You open Confluence or Jira, and it's just chaos. Information everywhere, navigation makes no sense, and honestly, the portals look bland. Plus, how many times have you seen tickets pile up because people can't find what they’re looking for?

If you've ever managed a Confluence or Jira portal, you've probably felt this pain. Most people are stuck running in circles instead of getting real work done. Those small frustrations aren't just annoying. They waste everyone's time, drain productivity, and gradually erode trust — both within your teams and with your customers.

But there’s good news. You can turn these cluttered, confusing portals into clear, intuitive spaces your teams will appreciate. Stick around, and we'll walk through practical ways to organize your sites, strengthen your branding, and boost usability. That way, your portals become helpful resources that your teams want to use.

Why UX-driven customization is no longer optional

The truth is, what was once "good enough" now falls short for all parties — employees, customers, and even the teams managing it all behind the scenes. Employees aren’t content to wrestle with clunky intranets anymore. They want easy-to-use, personalized experiences that make their jobs simpler, not harder. 

Your customers? They’re pretty much done with outdated self-service portals. They want answers fast, without needing a manual or a map to find them. Unfortunately, ignoring these shifts is getting costly. Here’s why:

• 64% of new hires bounce early because onboarding experiences are just that frustrating.
• 71% of consumers expect personalized experiences — so you can bet your employees are starting to feel the same.
• People waste 2 hours a day looking for documents, information, or people they need to do their jobs.

The message is clear: UX-driven Confluence customization isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a necessity if you want happy, productive teams and customers who stick around.

Refined turns chaos into clarity

Refined sits right on top of Atlassian, giving you the power to transform Confluence and Jira Service Management into polished, intuitive experiences without losing any of the functionality you rely on.

Think of it like this: Atlassian gives you the engine. Refined helps you design a vehicle that’s not just powerful, but easy to drive, easy to navigate, and tailored to the people who use it every day.

With Refined, you can finally close the gap between clunky out-of-the-box portals and the modern, user-friendly sites your teams (and your customers) expect. No complicated rebuilds. No trade-offs between beauty and performance. Just smarter, cleaner, more connected workspaces.

Wondering what that transformation looks like? Let’s start with Confluence.

What does transformation look like in Confluence?

Confluence as a branded, high-performing intranet

Do you ever view default Confluence sites as the digital equivalent of a junk drawer? The structure is unclear, the design is uninspiring, and finding the right page is a matter of trial and error. It’s easy to lose track of where things live or whether they’ve even been documented at all. New hires flounder. Teams get frustrated. Collaboration stalls before it ever really gets going.

Refined makes it easy to create a branded, high-performing intranet that feels like it belongs to your organization. You can build custom homepages, set up intuitive navigation menus, and deliver the right content to the right people with role-based visibility.

When your intranet is clean, organized, and looks and feels like your company, everything gets easier:

• New hires onboard faster.
• Teams find what they need without digging.
• Collaboration becomes second nature instead of a constant battle.

When you make your intranet clean, intuitive, and tailored to each team, people are happy to use it without being told. That makes it a stronger foundation for better collaboration and more efficient work.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can dive even deeper into intranet personalization.

Build engaging wikis that teams use

Wikis usually start strong. You have a few well-meaning contributors, some solid pages, maybe even a naming convention. Eventually, though, entropy creeps in. Pages pile up. Navigation breaks down. Content gets stale. And suddenly, no one knows what’s current, what’s accurate, or where to look first. Eventually, people just tune it out.

With Refined, you can create wiki spaces that are clean, visually engaging, and easy to navigate. Customize layouts, surface popular content, and organize pages into meaningful categories that help people find what they’re looking for.

When your wiki is well-organized and pleasant to use:

• Knowledge sharing becomes a habit, not a chore.
• Teams collaborate more naturally.
• Valuable information doesn’t get lost in the noise.

Wikis should be living, breathing tools for your teams, not cluttered archives. Refined helps you build engaging spaces where knowledge thrives and people want to contribute.

Take a look at our step-by-step guide to help you build a Confluence wiki. 

Streamline team workflows with Confluence templates

Every team’s got its way of doing things. Which sounds fine… until you realize every new project, doc, or update gets built from scratch. That means duplicated effort, inconsistent formats, and a whole lot of wasted time. It’s like trying to cook a team dinner when everyone’s using a different recipe and no one’s sharing ingredients.

Refined helps you bring structure inside your spaces, not just around them. By supporting pre-built templates across teams, you make it easier for everyone to get started fast and stay aligned. No more guessing. No more starting at a blank page.

When templates are baked into your intranet:

• Onboarding new hires gets quicker and smoother.
• Documentation stays consistent across departments.
• Teams spend less time formatting and more time doing real work.

Once your intranet is structured, the next step is optimizing what goes inside it. Templates give your teams a head start — helping them move faster, stay consistent, and focus on the work that matters.

Here are some ready-made Confluence and JSM landing page templates you can use right now.

Organize and elevate your documentation

Documentation should make things easier. But when it’s dumped into Confluence without any structure, it quickly becomes more of a burden than a benefit. You’ve got long pages, unclear categories, and a search function that’s more miss than hit. People end up creating duplicate content just to avoid the mess, or worse, give up and ask around instead.

Refined lets you bring order to the chaos. You can organize documentation into structured categories, use visual menus for easier navigation, and highlight key content with custom layouts. No more digging through endless pages to find the right guide.

When documentation is easy to access and easy to follow:

• Teams waste less time searching.
• Knowledge stays accurate and up-to-date.
• New contributors (and readers) can get up to speed faster.

Great documentation is more than just what you write — it’s how you present it. Refined makes sure your critical knowledge is always clear, accessible, and ready to support the work ahead.

We've put together a selection of Confluence documentation best practices consolidated over our years of experience.