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The FAQ of FAQ Pages

FAQ Page image on Keyboard

The expert secrets to optimizing your FAQ page traffic

Almost every website has an FAQ page, yours probably has one as well.

But have you ever taken a moment to consider how powerful it can be?
Did you ever try to optimize it so it will drive more sells and traction?

The following questions are maybe not so frequent but they will defiantly make you think about your FAQ page differently…

Why is an FAQ page so important?

The FAQ page is probably one of the most important touch points you have with a customer during their travel down the conversion funnel.

There’s no better indicator for a potential sale than an active user wanting to know more about your product or service.

Most FAQ visitors are looking for a specific answer or trying to get a general sense of the business. This is where you can win them over or lose them all at once.

Who should have an FAQ page?

Everyone. Especially if you are a providing a new type of service or product and/or if you have shipping involved.

It’s your opportunity to educate your visitors, highlight your strengths, set yourself apart from your competitors and set the right expectations.

What can I do to help someone visiting my FAQ page?

Great question. Sometimes users simply can’t find the answer they were looking for or not sure they understand what they read.

Why don’t you ask them how can you help them? After all they came to this page because they needed help with something…

The best way to do it is to install a help chat on the FAQ page that pops up an “how can I help you” question automatically after a certain time. (test and see what configuration works best for you but I would start with 10 seconds and gradually go up).

You can use tools like LiveChat, IntercomZopim (by ZenDesk), SalesIQ (by Zoho) etc.

And while you are at it, add it to the registration pages as well – It’s where you can prevent them from wondering around looking for answers or making the “wrong” decision.

Think of it as like going into a real store and have the sales person coming over to help you out.

Here’s an example from AnyClass, one of the companies I worked with and how we implemented it on the website:

Livechat on AnyClass FAQ page

 

 

You can gain a couple of things from putting such a system in place:

1. Insight – get to know what are your customers worried about? What do they usually ask? What wasn’t clear enough? Etc. – then you can use this insight to fix your FAQ, your messaging on other pages and much more.

Since you are already talking to them, it’s also a good opportunity to learn more about them – what drove them to look at your website, pick up on the language they’re using, what was their original pain-point, how did they hear about you etc.

If you are nice enough, you can create a great conversation out of a simple support chat.

If we take AnyClass as an example – by using a live chat system we realised a lot of people weren’t sure why they have to give out their credit card for a free trial.

So we addressed this issue both on the payment page and on email communications etc.:

 

adding msg to payment page on Anyclass

 

The results were amazing – we still got people asking about it but we were able to drive more people down the funnel without even opening the FAQ page.

We kept on improving this in different ways (where and how to display the message, the content of the message and its timing), but the bottom line is that without the live chat we wouldn’t have a clue as to why people abandon the registration process, even after reading the FAQs.

2. User engagement – When you are actively looking out for your users and show interest in their problems, you immediately score points for customer support and credibility.

These points will help you send the user further down the sales funnel (and maybe even prep them for an upsale). Why? Because you answered their questions, proved that your website is not a scam and is run by an actual human being and that they can always come here if they have any other questions. They now have someone they can count on!

In that case, should I have a link to the FAQ page on my cart/payment page?

Yes and no 🙂 – that’s a tricky one. A lot of users will be looking for answers just before they hit the “pay now” button, because they want to make sure they are making the right decision.

On the one hand you want them to be able to find these answers easily, but on the other hand you don’t want to let them out of the payment page (it’s the one page you want them to leave only by clicking submit).

A possible solution is a modal dialog based FAQ (also known as a pop-up or modal window) – it’s a window that is overlaid on the current screen. The only thing a user can do with it is to read it, interact with it or close it.
It keeps the sale workflow and prevents loosing customers for technical reasons (just make sure you place the modal dialog only on the relevant pages – sale/registration process ones).

Screen Shot 2016-02-26 at 9.29.32 pm

Modal Dialog Example from Gates Notes

 

Lets have another look at Anyclass as it is a great example. At the early days of launching we didn’t understand why people are completing step 1 and 2 of the registration but dropping out at the payment page. Obviously there are a lot of different reasons for that (see previous example as one of them), however we saw something interesting in our analytics: site visitors go from payment screen to FAQ and then start wondering around in the website and leave…

we tried tracing their steps ourselves and realised that they just couldn’t go back to the step they were on before… they looked at the FAQ and then checked where are the studios located and if they have enough classes to choose from and before they knew it they lost their way back to the payment page.
This is why we decided to implement the modal dial on ALL 3 pages that users were looking at before committing to join us. And it worked… abandonment rate was improved and less people were using the support chat for these type of questions.

If you don’t like modal dialogs, or not sure how to use them, that’s fine.
Just make sure getting back to the sales funnel is easy and intuitive and test the hell out of it. For example some users will hit the back button in order to go back to the last page they visited – Will it get them to the right stage in the process? Would they have to re-fill their delivery or payment details?

Check your analytics to see if they move on to other sections of the website from visiting your FAQs and try to think of clever ways to eliminate this so they can go back straight to the sales funnel instead of wondering around (like adding those details as another question).
The main point I’m trying to highlight here is that your FAQ page can look/behave different on specific pages if it serves the purpose and it should help you get sales instead of pushing them away.

What should be included in an FAQ page?

Your usual suspects – what is this service/product, how to use it, how do you get it, terms, shipping costs, delivery options etc.

But – don’t forget to add other call to actions like:

·      Introducing referral programs (e.g “Can I get a discount if I refer a friend?”)

·      Follow you on social networks and Email sign-ups (e.g “How can I stay up to date with X”?)

And add credibility by adding information like

·      Customer support (e.g “How do I contact you if I have a problem”?)

·      Product guarantee (e.g “Can I return the product if it doesn’t fit me”?)

What language is best to use?

Personally, I like the ones that sound like you are communicating with humans:

Format the questions as if you were the customer (e.g instead of “how to put a subscription on hold?” you can ask “How can I put my subscription on hold?”)

Ask questions that define the problem and not the topic (e.g instead of  “cancellation policy” you can ask “What if I want to cancel my subscription”?)

The most important thing is to keep it simple. Short, precise answers that your customers can understand are the best!

And don’t forget that like any other page on your website, this page represent your brand and image. The voice you chose to use in your communication should carry over to this page as well. If you are known for your cheekiness don’t let your Q&A be boring…

What if I have too many questions?

It’s ok to group them together into topics and give it some structure. Just make sure you include a “popular questions” section and a search option (and in it ask “how can we help you?” and not “search for your question here”).

Uber has a good example of such structure:

 

uber faq page screenshot example

 

Final words of wisdom?

Yes – don’t forget to offer users a way to contact you in case they couldn’t find the answer (and you were just taking a coffee break and wasn’t available on the support chat). Something like “couldn’t find the answer you were looking for? Drop us an email @….” would do the trick.

And… although it seems obvious – keep it updated and organised.

Did I leave anything out?

I hope that by now you understand that an FAQ is not just another page you have to include on your website.

If you think I forgot something, if you have any other cool ideas or if you have any questions just leave a comment or tweet me @yifi.

Yifat Shirben
Yifat Shirben
Yifat Shirben is an entrepreneurial marketer, with over a decade of international experience in marketing, branding, PR and business development within the innovation and entrepreneurial environment. As a former start-up founder herself, Yifat has developed a unique consumer-driven methodology to analyse and allow cost-effective, tailored made marketing strategies and solutions for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Yifat is also a director at Jayride (ASX:JAY)

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