Zendesk themes that actually work
Your help centre isn’t performing as well as it could
We see it constantly. Companies spending millions on their brand, building beautiful websites, then using Zendesk’s default theme and assuming it’s optimised. It isn’t.
Your help centre is often the first place frustrated customers land. If it’s slow or difficult to navigate, you’re making their day worse. That costs you money in tickets, damages your brand, and creates accessibility issues.
Even Zendesk’s own default theme can’t hit perfect Lighthouse scores:
Copenhagen - Zendesk’s default theme. Close, but not optimal.
This is a widespread problem
Even major tech companies and Zendesk themselves struggle to achieve optimal help centre performance:
Zendesk’s own help centre: 79 performance.
Dropbox: 59 performance, 77 accessibility.
Squarespace: 69 performance, 78 best practices.
These aren’t terrible scores. But they’re leaving performance on the table. And that has real consequences:
Accessibility gaps. Missing ARIA labels, broken keyboard navigation, poor colour contrast. You’re excluding customers and risking compliance issues.
Slower than necessary. Bloated JavaScript, unoptimised assets, render-blocking CSS. Your help centre is fundamentally text and search, but it’s loading like a complex web application.
Mobile experience suffers. Responsive doesn’t mean optimised. Most themes work on mobile, but they’re not fast or pleasant to use.
SEO penalties. Google cares about page speed and accessibility. Sub-optimal Lighthouse scores affect how your help articles rank.
All of this hurts deflection. When customers can’t find answers quickly, they submit tickets. Your agents get swamped. Your metrics suffer.
We rebuilt Bootstrap 5 for Zendesk
We took Bootstrap 5, stripped out everything Zendesk doesn’t need, optimised what remained, and built a proper theme framework.
The result: perfect Lighthouse scores across all metrics. Performance, accessibility, best practices, SEO. All 100.
This is what your help centre can achieve. When you get a perfect score, Chrome gives you fireworks in celebration.
What this actually means
Proper ARIA implementation. Screen readers work correctly. Keyboard navigation makes sense. Colour contrast passes WCAG AAA standards.
Mobile-first design. Not responsive as an afterthought. Built for mobile screens first, enhanced for desktop.
Optimised performance. Fast loading times even on poor connections. We’ve stripped out the bloat that makes most help centres sluggish.
Modern aesthetic. Bootstrap 5 is a solid foundation for matching your main website’s design. Your help centre can actually look like it belongs to your company.
SEO benefits. Google cares about page speed and accessibility. Perfect Lighthouse scores help your help articles rank properly.
What we offer
Pre-built themes
Ready to deploy. Choose a theme from our catalogue, install it, done. Single-use licence, no ongoing support or updates.
Custom theme development
We take one of our themes and customise it to match your brand. Colours, fonts, layout tweaks. Ongoing updates to the base theme engine included.
Enterprise solutions
Multi-brand setups, major customisations, bespoke features. Get in touch for a quote.
Part of our Zendesk services
If you’re already working with us on Zendesk integrations, migrations, or custom applications, theme development is now included. Your help centre should match your brand and actually work properly.
There’s a better way
Your help centre is probably leaving performance on the table right now. Slower loading times increase bounce rates. Accessibility gaps exclude customers. Sub-optimal scores affect SEO. Mobile experience could be faster.
You can fix this. Perfect Lighthouse scores aren’t just possible, they’re achievable.
Here’s the challenge
Open an incognito Chrome tab, open the element inspector, generate a Lighthouse report for desktop and another for mobile. Less than perfect? That’s okay! Get in touch with us today.
Deltastring: Zendesk theme specialists. Modern, accessible, performant help centres that don’t make your customers want to cry.