Answering frequently asked questions can help you convert more website visitors into paying customers. However, your FAQ page should be done right. It should meet the needs of your audience, which means developing a strategy that ensures you understand the types of questions your customers might ask.
Identifying the right questions and writing clear answers are crucial components of any FAQ page. Here's how you can create an FAQ page that educates, informs, and converts:
1. Establish the goal of your FAQ page
Before you create an FAQ page, you should define your goals and understand how this particular web page can support your overall business objectives. The main goal of any FAQ page is to provide general information about your products and services.
You can also have it help troubleshoot common issues and address FAQs about certain policies. Of course, the more comprehensive your FAQ page, the better because it ensures you can answer as many commonly asked questions as possible.
2. Identify frequently asked questions
You should never assume you know the most frequently asked questions customers have about your products, services, or policies. Looking at FAQ page examples can help you determine the types of questions customers have, but you should identify your own FAQs based on questions customers have actually asked.
You can talk to your customer service team to determine the most frequently asked questions. If they've answered the question enough, they'll remember it. However, you can also sort through support tickets and identify common questions or themes.
At the same time, some FAQs are a matter of common sense. For most e-commerce businesses, customers want to know about shipping costs and time. However, product-related questions will vary, so you'll need to determine your own unique FAQs.
If you find a lot of FAQs or want your FAQ page to be as comprehensive as possible, you can create categories. You'll probably have many product and service questions, shipping questions, sizing questions, and so forth. Of course, just like the actual questions, the question categories will vary by business.
3. Determine the page structure
A well-organized FAQ page has structure. Your FAQ page should have an information hierarchy that makes sense. You can review FAQ page templates or create your own for different question categories or products, depending on the layout of your website.
Your FAQ page can be a single page, but larger companies with more product and service offerings tend to have multiple FAQ pages categorized by common themes like products, services, policies, customer service, and so forth. This is why it's important to identify the questions your customers need answers to; you need to know how to structure the page and if you'll need to use more than one FAQ page template.
Again, you can look at FAQ page examples to determine the overall structure, but your page should be unique and consistent with your website design and branding.
4. Design and QA the page
FAQ page design is just as important as the questions and answers. An effective layout can improve the user experience and make website visitors more likely to actually use the page.
A good FAQ page has a clear and organized structure with headings, subheadings, and categories to help visitors navigate the page to find the exact information they're looking for. You can use expandable sections to keep the page short and avoid overwhelming the visitor with too much information at once, making it easier to scan and scroll.
In addition, whether you're using an FAQ page template or creating it from scratch, you should maintain consistent formatting, which means headings should be the same size as other headings with consistent use of bullet points, spacing, and alignment.
Your FAQ page should also include engaging visual elements that make it more visually appealing and can help customers visually identify questions and answers.
At the same time, your FAQ page should use a responsive web design that's readable and loads quickly on various screen sizes and devices to provide a seamless user experience. To ensure readability, you should test the page on different common devices and screen sizes.
5. Write digestible and detailed answers
FAQ page answers should be concise and detailed yet digestible. Your answers should be straightforward to make it as easy as possible for visitors to understand the information. Avoiding long explanations will prevent confusion.
Being as clear as possible will enhance the user experience because it makes it easier for them to comprehend the information on the page, reducing frustration they may already feel, depending on the reason why they're on your FAQ page.
Before you start writing your answers, you should fully understand the question by paying attention to the different inquiries within the same category. After you're done writing, reread the question and answer to ensure you've met the user's needs.
In addition, your answers must be accurate with up-to-date information. If anything about your business has recently changed, make sure to address it in the answer. For instance, if you've recently changed shipping costs or times, give your customers the most up-to-date information possible to avoid misleading them.
Unfortunately, sometimes the answer to a question only brings more questions. Try anticipating your customers' follow-up questions and offer the next steps or additional resources to help them if the FAQ page doesn't.
6. Publish the page and track performance
When your FAQ page is ready and you've reviewed it to avoid errors, you can publish it to your website. This page should be easy to find, so once it's published, add it to your website navigation or footer. Then, you can begin measuring its performance.
You can measure website traffic to get an idea of how many visitors review your FAQ page and the different paths they take throughout the website with the page as a touchpoint.
If your FAQ page is part of a conversion funnel, you can track the conversion rates of users who visit the page and monitor the number of visitors who completed desired actions like contacting you, making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, and so forth.
You can also ask customers directly how they feel about your FAQ page. Consider sending a customer survey to get feedback from the people who actually use the page.
You can ask them about their experience, if they have suggestions for questions, and whether the FAQ page helped them. Then, with this information, you can update your FAQ page to ensure it provides a good user experience.
7. Update your FAQs as needed
You should regularly update your FAQ page as your business grows or changes. If you add a new product to your website, you should update the FAQs to reflect product-specific questions and answers.
Or, if you've recently changed shipping carriers and your shipping times are different, you should inform your customers and update this information on your FAQ page and throughout your website.
Some situations when you should update your FAQs include:
- Updating new products or services
- Changing policies or terms
- New commonly asked customer service questions
- After requesting user feedback
- If you find an error
- Optimizing for user experience
