HHOOWW TTOO OORRGGAANNIIZZEE YYOOUURR HHEELLPP DDEESSKK KKNNOOWWLLEEDDGGEE BBAASSEE

If you’re thinking about putting together a knowledge base, congratulations – you’ve made a smart decision. Knowledge bases can help your audience search or browse your organized and shared categories for important information, articles and helpful tips of the trade.

While knowledge base software can help you create one, there’s a lot more that goes into organizing the base so that it’s easy to navigate for the user. Start by putting your articles into categories and then follow these five simple steps.

Look forward and keep it manageable.

It’s the old fashioned ‘quality over quantity’ saying. You want to plan ahead with your categories, but you don’t want to dilute it with too many meaningless ones or too few to the point that it doesn’t function.

The best idea is to divide your categories into broad topics/headlines and filter everything else into sub categories. Just make sure you don’t go overboard with the number of them.

Make sure they’re understandable and straightforward.

Don’t try to get creative or cute with your category names. Keep them self-explanatory and simple. You want your users to easily know what they’re looking for. Need help? Look to top keyword searches when naming your categories.

Keep it a 1:1 ratio.

Don’t over-assign categories to a single article in your help desk knowledge base. A good practice is to assign one category to each article to help simplify user navigation and make for digestible understanding. Assigning multiple categories for a single article will more than likely bring up the same article multiple times, making it look like you’re padding the base – which you don’t want to do.

Consistency is key.

When organizing your help desk knowledge base, make sure your categories have the same level of depth. Sometimes, when building your knowledge base, it’ll be broad enough to describe a wide range of topics in some instances, while other times your space will be barely big enough to fit just a few articles. Keeping it consistent will help with user navigation and company professionalism.

Bring your quick reference material to the top.

It’s smart to offer a set of articles for quick and easy reference, including items such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), “getting started” pieces, or “How to” steps. Having this small set of helpful content, easily available at the top of your knowledge base, will show your customers that you value their time and energy. Keeping your help desk organized is just as important as keeping your knowledge base organized. Check out IssueTrak’s software to see how it can be used to organize your help desk.