Have you ever visited a website for the first time and got a little confused? Perhaps your mind came up with a couple of questions surrounding the brand’s origin or how to navigate making a purchase. The best thing to do is to locate the frequently asked questions, or FAQ, page. This is a resource page for your visitors filled with commonly asked questions and answers to those questions.
It’s an ideal time to create a FAQ page when you can no longer keep up with the number of recurring queries sent to your inbox or through social media. It’s useful and saves you time from answering the same questions over and over again. However, make sure you only have a FAQ page if you really need it. If you can answer all the questions there are about your eCommerce store throughout your website, strengthen your copy instead.
It’s essential that your FAQ page is useful to your customers and helps them navigate through your store and its content. Here are a few ways to do just that.
Use real questions
You want to make sure the questions featured on your frequently asked page are ones that visitors of your site are asking. It might look silly to have five to ten questions when you’re just starting out the page, but as long as they’re legitimate, they’re valid. To insert questions that don’t pertain to your audience or have no purpose means you’re taking up space and filling your website with thin content.
Hunt for the questions your audience wants answers to. Go through your emails with subscribers and find ones that keep popping up. Review your social media comments and interactions and find questions consumers have asked you on there. Dig through ratings and reviews of your products to see what people needed the help with most.
Don’t forget to use question and answer platforms like Reddit, Quora, and AnswerThePublic to find out what people want to know about your industry. If there are general questions in your niche you think would further help your customers, add it to your FAQ page.
Provide useful links
When someone is visiting your website for the first or even second time, they’re still learning how to navigate through it. It’s helpful when you’re answering questions that you always link to the pages you’re talking about. This improves the customer experience (CX) for your users and makes it easier for them to follow the sales process and make a purchase.
If you mention a certain web page, use hyperlinks so users can click through and increase engagement. It encourages visitors to learn more about your brand as well as explore your website in detail. The more informed and assured a consumer is about your brand, the more easily convinced they’ll be to buy.
Include links to your landing pages and product pages if there’s a suitable spot for them. Consumers expect your website to boast its products, but too much is overkill. Only link to other content on your website if it’s relevant otherwise it looks like all you’re doing is promoting rather than helping.
Include a call to action
Perhaps your frequently asked questions page isn’t the first thing you’d think of when trying to boost your online store’s ROI. But you’d be surprised by how much potential traffic you could drive to other parts of your website by adding a call to action (CTA) on your FAQ page.
Visitors aren’t going to take action unless you push them to. They’re already learning about your business because they’re on your frequent questions page, so why not encourage them to take further action to get to know your brand? There’s no shame in encouraging users to check out other parts of your website.
You can include your CTAs in your questions or leave them until the end of the page and insert buttons. Use actionable language like “Contact Us Now” or “Submit a Question.” Hulu does a fantastic job of using CTA buttons on their FAQ page:
Over to you
Your FAQ page can be one of the greatest resources for users visiting your online store. It provides access to useful information at the click of a button so you don’t have to respond to each query individually. It doesn’t have to be boring, bland, and downright useless. You can turn it into an opportunity to lead visitors to pages that boost your ROI, engagement, and traffic. If you’re able to create a frequently asked questions page that properly answers your audience’s questions and takes them to more useful content, you’re on the way to building your business.