The goal of this project was to create a Help Center for Xiaomi's website (Spain), gathering all items related to support, such as search box, chat, contact, frequently asked questions (FAQ), technical support, and user manuals, enabling users to easily find the solution to any problem.
Launch ProjectSecondary research, Benchmarking, User research
Challenge definition, Insights
Moodboard, Wireframe
Prototyping
In the secondary research, it was found that Xiaomi's website (Spain), unlike some competitors such as Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, doesn't have a Help Center. A fact that upsets the brand's users when they need to solve a problem concerning a purchase or a product.
There isn't a support tab on the top menu nor a floating chat button. On the footer, there is a reference to support, but without a link to a Help Center page. There is only a list of links placed in a confusing way, such as two FAQ links, one "Shipping" link and another for "Payment Methods". To access the "chat", it is necessary to have an account on the company's website, which means another step for the user in an attempt to get help.
To better understand Xiaomi's consumers, a survey was conducted to analyze their experience concerning the brand's support service. The survey was posted on Xiaomi's Spanish consumer groups on Facebook and also on Xiaomi's Spanish forum.
25.6% of the 82 participants in the survey said they have used Xiaomi's support service, with most of them, 71.4% were related to technical support. And of those who used the support service, 66.7% did it using the "Chat" on the website and 42.9% by email.
The low number of participants who used the FAQ (9.5%) and Product Manual (19%), reflects the lack of organization of these items on the brand's current website.
As shown in "Secondary Research", there isn't a specific area of customer support in Xiaomi's website (Spain), different from its competitors, making it difficult for the users to find solutions to their problems by themselves.
With this in mind, an item "Centro de Ayuda" (Help Center) was created in the top menu, to simplify the user's search for the support area. The Help Center has a dynamic search field and the product manuals are organized by categories. The breadcrumb, the FAQ area, and a floating chat button have also been added.
One of the purposes of this project is to satisfy a principle of Jacob Nielsen's Heuristics, "Help and documentation", which aims to keep items of assistance to certain actions within the reach of the user, such as the FAQ.
Just above the search box, there is the "breadcrumb", which satisfies another principle of Nielsen's Heuristics, the "Recognize instead of remembering" where "the user is under no obligation to relearn the path taken to reach a certain section or an interface page."
This project was a good opportunity to learn how to structure a Help Center page and learn more about Jakob Nielsen's heuristics. It was possible to use these learnings to create a Help Center page focused on concentrate all the help items needed so that users can search for solutions on their own, and if they can't find it, they can contact the company.
