Organization & Role
Helpshift (acquired by Keywords Studios) is a mobile-first customer support platform. As their first Content Designer, I created and managed all in-app copy and knowledge base content.
Project
I put together a rewrite and redesign of Helpshift’s welcome page, which is the default page that users land on when they first open the product. This was part of a greater audit of all in-app copy I conducted to put together a voice and tone guide for the design team.
Problem
As Helpshift’s first Content Designer, I conducted an audit of all existing UX copy, which had been written by an array of different Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers over the years.
The welcome page content was especially challenging. Prior to my rewrite, it was filled with unhelpful copy and broken links.
The content was so bad, customer-facing teams were in the habit of only linking customers to specific app pages to prevent them from seeing this one. Since these teams had gotten comfortable with the workaround, the product team continued to focus their attention on other parts of the app.
Approach
Thinking through how this page could be fixed, I listed out all of the problems:
- It’s unnecessarily content-heavy, especially for a “welcome” page with a vague purpose.
- The steps are not provided in a coherent order – users get steps 01, 02, 03 scattered across different panes, with one additional item in the middle with no context on how it fits into the rest.
- The user has to scan the page back and forth to understand the numbering and take in the full set of information.
- As referenced before, there were two broken URLs and lots of outdated content. 😬
After verifying this list of problems, I got to work revising the copy and the design itself to provide a clearer path to success.
Outcome
My goal with this revision was to make this page simple, helpful, skimmable, and only include content that could stand the test of time. I added three links:
- Our popular getting started guide (embedded as an image link)
- Our entire education hub (the Knowledge Base)
- A way to contact Support
To match the newly concise content, I mocked up a single panel layout that aligned with our design and branding standards. Here’s the newly designed and rewritten page:
The full copy:
Hi [name],
Welcome to your Helpshift Dashboard!
To get started, review our Dashboard guide.
[CTA button that links to the Setting Up Your Dashboard guide]
To learn about additional features and best practices, check out our Knowledge Base.
If you have any questions or feedback for us, please feel free to reach out to our support team.
The new design reduces the cognitive load by reconciling the copy that was scattered in the previous design. Having a central call to action gives the user an easy, clear path forward. The simplified text above the CTA invites the user to self-serve via the linked resources (or contact support if needed).
Reflection
With more content design experience writing under my belt, here’s how I’d revise this further if I could go back and do this again:
- The duplicate ‘welcome’ above the single panel and below the ‘Hi’ text isn’t necessary – I’d remove it from above the single panel to keep attention focused on the copy in the panel itself.
- Replace “To learn about” with “For” and “check out” with “see”. I’d also remove “additional” as they haven’t encountered any features or best practices yet for this to reference.
- In the last line, I’d replace “If you have” with “to share” to make the copy a bit more confident – this is a first impression, after all.
- Once again in the last line, I would remove “for us” – though I originally added this to make the page feel more conversational, rereading it, it doesn’t seem to match the professional yet welcoming tone of the rest of the copy. I’d also remove “feel free to” for the same reasons.
Here’s what the copy would look like with these revisions applied.
Hi [name],
Welcome to your Helpshift Dashboard!
To get started, review our Dashboard guide.
[CTA button that links to the Setting Up Your Dashboard guide]
For features and best practices, see our Knowledge Base.
To share questions or feedback, please reach out to our support team.
