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Improve UI on Support Homepage

Problem

As with any customer, the support’s homepage is likely the first page I would look for help.

Reviewing the support’s landing page we have at https://support.gitlab.com , it does not appear we have enough information on the page to help customers.

When a customer submitted a ticket, at times they are able to resolve it themselves by finding the solution in our docs.

Proposal

Working doc for reference: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S23xwvabY_L28PaL3G1IGZjipqgytg8vKSDZmMJp6jI/edit?ts=5de8298c#bookmark=id.zgb7vvjioqgo

A revamp to the support’s homepage to help our customers find information related to their issue. This also aims to increase self-served customers while being able to utilize our docs better using improved navigation to available resources.

I created this issue so our team can iterate on the best approach on the user interface on how we can make it intuitive for our customers.

I came up with the following where:

Header:

  • We make the doc’s search box stands out as the first option to find solution to their problem by making a masthead design with a larger search box.

Content to include:

  • GitLab.com Docs
  • Server Status - visibility on GitLab.com server status with a twitter feed integration from status.io.
  • Billing/ Licensing Issues. Links to customer portal, Docs, FAQ
  • Community Support / Support Forum - which are useful for free customers.
  • Support Options (learn more about support?). Links to support page, scope/statement of support
  • Recent updates from twitter - gitlabstatus - status.io
  • Support Suggestions - articles on common topics/errors where these links to the docs as suggested by @tatkins .
  • Link to the Contact Us form.

Design

Initial mock-up which I have only created in a photo editor. After reviewing Zendesk template, it appears that the layout can be easily change to reflect the following:

support-homepage-final

@lisvinueza will work with me on the revamp. She has done a lot of work in the workflow of our customers in the support forms which would play a big role in the usability of the support homepage interface.

Things to consider

Actions required

  • Request sandbox access to look into the support form workflow.
  • Review templates in Zendesk on what can be possibly be done.
  • Managers approval on the design. @gitlab-com/support/managers
  • Manager: purchase ZD theme
  • contact digital marketing team on assets/feedback?
  • implementation via ZD theme repo
  • push to sandbox
  • review by team, UX?, digital team member?
  • push to prod

Relates to:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/issues/1853

Goals

  • Satisfying customers with an intuitive approach.
  • Adaptation of new design to all device screen sizes
  • Reduce un-necessary tickets where solutions can mostly be found in the docs.
Edited by Cynthia "Arty" Ng