FAQ is also known as Frequently Asked Questions, and they are starting to become the norm with most Aussie websites.
Websites FAQ is not just for aesthetics, but they play a vital marketing role for your business. They help answer customers questions very quickly, they are great for customer conversions, and they also instil trust and confidence in your company. All websites nowadays must have a FAQ section on most pages of their site.
Your FAQ can be a single section at the bottom of a particular page, or it can be a whole page with a detailed list of commonly asked questions relating to your business.
The Benefits of a Website FAQ’s page
1) Answer questions quickly
There are so many benefits to having an FAQ section on your website. They are a fantastic, self-serving tool to help with customer information. Many customers will go looking for an FAQ section to address any questions or concerns they have. You can quickly address questions like refund policies, delivery details, product returns, product instructions and how to reset my password in the FAQ section.
Once they read these FAQ’s, there is no need to call you and send an email inquiry. Just think of all those waste of time calls you used to get answering the same questions all the time. An FAQ section will free up your time so you can work on other things.
2) Increase in Lead Conversion
If the FAQ answers a particular question, the potential customer will be more inclined to buy from the site if they have answers at their fingertips. It’s not surprising that customers leave the site if they can’t find solutions to their questions. If you can provide this with certainty and authority – you’ll clinch the deal, sale or inquiry.
Lets’ say they had a query about the delivery times of a product; if the FAQ’s gave them the answer they wanted, this is a huge conversion factor.
3) Ease the Customer Experience
Most new visitors or customers to your website will go to the FAQ section if they don’t know your policies, procedures or business processes. An FAQ section guides them through all these questions and quickly enhances the whole experience. A happy new customer who trusts your site will be more inclined to make that purchase!
Hopping Mad Designs Tip: make sure they can easily find your FAQ section, and it’s not hidden somewhere down the bottom of the page.
4) FAQ’s help with your SEO and Google rankings.
Adding FAQ’s to each main page of your site will help with your online rankings. Adding FAQ’s may result in rich snippet displays on Google, which means your website will have more real estate on Google. As of March 21, Google likes well written FAQ’s and will display these under your website.
Also, detailed answers can address long-tail keyword rankings, which can help to rank more keywords. It’s a win-win!
Hopping Mad Designs Tip: Try and be as detailed as possible in your answers. The more information you give the customer, the more likely they’ll buy from you.
5) Helps improve site structure and navigation
Add an FAQ into the main navigation at the top of the website will increase customers’ chances of clicking on them. A detailed FAQ page ( like our Hopping Mad Designs FAQ ) can also direct users to other pages throughout the site via internal linking. It’s a nifty way to drive traffic to specific high-value pages on the site. Internal linking is great for SEO, as it allows Google to crawl your site easily.
Check out the FAQ page on our Hopping Mad Designs website. Simple, clean with lots of information.
6) You become the authority
If you want to become an authority in your industry niche, a detailed FAQ section sets you up for that. You can cover as many topics as you like with clear answers. Customers will appreciate the effort you have put into this.Check out The Smith Family’s FAQ page as well as a good example.
Hopping Mad Designs Tip: you can have as little or as much information as you like. Remember, the more effort you put into the FAQ section, the more information you give customers. Make sure you also update outdated information such as prices, shipping details, returns policy, guarantees, warranties etc.
7) Less Customer Service Calls
Think about all those pesky inquiries and questions that led to nothing. FAQ’s eliminates time wasters, tyre kickers, and headaches of repeating the same answers day after day.
Letting your customers work the answers out for themselves with a detailed FAQ section frees your time up. You may not even need that customer service call centre or someone monitoring the Live Chat that’s costing you a fortune. Think about all those dollars save!!
All this allows your customer service dept to focus on urgent and more pressing issues.
8) Be better than the competition
Want to know what makes you look more professional? It’s more informative and well-written content on your website. With an FAQ section, you can enhance and show off your authority and more profound knowledge in your field by writing the best FAQ set. It’s a great way to outdo the competitors who may have a poor FAQ section.
9) Helps reduce bounce rates
That’s right. Most people will quickly glance at the FAQ section for extra information. If they find something interesting, they’ll spend more time on your site reading. Google will notice the extra time and reduced bounce rates and start ranking this page higher – especially if you encourage users to click through to other pages within your site.
How to Create a User-Friendly FAQ Page
Creating a helpful FAQ page is relatively simple. You can have it accordion style where they click on the read more for the complete answer or display the entire FAQ’s.
There are two essential steps to FAQ creation. The first is to put all your questions down and answers down and get a web developer to add this to your site. Put some creative effort into this to encourage people to read them.
How to make an FAQ’s page
1) Determine a set of questions
You have to start by thinking about questions your customers would be asking. These are called lead generation questions.
Let’s take a closer look at this.
Say, for example, you are selling children’s clothing. An excellent example of a lead-generating question is: do you ship free of charge Sydney or Australia wide? The reason being, they would be more likely to buy from you if the answer is yes – you do provide free shipping. Another top question is: are you open 7 days? If you have bricks and mortar shop, customers will want to know if they can shop there on the weekend. Take it one step further and address questions about Christmas and public holiday opening hours.
Other vital areas in the FAQ’s that are great for customer conversion include:
i) details about your shipping policy
ii) policy during COVID-19
iii) faulty product returns policy
iv) parking availability outside your shop
v) security of product delivery
Hopping Mad Designs tip: make sure the FAQ’s are relevant to the specific page. Address all questions and answers related to the page topic and never deviate from this.
You may even like to keep these questions uniform through all FAQ sections with unique answers for each page.
Common categories include:
- Shipping and returns
- Sizing
- Products
- Payments
- Security
- Your account
- Promotions and discounts
- Delivery Details
- COVID
2) Prioritise the most popular questions
Frequently asked questions are named that for a reason. Keep the most popular questions at the top of the FAQ page—Google analytics will tell you your most popular questions.
Hopping Mad Designs Tip: keep updating these questions with relevant information as they will become outdated over time.
3) Include a search bar
Although we do not have it on our site, it’s not a bad idea to have a search bar to help customers find an answer quickly. Rather than scrolling through pages of information, a search bar quickly points users in the right direction and may help with Bounce Rates.
The last thing we want is for users to find the FAQ’s too cumbersome and lengthy that they leave the site altogether in frustration.
4) Keep it branded
Get your web designers to keep the FAQ consistent with your branding’s look and feel—no point in getting a great looking website only to spoil it with a poor customer experience.
5) Update regularly
Your business is evolving, so update your policies and procedures in the faqs. If a client goes there and reads something false, you lose so much credibility – especially shoppers who hate outdated returns and refunds policies!
Update your FAQ’s with separate COVID sections as you might have changed delivery and handling procedures.
6) Monitor and improve
We talked about how vital FAQ’s are in the whole customer experience. But, you have to be monitoring these and improving on them the entire time. They are not a set and forget. Look at revising them a couple of times a year as your business changes. Most websites we build at Hopping Mad Designs are on a WordPress platform, so updates to the FAQ section are relatively simple.
The takeout
Frequently Asked Question pages are a brilliant way to help customers and your business at the same time. Use them to your advantage as they are a valuable sales and marketing tool.
For more information on how to start your FAQ page, contact us anytime.