FAQ (Frequently Answered Questions) pages are one of the most underutilized pages. For many businesses, it’s a mere afterthought and many others don’t have even have one.
In short, a FAQ page is where you address common concerns or questions that your customers may be having. It deals with the nitty-gritty relating to your product or service. Depending on your business, common questions may include: What is the cost of shipping? What’s your privacy policy? How can I track my order? Can your solution integrate with [insert name]?
If used strategically and created correctly, with thought and care, a FAQ page can be a powerful addition to your website. FAQ pages provide needed SEO juice, reduce customer support queries, assist customers in their purchase journey and alleviate purchase anxiety, to name but a few benefits. Here are 8 reasons your small business needs a FAQ page.
1. Saves You Time and Resources
If you find that you’re always receiving the same question from different customers, perhaps it’s time to consider creating a FAQ page for this information?
Not only will you help your customers by providing this information where it’s accessible, but you’ll be freeing up time for yourself to focus on other pressing issues. No longer will you have to individually respond to these requests. And should a customer contact you with such a FAQ, you can refer them to your FAQ page. This will also alleviate the burden placed on support staff who would have to respond to these requests.
2. Builds Trust and Relationships
A FAQ page is also a signal of transparency. It shows potential customers that you’re willing to address their concerns. This, in turn, builds trust, which is one of the most important building blocks in a solid relationship. Through building such trust you’re also aiding in creating repeat customers.
3. Establishes You as an Expert
FAQ’s also provide the perfect opportunity to showcase your product expertise and industry knowledge. This improves your credibility and brand perception and also aids in building trust.
4. Adds Needed SEO Juice
By including valuable content and relevant keywords FAQ’s can improve your search engine listings. FAQ’s then are not only valuable in answering customer questions, but they also provide needed SEO juice.
However, search engines prefer pages that contain one theme or keyword. So, if you’re creating one FAQ page -which will have many themes- the quality of the information becomes diluted. From an SEO point of view, this is not optimal. So Scrap that idea!
Rather consider creating individual dedicated pages for each specific answer/theme. This is easier for Google to crawl as it immediately establishes what the page is about. To do this create a landing page with the questions and then hyperlink to the answer on a separate page. Do not write out lengthy answers to the questions all on one page!
Having separately optimized pages is more search engine friendly. Your chances of visitors finding you in search engines is higher, even when they are searching for answers related to your industry and not your specific brand.
5. Improves Your Site Navigation
Hyperlinking can also form an important part of your site navigation strategy. Provide hyperlinks to relevant products, services or other pages. In doing this you re-direct consumers to solutions that have relevance to their questions. It also presents opportunities for further engagement on your site and the potential for a sale.
6. Presents an Opportunity for Making a Sale
FAQ’s present extra opportunities to make a sale. Once consumers have discovered your site, whether it be by accident or via search engines, why not add hyperlinks to pages and information? This encourages them to take further action.
After all, this is what you want to do every time someone lands on your site. FAQ pages provide you with this opportunity, so use it! Give customers a choice about what action to take rather than leaving it up to chance and hoping they will spend time searching your website. Link to your services, products, sign-up and about page. If the link is relevant, include it!
7. Gathers Key Customer Insights
Analytics are essential for any business. Through copying and pasting a Google Analytics code in the header of your site, you’re also able to gather key insights on customers. Insights include demographics, country of origin, time spent on the page etc. Your FAQ page presents an opportunity to analyze such analytics. Through this analysis, you can decide what relevant adjustments to make.
For example, if you bounce rate is high, perhaps customers found the page irrelevant or perhaps they got the answer they wanted and then left? You can reduce such bounce rates, by actually hyperlinking to other relevant information and guiding them on their purchase journey.
8. Aids Customers on Their Purchase Journey
By using a FAQ page right, consumers can also benefit by alleviating certain purchase anxieties. For example, a potential customer might be considering your product, but want’s clarification on certain aspects before purchasing it. Questions they might include:
- Can it integrate [insert business/product] with [insert business/product]?
- Do I have to provide my credit card details for the free trial?
Often they will search Google for such answers. If the answer is not immediately available this might deter potential customers, resulting in a lost sale. People are lazier than you think. They want answers and they want answers now!
So make it easy for them, particularly if you notice an influx of e-mails relating to a certain question. Make answers accessible. Do this and you reduce purchase anxiety and improve the chances of a sale!
Summary
Ultimately, if created correctly, FAQ pages can be extremely effective. Not only will you free up time and resources, but you will build trust, establish yourself as an expert, build relationships, improve your SEO and site navigation, provide extra opportunities for a sale, and perhaps, most importantly you will reduce any purchase anxiety. This all has the potential for more traffic and more sales for your business.
Ready to get started on creating your FAQ page? If you want a head start, consider using the following apps:
- Weebly: FAQ
- Shopify: Help Center