Self-Service Website Construction: Build Your Site with Ease

Learn how you can build a customer self-service website to help customers solve an issue with minimal effort – and without interacting with support agents.

According to Zendesk, nearly 90% of customers would switch to a competitor if it could provide a better customer experience. To meet these growing demands, businesses are turning to self-service website construction – a solution that provides intuitive, 24/7 support.

Customer self-service portals enable customers to solve an issue with minimal effort – and without interacting with a customer service agent. This leads to a seamless experience and ultimately happy customers.

By building a self-service website with an easy-to-use, no-code tool, you can create a fully functional platform that meets your customers’ expectations without needing advanced technical skills. Whether it’s a knowledge base, FAQ section or personalized account management system, the right tools make construction simple and efficient.

What is a customer self-service website?

A customer self-service website is an online platform that helps customers find instant answers to their questions, manage personal information, and track transactions – all without contacting support. These websites are designed to give users the power to solve issues on their own.

By building a self-service website, businesses can cut down on customer service times, improve problem-solving for customers and reduce frustration. However, self-service websites don’t replace your support team – they work alongside them. While the website handles repetitive tasks, your team can focus on more complex queries.

The best part? These websites are fully customizable. You can tailor features to fit your products, services and customer needs.

Must-have features of a customer self-service website

A well-built customer self-service website provides a unified and intuitive way for customers to access information about your company via communities, FAQs, a knowledge base and more. 

Community forum

A community forum enables customers to ask and answer questions, get peer to peer support and learn from real-time interactions. Once users join, they can share experiences, request technical support or get guidance from experts.

When building a community forum, focus on:

• User-friendly design: Ensure users can navigate, post and search easily.
• Searchable archives: Allow users to revisit past conversations for quicker solutions.
• Engagement features: Include upvotes, comments and tagging to encourage participation.

Knowledge base

A knowledge base is a collection of information that helps customers find solutions to problems they may run into while using your product. 

It contains different types of content, like articles, how-to guides, frequently asked questions (FAQs), how-to-videos or guides related to your company's products. 

When building a knowledge base, prioritize:

• Clarity and organization: Use categories and tags to help users find information quickly.
• Multiple content formats: Combine text, images and videos for better understanding.
• Search functionality: Include a search bar that helps users locate relevant content fast.

FAQ Pages

Having an up-to-date FAQ page in place plays a major role in improving customer satisfaction and is an important feature of any customer self-service website. 

To build effective FAQs:

• Identify key questions: Gather input from customer feedback and support interactions.
• Keep it concise: Provide direct answers without unnecessary detail.
• Make it navigable: Use headings, categories and links to guide users effortlessly.

Chatbots

Chatbots are your virtual assistants, offering instant help to customers at any time. They can recommend knowledge base articles, direct users to specific pages or walk them through simple processes.

When building chatbot functionality, ensure:

• Personalization: Include options for tailored responses based on user input.
• 24/7 availability: Make sure chatbots provide round-the-clock support.
• Seamless escalation: Allow easy handoff to a support agent when necessary.

The benefits of an effective customer self-service website

Creating an effective customer self-service website isn’t just about providing answers – it’s about improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs and supporting your team.

Let’s explore the key benefits your business can enjoy when you use a no-code community website builder to create a powerful self-service platform.

Provide 24/7 customer service support

Customers expect help anytime they need it, but it’s not practical for human support teams to be available around the clock. While 83% of CX professionals surveyed by HubSpot acknowledge the shift toward self-service, only 34% of companies currently offer 24/7 support or self-service options.

With customer self-service tools like a detailed knowledge base and clear FAQs, customers can find accurate answers at any hour. By building a website with these features, you ensure their needs are met—even outside of your team's working hours.

Reduce support costs

A well-built self-service website empowers customers to find answers with minimal effort, which translates into cost savings for your business. Studies show that improving self-service support can:

• Decrease 40% of repeat calls
• Reduce 50% of escalations
• Cut 54% of channel switching

On top of that, 47% of businesses reported an increase in sales after implementing self-service – proving that it can enhance customer satisfaction while driving revenue growth. 

By leveraging a web app builder like Bettermode, you can create scalable, easy-to-manage self-service platforms while taking advantage of customizable templates designed for various use cases.

Increase ticket deflection

Ticket deflection is when a customer is redirected to a self-service customer portal to find the information they're looking for – instead of creating a ticket. 

