Lead a library overhaul

Addressing the top 70 most viewed QuickBooks Payroll articles by leading a tiger team.

Company

Intuit, QuickBooks Payroll Help

Team

@Me Content Designer
3 Digital Delivery Leaders
1 SEO Manager
2 Content Designers (Support)
11 Writers
1 Analytics Manager
6 Subject Matter Experts

Timeline

Oct 2019 to Jan 2020

Background

Over a span of more than 10 years, 2,500 pieces of QuickBooks Payroll help content were created—with no central content strategy. This decentralized way of creating content left customers searching for help frustrated and confused. Over a three month span, I worked as a cross-functional leader, addressing the content from a strategic perspective to begin to improve the performance and curation of the Payroll knowledge base.

Content Design principles

Aim for 6th grade reading level

Our customers are smart. But that doesn’t mean they're payroll or tax experts. A lot of current help content is overly complex and hovers around the 12th grade reading level. Aiming our reading level to a 5th to 8th grade gives our readers the best chance to understand the content on the page.

Future proof the content

Each year, content teams have to do a sweep of the Payroll content. Many of the articles give our users specific details that need to be updated regularly. To ensure our team can sweep efficiently, we created more evergreen content, and “snippet-ized” any line that will need to be changed.

Use customer-centric language

Historically, QuickBooks’ help content was written by subject matter experts who weren’t professional writers. This means that a lot of the content used terms, ideas, and framing devices that most people wouldn’t understand. So instead of writing headlines like “How will Federal banking holidays affect my direct deposit processing?” we went with “ How to adjust your payroll for holidays.”

A few articles from this project

Learnings

When we started this project, we’re missing huge data sets, and we couldn’t see important key performance indicators like escalation rates. or contact rates—important metrics to help judge the content’s effectiveness. As a result, we were unable to measure how many people were contacting us to get help with their payroll.

Kyle Stewart

Made with 💛 in my 🌁 living room with support from excellent friends.