Knowledge is key and should be easily found. 🔎 And that is why I want to introduce you to a sample landing page for an internal knowledge base.
In my example I chose a specific topic, but the following tips and insights can be applied on all landing pages for knowledge bases.
Furthermore I want to tell you a little bit about the reasons why it is build the way it is. Because I just love UX, and I think it’s valuable to know a couple of tricks to create practically but appealing pages in Confluence.
So without further ado here comes a screenshot of the page (click on the picture to enlarge) and you’ll find everything worth knowing beneath. 💙
The header picture is our entry point for all our users visiting our knowledge base. And yes, you could simply use a heading but let me tell you why a header with an illustration is a great idea:
40% of us respond more to visuals than to text
visuals are processed 60.000x faster in our brain than text
Images - like the little flat illustration on the right - are able to catch our notice easily and readers are immediately drawn to them. The human brain is able to recognize a familiar object within 100 milliseconds, so when we see a picture, we are quick to analyze it. 👀
But enough about our (pretty) header. Underneath we wrote two sentence about what can be found here. Two sentences are enough to inform the users if they’re on the right page.
And now we’re using some fun macros to point out our content. But before we’re taking a look into the macro: Did you notice the heading? With the little sentence “Explore the Knowledge Base” we not only invited and encouraged our visitor but also urged the user to do some thing. A very simply way of telling your users that they’re welcome and that they can be exploratory.
Now let’s talk about our first macro: “Labels List”.
A user needs to easily navigate and with this handy list he can not only find the things he is looking for easily but also gets an overview of the included topics.
Okay, but maybe our user is not looking for any help on a specific topic but rather for a collection of information. 💡
For this I included tiles that will draw the attention to bigger resources - in this case a beginners guide (helpful for on boarding new employees) and an exam preparation course (great for training).
Both held links that will direct the user to new landing pages or new content.
For creating such tiles you can either include an image and than put link behind it or use an app. I’ve used the app Aura to create these two teasers.
Another important thing about an internal knowledge base is to include the newest resources and updates. This can be easily done by using the ‘Blogpost’ macro. Another way to highlight content in your knowledge base is to introduce the category “Popular Articles”. ⭐
Use Confluence Analytics (if you’re are on a Premium or Enterprise plan) or find your popular content either by page likes or internal surveys. Label those pages (for example with the label “popular-knowledge-article”) and use the macro “Content by Label” to insert valuable pages.
Last but not least: Don’t let your users alone. Make sure to let them know where to get help if they have questions or problems. 💬
Also: Link/Pin other helpful resources. Include links to trustworthy external documentation such as the Atlassian documentation or the documentation of an app vendor.
That’s a wrap! If you made it this far: Thank you for reading! I hope you found this post inspiring or informative.
If you would like to see another landing page, leave a comment so I can make sure to start a new blogpost. If you like Confluence and Jira tips you can follow me here.
Thanks so much and let me know what you think about this article.
Svenja
Svenja Lorenzen
IT-Consultant
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Lüneburg
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