This helps decrease the number of service requests your support team receives and can prevent hundreds of tickets from being in the pipeline. Likewise, it can also stop your sales reps from suffering burnout.

FAQs are particularly effective for deflecting tickets. Common questions, like troubleshooting tips or product usage details, can be addressed directly on your site, preventing unnecessary support tickets and saving your team time.

Build a customer community

Community forums provide a great way for your customers to interact with each other about your products. They foster friendships between members – while strengthening their connection to your brand and improving customer loyalty.

Plus, online community forums provide valuable insights for your business. By monitoring discussions, you can gather direct feedback, spot trends and better understand customer needs.

How to build an effective customer self-service website

Since customer self-service websites provide customers with the tools they need to find answers on their own, they're an essential asset for every business.

However, data shows that only 15% of customers are satisfied with the self-service channels brands provide. This indicates that many businesses struggle to create a customer self-service solution that meets their expectations.

With a platform such as Bettermode, you can easily build a robust customer self-service website that includes community forums, knowledge bases, resource centers and FAQs in one centralized online space.

We've created a step-by-step process to help you build an effective customer self-service website that'll meet customer expectations. 

Understand your customers' needs  

Before building your self-service website, it’s essential to understand what your customers need. Research is key. By understanding your customers’ pain points and how they interact with your products, you can create content that addresses their questions effectively – without the need for human interaction.

You can gather insights from sources like your company's service desk, analytics and social media mentions. This data will guide you in crafting content that solves your customers’ problems.

Define your team's roles

Building a self-service website requires teamwork. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member involved in the project. Tasks could include:

• Outlining the portal content
• Organizing resource categories
• Writing relevant copy
• Choosing design elements
• Testing for usability
• Providing training for customers

By assigning these roles early on, you ensure the entire process runs smoothly and the project is completed on time.

Create a seamless user experience

User experience is everything when it comes to self-service websites. A poor experience can lead to frustration and customers abandoning the portal.

Advanced search capabilities

Customers usually have trouble finding answers on company websites, so ensuring that your portal has advanced search features is critical. Implement predictive search, autosuggest, granular filters and recommendations to provide accurate results and ensure customers find what they need.

Organize resources into categories

Organize your resources into clear, easy-to-navigate categories. This helps customers quickly browse through the information and reduces confusion. It also prevents your website from becoming cluttered, offering a cleaner, more pleasant experience.

Keep the design simple

A key factor in making your customer self-service website UX seamless is keeping your design straightforward. Use simple colors, fonts and icons that are easy to understand. This ensures a smooth and frictionless experience for customers. At the same time, the design elements you choose should reflect your company's branding.

Make your portal mobile-friendly

More customers are accessing self-service portals via mobile devices, so your website must be mobile-responsive. A mobile-responsive site helps customers access support on the go, improving their experience and reducing frustration.

Run an early adopter initiative 

Before launching your self-service website to the public, invite a small group of customers to test it out. This early adopter initiative lets you gather feedback on what works well and what needs improvement.

These early users can provide valuable insights, which you can incorporate to refine the website before the official launch. Plus, these customers are likely to become loyal users of your self-service platform.

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)

After launching your self-service website, it’s essential to monitor KPIs to evaluate its performance. Tracking these metrics will help you understand how well your site is performing and whether your customers are satisfied. Some KPIs to monitor include:

• Ticket volume
• Deflection rate 
• Self-service success rat
• Page views and duration 
• Page interaction

If your portal is performing well, keep following your customer self-service strategy. If not, adjust your approach based on the insights you gather.

4 best practices for building a stellar customer self-service website

To keep your customers satisfied, your self-service website must deliver a great experience every time they visit. Here are four best practices to ensure your site works effectively and meets their expectations:

Make the portal easy to find

For customers to use your self-service portal, they need to be able to find it easily. The simpler the access, the better the experience.

To make your portal easy to locate, ensure it’s visible on every page of your website. Here are some tips for placement:

• Prominent links: Place the link to your portal in the homepage drop-down menu.
• Footer access: Position the link in your website’s footer.

Encourage consumers to adopt self-service solutions

The success of your self-service portal depends on how well it's adopted by your customers. Keep in mind that using a portal can be intimidating or inconvenient for some, leading them to opt-out and head straight for your customer service team. 

