Introduction
A great FAQ page can have a positive impact on your entire customer journey.
That’s not an overstatement. Everyone from interested prospects to long-time customers can find significant value from your FAQ page, if you’re intentional about your design and creation process.
FAQ pages can range from standalone pages to full-blown help centers. Whichever approach you opt for, there are many benefits to an effective FAQ page:
- Increased sales and revenue.
- Improved customer experience.
- Decreased support workload.
- Increased traffic.
Increased sales and revenue
When a prospect is interested in your product, you want to make it easy for them to get the answers they need. And while you should try to address key objections on your product pages, you also don’t want to overwhelm visitors with walls of text.
That’s where your FAQ comes in.
It’s the perfect, scalable way to include additional frequently asked questions and to overcome objections to the sale.
Improved customer experience
Your customers want you to make things easy on them. If you’re not making things easy on them, you’re falling short of their expectations. You’re actually pushing them away.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to improve your customer experience. One of the most common frustrations for customers is when they can’t get answers to simple questions. A well-written FAQ page is a perfect solution to this customer pain point.
Decreased customer support workload
Did you know that 91 percent of customers would use an online help center if it was available to them? Answering frequently asked questions is a key piece of your help center and the key to a smooth self-service experience.
Every question you can answer through your FAQ page is one less customer support ticket created. This saves you money by helping you scale more cost-effectively. It also frees up your support team to focus on more complex issues, creating a better overall customer experience.
Increased traffic
A well-designed FAQ page can have significant SEO benefits.
It’s likely that your customers are using search engines like Google to find answers to their questions. If you create pages that clearly and concisely provide those answers, you’ll have a chance to rank in search results. You might even be able to snag the coveted Featured Snippet for key questions.
FAQ pages are also a great way to link to other pages across your site. Internal links help signal important pages to search engines, so the more links you can get to your core pages, the better.
Every page that ranks in search results means more traffic to your website.
What should be included on your FAQ page?
You might think you know what your customers’ common questions are. And maybe you’re right.
But if you’re not, your FAQ page is going to miss the mark. Rather than make that gamble, follow these best practices to make sure you’re answering the right questions on your FAQ page.
Consider including three types of questions on your FAQ page.
Three types of questions to answer
1. The questions your customers are actually asking. If you have customers, they’re asking questions. Don’t assume you know what they are. Look at your existing inboxes and data to understand what your customers’ questions truly are. Solve those problems with clear answers on your FAQ page.
2. Product and customer success questions. These are general questions related to your product. Answering them helps your customers be more successful.
- Say your product is an email marketing software and you sell three different packages. You might want to answer the question, “How do I know which package is right for me?”
- If you’re an ecommerce store selling children’s toys an example might be, “Where are your products made?”
3. General industry questions. These are typically broad industry-specific questions. If you sell eSignature software, you might answer the question, “Why do I need eSignature software?”
Those are the three types of questions you need to answer. But how do you find the specific questions you need to include?
Deciding which questions to answer
- Start with your customer and sales teams. No one knows your customers’ questions better than the teams providing customer service all day, every day. Check your customer support inbox or help desk to learn about common inquiries and issues. From there, talk to your sales team to understand your prospects’ most common questions and concerns before buying.
- Look at your reviews. Reviews are a gold mine of customer feedback. They’ll often clearly show where customers were disappointed or confused in their experience. You can head off future complaints by addressing those areas on your FAQ page.
- Scope out your competitors’ sites. While you should never copy from a competitor’s site, you can learn from them. If your competitors have FAQ pages, use them as sources of inspiration. Try to answer questions — especially product or industry questions — better than they do to improve your SEO.
- Use Google, Reddit, and Quora. These three sites are all very different, but they have a wealth of information on what your customers are searching for.
- Google’s Autosuggest and “People also ask”. Start typing in a search query related to your business or industry and Google will populate related searches. Answer applicable questions on your FAQ page.
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- Use Reddit. Reddit is the world’s largest forum and is home to thousands of communities. Find discussions related to your products and industry and you’ll have lots of inspiration for your FAQ page.
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- Use Quora. Hundreds of millions of people go to Quora every month for one reason: to ask questions. It can be a great tool to inform the language you use in your FAQ (e.g. do your customers say “digitally sign” or “electronically sign”?)
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8 tips for writing a great FAQ page
Your FAQ page should deliver your prospects and customers quick and easy answers to their questions. Following these tips will help you know that your FAQ page is effective and useful:
- Keep your whole audience in mind.
- Answer the questions clearly.
- Make it searchable and easy to navigate.
- Write like your customers talk.
- Optimize for your readers first, then search engines.
