We are thinking about how to make IBM end users feel safe, secure and empowered through self-service IT support. End users don't want to learn how to use the support site, they just need to use it to resolve the issue at hand and move on. Displaying a large amount of information to end users on the support home page will overwhelm them and make them feel helpless. The user is more likely to try to get help by seeking out a more expensive assisted support channel for the company. Below are some of the best practices widely used in the industry… Make it easy to find and use: • Focus on simplicity of design for your self-help website • Understand the content used most often by visitors, position it clearly visible and you will get a big advantage in terms of screen space. • Make sure the knowledge in your self-help website is properly optimized with updated content for easy retrieval of information. • Focus on search engine optimization; ensure that support pages are indexed, tagged, or ranked, so that support content appears in these search results.• Offer product images or icons as a starting point of the service experience.• Direct users to better content. One option is to generate a list of frequently asked questions. A second way is to link to content that others have found useful at the bottom of individual help pages. Understanding User Problems Most end-user self-help goals can ultimately be distilled into two goals: • Find information. The end user is looking for a self-help service and wants to locate some information to solve a problem• Get help. The end user believes that the problem cannot be solved with self-service and seeks assistance from an experienced human. The contents of...... half of the document ...... an example of behavior modification is the priority offered on an assisted channel as telephone support to End Users who have already visited or attempted to resolve the problem. This may involve providing End Users with a reference number to enter via an automated interactive voice response system when they request support. These end users can then be moved to a special queue with higher priority instead of waiting in a general queue. Bottom line: Today's Web self-help content and services are continually improving. It may seem difficult to adopt all best practices at once. It often takes years to implement all the concepts and increase the level of maturity to provide an amazing experience to the end user. Researching and understanding the concepts is the first step in the journey of continuous improvement and delivery excellence in the self-help space.