We're going to cover two steps:

• Add your email addresses
• Use filters to separate tickets

Add your email addresses

Let's say you'd like to receive emails to two addresses: support@companya.com and support@companyb.com. You'll need to add them in the  Settings > TICKETS > Mailboxes page and ensure that forwarding is configured properly. See the Adding email accounts and setting up email forwarding article for more details on adding email addresses.

Here is how the Emails page should look after you're done:

Use filters to separate tickets

• Go to   Tickets
• Click the ⋮  icon on the right of Tickets and select Add filter
• Type in your search query and hit Enter

Select who you want this filter to be available to. Everyone, a specific team, or you only. You can change this at any moment. Learn more about filters in Searching tickets and setting up filters article.

Tip: when a customer sends an email to support@companya.com and an agent replies, the reply is also sent from support@companya.com. Learn more: When I send an email using Helprace, who is it 'From'?

The purpose of a knowledge base is to allow site visitors to help themselves instead of contacting support. If your links are poorly laid out in your library, they will fail to attract a click-through rate despite gaining a lot of impressions.

In this article we are going to share a few tips that on making your knowledge base more appealing to your end-user at first glance.

Make content easy to browse

Your site visitors are all different. Some prefer to search, others like to browse. However, we’ll all agree that most prefer to find what they’re looking for with a minimum amount of hassle.

That is why it’s imperative that your content is easy to search for, navigate and scan through at first glance. Here are some key tips to consider:

• Link your articles together in your Helprace as well as to your company website
• Create categories in the right order starting with most engaging material at the top
• Constantly update articles with new information and remove duplicates

Sometimes it’s helpful to start with a brainstorming session. Get a pen and paper and jot down ideas for most pressing articles. A good place to start is to look at the pain points of your customers. What types of tickets keep coming in? What types of questions are users asking in your community? This can help you get started.

As a next step, draw out lines to other sub-categories. Again, this depends on your company, user base and product offering. The rule of thumb however is to keep content categories simple and specific. Don’t worry about starting off with a small number of categories. You can always add additional categories and rearrange them. To learn more take a look at Adding categories to your knowledge base

Keep the important stuff at the top

Links that are easy to scan and understand will keep users in reading mode. That’s why it’s a good idea to put these articles at the top of your knowledge base. Think of easy-to read titles that jump out at the user. Include action words in your titles and consider phrasing them as questions.

There is no right or wrong way to title your articles, but here are some suggestions:

• How do I set up my profile?
• What is the return policy?
• How can I submit a complaint?

Try to keep track of comments and positive / negative votes on your articles. Articles with the most activity are getting a lot of hits and should be included at the top of your knowledge base.

Look at what your customers are asking

Your best content can only be determined when you know what type of questions your customers are asking.

An obvious place to start would be your ticket library. What are your customers asking most? Have you or your team members provided great solutions in the past? Don’t let these emails go to waste. Then, head over to your Helprace community. Look at questions asked, ideas suggested, problems raised and praise given by your users.

Helprace has a feature which allows end-users to rate knowledge base articles as “useful” and “not useful”. Based on this data, you can see which articles have the potential to help site visitors and which are just gathering dust, so to speak.

Format your articles properly

It’s estimated than the attention span of online users is averages around 10 seconds. There’s only 24 hours in the day but there’s cat videos to catch up on, movie releases to check out and then there’s work. So keep in mind that capturing your user’s attention is your primary goal and it all starts with how you structure your knowledge base.

• Order your links by difficulty. It’s a good idea to start off with short, generic phrases and get more specific down the list. This works not only for structuring articles but structuring your knowledge base links, too.
• Remember who you’re writing to and what their reading habits may be. For example, if you’re writing many technical articles with the same keywords, you may want to set up a specific tag structure and a corresponding search guide to help your users find what they're looking for.
• Create engaging content. When you’re finished setting up your content, give it a test-run. Ask others if they would read the whole piece or stop mid-way. Can you improve your content any?

For more information about formatting your knowledge base articles, take a look at Formatting knowledge base articles

Connect your articles with links and tags

Helprace allows you to keep content interconnected with tags. Since search strings and the Related Articles sidebar in your Helprace work off tags, it’s imperative to keep your tags organized and up-to-date. Properly tagged articles will also show up in your community and feedback widget as search suggestions.

Remember, you can always choose to keep certain articles Unpublished to hide them from public view. You can also create a private, staff-only knowledge base for internal use.

Revisit your knowledge base periodically

The work doesn’t end when you hit Upload!

It may seem obvious, but many articles I’ve come across do a lot of assuming that the end-user understands everything. Articles mentioning certain integrations don’t link supporting documentation. Other articles give instructions to “set up your profile” without proper, step by step instructions with screenshots. Create a process to re-visit your articles after a certain time and update them with relevant information.

As a parting note…

It might be tempting to take an article from your internal database and plop it right into your community for everyone to see, but don’t fall for this trap. Before you hit Upload, check the language, tone and length of your article. Finally, ask yourself the all-important question: Will your customer want to submit a request after reading this?