- Use visuals to illustrate.
- Track your FAQ page’s performance. Look at on-page analytics or a heatmap.
- Make it easy to contact support when needed.
1. Keep your whole audience in mind
Existing customers might be the most frequent visitors to your FAQ page, but they’re not alone. Prospects will also use your FAQ to find answers to their questions and to determine if they can trust you. When you’re writing your FAQ content, always keep both of these groups in mind. Include the common questions they’re both asking, and make sure your answers are tailored to where each group is in their customer journey.
2. Answer the questions clearly
The best way to make your FAQ page a source of frustration is to not answer your visitors’ questions. So don’t give vague or fluffy answers. Don’t disguise the truth or redirect them to other sources.
Optimize for clarity instead:
- Use a question and answer format.
- Be straightforward and concise. Don’t use 100 words when 10 will do.
- Try using the “Bottom Line Up Front” (or BLUF) method. This technique involves putting the most critical information for the reader to grasp front and center. Feel free to provide more context to an FAQ when needed, but don’t bury the answer. Start with what’s most important.
3. Make it searchable and easy to navigate
Having a robust FAQ is essential. But your website visitors don’t want to spend time digging through all of your frequently asked questions to find the one they’re concerned about.
Always include a search bar in your FAQ page or help center to make it easy for customers to find answers.
As you’re writing answers to your frequently asked questions, make sure you’re including keywords and phrases that will cause those pages to show up in relevant searches.
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4. Write like your customers talk
Your FAQ page exists to serve and help your customers. You’ll get more ROI for your hard work if you phrase your questions and answers in the way your customers talk.
First, always make sure you’re using the words and phrases that your customers use. If they call your product a “widget maker”, don’t call it a “gadget creator” in your FAQs. Using the wrong language will hurt your search performance and make it harder for your customers to find what they’re looking for.
You should also write your FAQ page from your customers’ point of view. Do this by using first-person language (I/we) in your questions:
🚫 Company-centered point of view: “How can you change your account info?”
✅ Customer-centered point of view: “How do I change my account info?”
5. Optimize for readers first, then search engines
A thorough FAQ page or help center can bring big SEO benefits. But if you treat SEO as the priority, you’ll risk making your FAQ page ineffective (and you might hurt your SEO results as well).
Search engines like content that is reader-friendly and helps visitors achieve their goals. So write for your readers first while also keeping SEO best practices for FAQ pages in mind.
You write for your readers first by doing all the things we’ve talked about already: using their language, being concise, and prioritizing clear answers to their questions.
6. Use visuals to illustrate
No one likes long paragraphs of text. We all tend to scan web pages when reading them, so design your page and content with this in mind.
Visuals are a great way to break up your answers and to make your FAQ content more interactive.
Scribes are the perfect example of an easy way to generate step-by-step guides which you can easily embed into your FAQ page or help center.
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7. Track your FAQ page’s performance
Treat your FAQ as an evolving thing. When you launch it, you won’t have everything perfect right away. And as your products and services change over time, you’ll need to regularly update and refine your FAQ content.
Tracking help center metrics like views and failed searches can help you understand where your FAQ page is falling short and how you can improve it
8. Make it easy to contact support when needed
Your FAQ page will never be able to answer every single question your website visitors can dream up.
So make it easy for visitors to escalate their questions when necessary. Enable them to easily submit a case, send your support team an email, or start a live chat conversation.
FAQ page examples
There are thousands of great (and not so great) examples of FAQ pages. Check out some of these examples for inspiration on how to write your own FAQ page.
Bon Bon Bon
This Detroit-based chocolate shop is an awesome example of an effective one-page FAQ. It’s totally on brand, written in clear language from a customer’s point of view, and includes an easy way to email their team if you can’t find what you’re looking for.
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Skullcandy
Skullcandy makes music accessories. They have a bold brand, and this comes across in how they’ve designed their FAQ page. There’s a strong mix of text and video content throughout their help center, ensuring it appeals to visitors of all kinds.
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Roll20
Gaming platform Roll20 uses a sidebar to help visitors navigate through their frequently asked questions. Their search bar is always available at the top of the page, but the sidebar makes for easy navigation throughout different sections.
They’re also a great example of how effective embedded Scribes can be on an FAQ page.
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If you’re looking for more inspiration, check out this article with fuller breakdowns of more FAQ page examples.
Get started writing your FAQ page
Creating an FAQ page doesn’t have to be hard.
Whether you choose to use a standalone page or a full help center, tools like Scribe can help you set up an FAQ page with specific, branded step-by-step guides. Support even the toughest query in seconds. Get started with Scribe for free today.
