While they may be one of the older conventions in website design, we love to see great FAQ pages function as a key component in consumer education.
There’s nothing not to love about Live Agent Services — when they are available and you are not stuck in queue being reminded of how important you are! But an FAQ page is static and always live so it is working 24×7. By delivering an inclusive catalog of answers, an FAQ page can even save precious time in your work day by supplying answers to the most commonly asked questions.
FAQ and SEO
If written with your keywords/phrases, an FAQ page will help serve your SEO goals and exist as a virtual billboard of the essential facts your visitors and potential clients want to know — along with a link, phone number, or form so they may obtain even more information.
Now that you’re sold on the value of an FAQ page (which is also significantly cheaper than a service cloud and a touch more reliable), how do you create a great one?
Fortunately, with platforms like WordPress, adding a new page or creating a link on your home page to a PDF doc is easy. (We do however suggest you do not use your live website as a training ground to hone your WordPress skills! So that previous statement carries the caveat that you are comfortable in making changes and not likely to blow up your site.)
Back to the content…the most labor intensive part is building succinct, yet enlightening answers that support the questions.
Because you may be too close to have all the perspective you need, here are a couple ideas to collect the questions:
- Have your receptionist or customer service team keep a running list.
- If you have a toll free number, an info email address or a CMS that takes incoming questions, comb through those for the most universally pertinent ones.
- Request that your field services/sales people compile the FAQs they get most frequently.
- Ask a trusted associate who has never purchased your product or service to quiz you about your offerings and take note.
- Start with the simple things like:
- Hours of operation
- Product warranties
- Turnaround times
- Price ranges
You’ll be surprised at how quickly you will start to reel off questions/answers for the page once you begin. And in a reverse engineering twist, sometimes when you are writing the answer to the question, you’ll discover a more efficient way to accomplish a task and adjust your operation accordingly.
We have spoken with people who prefer not to include an FAQ page on their website or allocate a section in their marketing materials for one because they believe it “shows their hand” and discourages prospects from picking up the phone to connect with a sales associate. This more evasive technique certainly has merit, but for most clients we recommend that a solid FAQ page stands as an effective sales tool. It provides an opportunity to showcase your knowledge of the field or product – a straightforward way to position yourself as an authority along with your social media presence.
If you believe a full-blown FAQ page on your website is overkill, then leverage your site’s services page for specifics about your merchandise/expertise. However answering client questions best suits your agenda, be sure to review it periodically to update the information to include detail on your latest offerings! Any questions?
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