To counter this, your customers must know how easy it is to use. Here are three tactics you can put into action to make that happen:

• Provide training and support: Help customers become familiar with the portal by offering helpful information, such as walkthrough videos. Keep communication channels open for personalized assistance.
• Showcase the benefits: Explain how the portal benefits them – quick access to information, reduced wait times and the ability to engage with your customer community.
• Promote your customer self-service options: Talk about your portal in newsletters, blog posts, social media and during self-service onboarding.

Update your self-service website regularly

Outdated self-service portals lead to frustrated and unhappy customers. Regular updates are necessary to keep content relevant and accurate.

Here’s how to stay on top of updates:

• Set a review schedule: Set timeframes for assessing whether any content is outdated or irrelevant.
• Types of updates: Some examples of updates include:some text
  • Adding new FAQs
  • Editing how-to articles when features change
  • Announcing and explaining new features
  • Notifying users about scheduled maintenance or terms and conditions changes

It’s also important to display a "last updated" date so customers know when the content was last refreshed.

Highlight the most popular FAQs

Highlighting your most popular FAQs on your FAQ page helps customers find the answers quickly, improving their self-service experience and saving time.

Here’s how to feature the FAQs that matter most:

• Analyze frequently asked questions: Review which questions are asked the most, using data from customer service logs and portal usage.
• Feature top questions: Highlight the top 3-6 questions at the top of your FAQ page or in a special section midway down.

2 examples of customer self-service websites

When building a customer self-service website, it’s helpful to see how others have successfully created functional and user-friendly platforms. Let’s take a look at two examples, Protegrity and ConvertKit, both built using Bettermode's no-code tools.

Protegrity

Protegrity, a leader in data security, created the Shift Left Community to address the cybersecurity skills gap. This self-service platform provides developers and cybersecurity professionals with the tools, resources and knowledge to enhance secure coding and implement privacy practices efficiently.

Protegrity used Bettermode's key features to build its community:

• Design Studio for a customized look and feel
• Spaces and Collections to create a multi-tenant structure
• Single Sign-On (SSO) for seamless member access
• Salesforce Integration for synced data and CRM insights

Within four months, Protegrity launched a vibrant self-service portal supporting its global customer base. The community has been instrumental in bridging the gap between security experts and developers.

ConvertKit 

ConvertKit, a leading email marketing software for creators, established a thriving customer self-service portal that supports over 44,000 members. This platform connects creators, shares valuable resources and provides answers to common challenges.

ConvertKit used Bettermode's key features to build its community:

• Spaces and Groups: Allowed for intimate sub-communities like writers, YouTubers and podcasters.
• Help Forum: Enabled members to get answers from peers and experts.
• Reputation and Leaderboards: Gamified member participation to foster engagement.

‍In just one year, ConvertKit's customer support portal became a key asset, integrating value throughout the customer lifecycle. Creators not only learned and improved their skills but also contributed back to the community, ensuring its growth and sustainability.

Conclusion

A well-designed self-service website empowers customers to solve issues on their own, reducing support tickets and costs while building community.

Here’s how to get started:

• Focus on needs: Offer FAQs, guides and forums to address customer challenges.
• Keep it simple: Ensure an uncluttered design and mobile-friendly experience.
• Track progress: Monitor KPIs like engagement rate and ticket reductions.
• Use the right tools: Build without code using a user-friendly platform.

Bettermode makes it easy to create a powerful self-service website – no coding required.

The Saasplex template is perfect for building customer service management platforms, while the Cloud Project template excels in creating self-service knowledge bases. 

Both templates simplify self-service for SaaS, offering customization and scalability with no technical expertise required. Start your free trial today.

This article was originally published on January 20th, 2023, and was updated on November 19th, 2024.

FAQ

What is a self-service website?

A self-service website is a platform where customers can find answers, access resources and resolve issues on their own without needing direct help from support teams.

How to design a self-service portal?

Focus on your audience's needs, keep the interface simple and intuitive, provide clear navigation and include helpful resources like FAQs, guides and forums.

What are self-service-created sites?

These are websites built using tools that let you design and manage them without technical coding knowledge, often using drag-and-drop features.

What are the three types of self-service?

• Informational self-service: FAQs, guides and articles for quick answers.
• Interactive self-service: Tools like chatbots or forums for engagement.
• Transactional self-service: Features for completing actions like payments or bookings independently.

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