You’ve created some wonderful content, and can’t wait to publish your masterpieces for all to see. Before you do that however, it’s important to consider what type of audience you’re catering to and what their reading style is.

For example, you may be writing an in-depth technical article or a quick start guide that skims over the main functions of your product. No matter what your article is about, it demands a specific formatting style to get its point across effectively.

This post is going to tell you how to use formatting tools in Helprace (particularly the WYSIWYG toolbar) to help you make engaging, readable articles. When you’re done, you’ll be ready to publish articles that others will want to read.

Let's get started:

KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)

KISS can’t be repeated enough, because when it comes to web content, you can never be too simple.

One of the biggest changes writers have to make when transitioning for the web is learning how to write short, informative paragraphs without losing their punch. Your content can be great, but lose its appeal if formatted incorrectly and as a result can fail to attract a desired reader base.

After all, what's the use of great content that doesn’t get read? Can we even call this content great? I didn’t think so, either. The purpose of correct article formatting is to make your already good content even more engaging to your readers.

Have a punch line at the beginning and the end

This isn’t exactly a formatting tip, but it’s definitely worth mentioning.

I’ve heard it from instructors, co-workers and other mentors over the course of my professional career. Whether presenting a body of work, portfolio or just about any sort of presentation in front of a panel of investors the advice was the same. “Have a strong beginning and end”.

It’s not to say that the main body of your content isn’t important, but what will eventually stick to the reader is the message in the beginning and the end of your article. In your introduction, have a statement that will pique the interest of your reader and let them know what exactly your article hopes to achieve.

Your conclusion is just as important. Use this as an opportunity to give your reader a course of action:

• tell your readers what you want them to take away from your topic
• encourage users to read more by linking them to a different page, or
• encourage them to start a discussion.

Life on the web is always a bit more…bold

Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s get started with the two formatting options that everyone knows. Bold and Italic.

In print writing, bold is usually reserved for that rare case when you need to draw reader attention to an unfamiliar term that is expanded on, defined or referred to later in more detail. Italics are usually used in instances when text is externally quoted or an out-of-context text block needs to be separated physically from the body.

These rules don’t necessarily apply to web formatting. On the web, things are a little more laisezz-faire. Bold and italic functions should be used to draw attention to relevant words and phrases, highlighting important points that you want your users to take away at first glance.

Create buffers with subheads and horizontal bars

If you’re writing a long article, subheadings are your ticket towards reader engagement.

Readers will often skim articles for subheads and horizontal bars that physically separate your text, and at that point decide when / whether to dig in. This is particularly useful at capturing the attention of skimmers (those who are on the fence between scrolling down or hitting the dreaded back button.)

It’s up to you whether to capitalize the first letter of your heading or the first letter of every word. I personally think that capitalizing the first letter is enough as it makes the text easier to read.

Regardless of what you choose to do, consistency is key. So don’t use...

Initial Capitalization On Some Headings

And not on others.

Highlight and block quote

When laying out paragraphs, a good rule of thumb is to keep them under four sentences in length. When I approach a third sentence, I try to either come up with ways to wrap the paragraph up or introduce a way to space content out. Using highlights and block quotes can really add some much needed breaks while focusing your attention on important phrases, codes or terminology. They are also great ideas for adding a more subtle level of visual separation in your paragraphs that you can’t quite achieve using horizontal rules and subheadings. Like this. or this.

Divide up heavy concepts with bullets

Lists are a great way to divide up monotonous content. Readers love them as they draw the eye down and force people to read them all the way down.

For that reason bullets are proven to be effective in catching interest and helping users digest concepts easily. Lists are a great way to:

• keep the reader’s attention with you
• make your content look neat and professional
• add some structure to your ideas
• divide up lengthly paragraphs
• give room to expand on your ideas

Organize confusing data with tables and images

Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. Similarly, readers see tables as a satisfying way to consume information since tables present complex data in an understandable format.

The Helprace table editor gives you a wide array of options including cell, header and footer formatting as well as the ability to set table dimensions by clicking & dragging. Advanced options can be used to make your tables stand out even more in your articles.

Your Helprace User Portal is designed to be viewed on mobile devices as well as desktops. This means that your text and images are designed to wrap within the display of mobile screens. Although large images or graphs are automatically scaled down to 800px in width in the desktop version of your Helprace, large images or graphs with set widths will not scale down to screens of mobile devices.

Don’t forget to make the most of your visual real estate

Think of your Helprace knowledge base article as your very own piece of real estate. Make sure you use every nook and cranny of your article wisely. Some strategies to maximize the usability of your articles are:

• use language that’s objective, informative and not too jargon or marketing-filled.
• spice up your content with relevant graphics, tables and charts.
• ensure your paragraphs deal with one concrete, concise topic
• have a clear a punchline in the beginning and end of your article.

Follow these guidelines and improve engagement, increase readability and keep your content fresh for longer. Do you have additional ideas or formatting tips to keep readers coming back? Share them in the comment section below!