Definition: Frequently asked questions (FAQ) are collections of the most common questions and brief, easy-to-understand answers about a particular product, service, or topic. They can be presented in various formats, such as a webpage, a PDF file, or an interactive chatbot.
They serve as a self-service tool for customers to easily find the information they need without contacting customer support.
Benefits of having FAQ pages
- Saves customers’ time by letting them find the information they need without contacting customer support, which can take time due to delays.
- Establishes trust by showing customers that the company understands their pain points and is addressing them. It creates transparency about the company’s products/services.
- Reduces the cost of customer support by lowering the number of low-impact tickets in the support queue and making more room for important tickets.
- Improves website navigation by pointing users to the right pages on the website (specific blogs, features, tutorials…). This is done through internal linking.
- Improves SEO traffic by making the website more visible, making it easier for potential customers to find the website by searching for specific questions.
How to craft good FAQs
- Identify common questions customers are asking about the product/service across all channels and create lists of questions that need to be answered.
- Organize the FAQ into categories based on different topics, customer personas, and products/services.
- Answer questions clearly and concisely with only the important information that solves the problem and easy-to-understand language.
- Make answers easy to find by displaying the most common questions on top, internally linking them, and allowing customers to search for questions.
- Include media (images, GIFs, videos) that visually explain what the paragraphs are telling the customer to do.
- Update the FAQ regularly with new questions, remove outdated answers, and improve other aspects of the FAQ.
- Optimize for SEO by using relevant keywords in questions/answers as many customers search for answers for products/services on Google.
- Make the FAQ accessible on every website page and inside the product.
How do you structure frequently asked questions?
There are two ways to structure them:
- A list of questions one after another. This structure works for small FAQs.
- Categorized by topics where questions are grouped, each category has a heading that customers can click to access questions. This structure is best for big FAQs because they are easier to navigate.
Examples of well-designed and written FAQ pages
Airbnb has a search bar allowing users to search for specific questions with suggestions based on their profile, with every FAQ page acting as a mini blog.
YouTube’s FAQ is split into categories and sub-categories, leading to different branches of questions on separate pages.
WhatsApp has an easy navigation system of drop-down categories and questions that follows the user with questions being answered step-by-step.
Wikipedia has every important topic on each page linked to the appropriate page creating a web of pages.
