Issue #5

What the FAQ ... ?!

In honor of my first (and even second 😏) video of the Top Ten Help Centers of 2025 series going out, I decided to share what I use when looking through a help center for the first time.

Better yet, it is what I also use when looking through my own help center.

Why does it matter what I think?

Tbh, it really doesn't. What matters is what your user thinks when navigating your content.

When I tackle help centers or review knowledge bases, the first thing I do is put myself in the user's shoes.

The persona if yer' nasty.

I ask myself questions like: How do I feel when coming to this page? What am I looking for? How much experience do I have with this tool? What is causing me stress in my life, both with this tool and external stresses?

Once I am in character, I start going through the content. This is what to look for.

🧭 Navigation

Is it easy to find what you need? And this doesn't mean that you understand the quirks of your search tool and can find all your documents without a problem.

Find the user journey that your customer experiences and make sure it is smooth. Smoother than smooth. Like butter 🧈

Remove any blockers, take out extra pop-ups that aren't necessary, enable search terms and tags in your writing tool to make searching a breeze, and rename articles in a way that makes sense.

☝️ Important content above the fold

Important content needs to be above the fold.

What is the fold, you say? The fold is the part of a web page shown before scrolling. It is what you see as soon as the page loads on your screen.

The fold will be different for different screen sizes (mobile vs desktop), so keep that in mind.

It can be tempting to write a fluff or big intro section for each article, but keep in mind what content is in the introduction. It is taking up valuable real estate.

♿ Accessibility isn't a "nice to have"

I've seen it a million times where the team has good intentions to "start" adding alt text on images or updating brand colors to make sure they are suitable for everyone's eyesight, but it just never happens.

Accessibility needs to be a priority, not a backlog item.

This can be easier said than done, depending on your team size, so start small. Use tools like WAVE to determine what your pain points are within your help center and start working on those.

Small changes can go a long way.

💡 Make your formatting make sense

Style guides exist for a reason. If you are looking through multiple documents to find your answer and you are constantly seeing layout, formatting, or style changes, it can be really distracting.

Look for weird bolding or headings that seem out of place. A majority of the time, if your gut is saying that the bolding, underlining, or italics you are seeing seems weird ... it is weird.

1️⃣ Numbered lists are only for steps

I know some people think I am ridiculous for saying this, and sure this is highly opinionated, but come on ...

When was the last time you were on documentation when you've seen a numbered list and didn't think "Ohhh, steps for me to follow!"

Sure, in normal writing situations, it could be a list of items or giving prioritization to a list of thoughts, but for a help center, make numbers mean one thing - steps to follow.

⚓ Anchors away, baby!

This is very much tied to navigation, but anchor links are king 👑

If you have a very long article or even multiple sections to navigate, drop those anchor links in to bring the user back to the top of the page without scrolling.

Yes, it is just scrolling, but compare it to walking in a store like Costco.

Are you going to make your customer walk ALL the way through your store to the aisle they need and then walk ALL the way back to the map to find their way to the next aisle?!

NO! Give them an anchor link.

Alright, enough with the drama. That's all I got for you today.

Make sure to check out my new video series on the Top Ten Help Centers of 2025, where I apply rules like these to help centers LIVE 😬