Help Centers and product educational websites were designed.
I searched for the best ways to develop an article knowledge base through research to share it with the content team. Because this was a large content project, it was critical to be aligned with customer support and writers from the start.
Some of the best practices were:
"81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative."
Refining The Features Needed
Since we didn't have a dedicated Product Owner on this project, I helped fill in that role.
After getting an idea of what the best practices consisted of, the goal became to get agreement on the features based on the user needs, business goals, and technical requirements.
Below are some of the features we could kick off with:
Finding a Zendesk Theme
I searched for a theme that had most of the features and layout structure we needed in order to avoid custom coding as much as possible.
I then gave the Zendesk developer quick and dirty mockups of the theme and the features we'd need help implementing.
Collaborating with Art Director to Discuss Visual Design Direction
I next brought in our in-house Art Director, who handled branding, to help me concept the visual design. Together we brainstormed and made design decisions around typography, navigation style, icons, footer, and colors.
This step was key to maintaining the consistency of the FamilyTreeDNA website since users would be switching back and forth between the Help Center and the app.
Besides building the Help Center website, we also linked specific articles on the FamilyTreeDNA website to point directly to the Help Center.
The goal was to lead users to context-sensitive information and help them find answers to common questions faster.
The need to link to the Help Center within the FamilyTreeDNA app made workflow particularly tricky. This created multiple dependencies as writers, developers, and the QA team whom were all working simultaneously.
While the website design and development teams were on track to finish on time, the content team fell behind.
"MVP" Help Center
Due to the amount of content work still remaining, I proposed releasing the Help Center with only the most visited topics. This would allow us to stay ahead of the development team as they worked on other projects that overlapped with the Help Center.
I provided analytics to the content team on the top pages and products for which we needed content. After that, we disabled or hid features that were not part of the MVP.
The launch of the Help Center was a success! We released on time and gave the QA team adequate time to test.
Word-of-mouth quickly spread about the new help features available for education, improving the overall customer experience and satisfaction with FamilyTreeDNA's products.
The next phases and iterations of the Help Center will be based on data-driven decisions, which was one of the main reasons for selecting Zendesk as the Help Center platform because of its exceptional reporting tools.
