Targeting a specialized audience for Zendesk

Our site layout for Zendesk Newsroom was crafted to serve a specialized niche

Overview

Zendesk approached Message Lab with a familiar conundrum: their publishing properties had proliferated (an inactive blog here, a stream of press releases there) and needed to be centralized and reconceived with strategic purpose. Here's how we got there.

Visit Zendesk.com/Newsroom

A thorough discovery process

Our discovery process included questionnaires and live discussion sessions where the Message Lab team investigated the client's challenges and potential solutions. What we discovered was an opportunity to merge existing properties in a single location with a primary goal: to serve the needs of journalists who sought to cover Zendesk.

Targeting a niche

We generated sitemaps and content priority guides that determined categorical structure (Company, Culture, Community, CX innovations) that served our audience. Message Lab's staff of veteran journalists supplied firsthand knowledge about reporters' needs, which helped inform UX priorities (like including a contact button in the sticky nav where it would be omnipresent for interested parties).

User personas and journeys

Zendesk's Newsroom is a user-centric platform that caters specifically to the needs of journalists like "Emma Smith." We streamlined the site's navigation, ensuring that finding the latest press releases and high-resolution media assets is quick and intuitive.

Iterating to success

We worked with Zendesk's design system, Greenhouse, creating Figma layouts that gradually increased in fidelity from wireframes to high-fidelity designs. I presented our work to the client in a series of design rounds until we arrived at a final layout that balanced the client's business goals with user-centered design strategy.