One of the main reasons prospective customers come to your website is to find answers to their questions. If they find answers they are more likely to take the next step; filling out a contact form, scheduling an appointment, or even selecting an item to buy.

So is your website ready to answer the most frequently asked questions? In almost every product category, a good FAQ section on your website will help make customers more comfortable with your skill, product, or service.

What type of questions should you include in your FAQ section?

A good page will cover a wide range of frequently asked questions including things like how to use or buy your product. Who you are and what makes you uniquely qualified to answer their questions. Even though the answers to these questions may be fairly consistent over time, it makes sense to refresh the page, making small updates and adding a new question or two from time to time.

How to Buy Your Product

The average homeowner doesn’t buy new siding for their home or a new roof regularly. Their lack of knowledge about the buying process likely makes them feel uncomfortable and possibly a little defensive. You can defuse the situation by sharing the “rules of the game.”

Simple FAQs help customers by telling them what to expect. As a result, they come into the sales conversations more comfortable and more prepared to buy. If you have a number of questions on related topics, consider creating a buyer’s guide or a check list which outlines things people should know before they buy. Keep this information based, not sales oriented and offer it as a download from your website, because only people thinking about replacing their floor are going to download a Hardwood Flooring Guide. Capturing their contact information will help you grow your list of new qualified prospects.

Who are you

People will buy from someone they trust. FAQ’s help build trust as you use your website to introduce your employees that a customer is likely to interact with. Putting a face to a voice over the phone humanizes the conversation. Your website can help sales people move through the awkward part of a sales conversation when you introduce them with a short bio, photo, or maybe even a video.

What other people say

Beyond what you say about yourself, potential customers have questions about what other people think about you. So don’t skip the review section of your website and make sure there are links to external reviews on sites like Houzz, Angie’s List, Yelp, Facebook, and Google My Business.

SEO value of FAQ’s

In addition to answering questions customers are likely to have when they visit your website, a frequently asked question section on your website has tremendous SEO value. The questions and your answer should be filled (but not stuffed) with common key word to improve your rankings and increase the likelihood that your website will show up in search results.

Your FAQ page will naturally link to blog posts and other pages within your website. Those internal links serve to increase time on the site as well as improve the authority of some of those other internal pages. And while you are linking to other pages, think about linking to case studies which show how you solved specific problems for other customers.

What should a FAQ page look like?

I don’t think there is one right answer to this question. It will depend on how many questions you are trying to answer on the page. For example Randall Beans has only 19 questions. The answers are short, 1 – 2 sentences each. So for them a simple list is best with the single most frequently asked question at the very top of the list.

When you have a much more robust FAQ section, dividing the questions into categories along with a search function at the very top makes more sense. Software companies like WhatsApp are more likely to have this type of complex FAQ section.

If your frequently asked questions require longer answers, taking an accordion approach, with text boxes that open and close, allows you to present a lot of information in a small space.  That is the approach Microsoft took on their page.

The best layout is the one which makes it easy for visitors to find the answers they are looking for.

Add a FAQ section to your website

If you would like to add questions and answers to your WordPress site, or update the layout of your existing page, we can help. Drop us a note to get started.