A FAQ page is usually thought of as an outdated web page of the past, a concept that worked when Google wasn’t around to answer our every question. But that doesn’t mean that these pages are any less important now than they were during their heyday.
If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages are exactly what they sound like. They’re a collection of the most frequently and commonly asked questions that a consumer or site visitor might have.
But with search engines now able to index millions of web pages to find a plurality of answers for every question, it’s understandable how FAQ pages have fallen to the wayside.
You might be surprised to learn that if done well, this web page can provide many more bottom-line increasing benefits. In fact, it’s no stretch to say that having one will increase your site’s ranking, optimize your conversion rate and increase awareness of your site.
If you remain unconvinced, we’re going to take you through the importance of having a FAQ page, how to design one while providing examples of the best templates you can apply to your own website.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What is a FAQ Page?
This stands for Frequently Asked Questions and is a page that exists on websites to answer the most commonly asked questions by customers. Questions listed will depend on the services and products of the business.
Why Do You Need A Good FAQ Page? The Benefits
A knowledge base of your brand’s most commonly asked questions and queries, your FAQ page is one of the most pages and sources of information on your site. It should, if not already, be one of your most visited and high-traffic pages.
What many don’t realize is that the high visitor visibility that this page enjoys can be leveraged in a variety of ways.
Before we get into designing the perfect one, here are a few examples of how it can benefit your website:
Great UX leaves a positive impression
For the most part, this page will be a collection of text, some hyperlinks and a few sparse images. But how you present all this information is just as important as the data itself.
Your page’s text-heaviness should not dictate its design or aesthetic. As your website’s knowledge base, the layout and experience of your imparts a strong impression on how the rest of your site should feel and look.
Just as there are a variety of different site layouts and aesthetics, there are even more ways to present all of your customers’ most pertinent questions.
From categories to headers and content layouts, your question page should tell your customer about your brand as much as it tells them about your products and services.
With its colourful graphics and clean design, AirBnB follows this practice well as you’ll see in the above example. With on-brand illustrations and clear categories and questions, you can see that AirBnB appreciates how a FAQ page can speak to your business and personality.
Improve website rankings
Usually, this page is dense with text consisting of questions that consumers type into search engines. This makes them perfect search engine optimization candidates.
Keyword-rich content and long-tail keywords that your customers are searching for will help search engines more quickly and easily index your site. Simultaneously, you’ll be increasing its ranking in search engine results pages.
As you’ll see, Corsair’s FAQ page allows users the ability to sort questions by category. It also lists each question and answer on one page to capitalize on the SEO opportunity.
Specific and detailed questions will give you the chance to include as many specific keywords as you want, making your page one of your most highly ranked.
They offer the chance to show off your personality
As we’ve mentioned before, these pages don’t have to be devoid of personality and humour. While having your page display information as clearly and simply as possible is a necessity, you can definitely exercise some creative freedom here.
McDonald’s emulates an example of a brand having fun. Their light, conversational tone makes the brand as a whole come off as more personable.
Play around with your tone and have your answers reflect the personality and voice of your brand. Include a couple of innocuous jokes here and there to let your personality shine.
Establish your brand as an authority
A well thought out FAQ page can impart a sense of trust towards your target audience. As a collection of knowledge surrounding your brand and services, the amount, variety and nuance of your questions and answers will dictate how much of an authority you are.
Scotiabank’s availability of questions and answers is a perfect example of how this page can establish authority in their industry. It lists out business investment accounts with a click-through page explaining each account in detail.
Sales benefits
If customers are able to find pertinent answers for their questions effectively, it cuts down the time they spend away from shopping part of your website.
Consumers are busy. Nobody wants to waste time clicking through page after page to find an answer for the one question that’s giving them doubt about converting and purchasing a product.
In order to maximize your page’s content’s effectiveness, there are a few essential design elements that you should emulate. Next, let’s dive into how to design your page to make your brand personality shine.
Ease the pressure on customer service
Tying in with sales benefits, if customers are able to find answers to all of their questions easily and in one spot, then the won’t have the need to personally contact your customer support department for further assistance.
Customers won’t need to call you or wait for an email reply from your business. This will free up your time to handle more high-level and personal customer inquiries. It helps you as much as it helps your customers.
How To Design FAQ Your Page
FAQ pages are often accosted as boring, text-heavy pages, but this doesn’t always have to be the case. Taking the first step towards creating an all-encompassing webpage for your customers that will answer all of their questions is difficult.
Having that same page speak to larger elements of your business such as your brand’s image and tone doubly so. For a complete guide to FAQ page design be sure to check out this page.
At a glance, here are a few design best practices to keep in mind:
- Clear question headers: the clearer the question, the less time your customers will spend looking for their answers
- Succinct, jargon-free copy: to lower the chance of confusion, keep the technical talk out of it.
- Using subheadings and categories: you wouldn’t want to read through a wall of text to obtain that one nugget of information, so why should your customers?
- Links to other pages and navigation: encourage customers to invest more time browsing your site and opens up the door for them to potentially convert.
- Social buttons/feedback: give your customers the opportunity to contact you to answer their questions and inform you of any missing information that should be included.
- User experience and design: your page should be clear and easy to read while also speaking to your brand in regards to visibility and style.
- Focus on the customer: avoid promoting products and any other unnecessary information.
- Keep it updated: continually review and refresh.
- Optimize for SEO: conduct keyword research and include the top performers throughout your answers, category headers and links.
- Add a search bar to make it a knowledge base: cut down on the time your customers spend searching.
Tips On How To Make a FAQ Page: A Step-By-Step Guide
Now that we’ve looked at how to design this page, we have a step-by-step guide for the entire process from beginning to end. There’s a 5 step strategy that has to be followed but you can find the full guide here.
Starting your very own frequently asked question page is a process. We’re going to break down how you can easily create this page for 3 of the most widely used CMS platforms.
Worth noting: if you’re using a CMS platform like thousands of other businesses, then it may be more effective to opt for a plugin or shortcut that can do all the heavy lifting for you.
WordPress
In the digital marketing world, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t heard of WordPress. Created in 2003, WordPress has grown to encompass 34 percent of all websites available today.
That’s a huge amount – it makes sense why there’s such a large community of creators designing custom plugins and extensions for this CMS platform.
Creating a FAQ page for WordPress is easy and you have a lot of options to consider when approaching this task. The easiest way is to simply add another page to your site, designate that as your FAQ and then populate it with questions and answers.
The only downsides to this method are that it can be time-consuming and arduous to create one from scratch and difficult to gather data to improve your page.
That’s where plugins come in. Available in a variety of flavours and functions; plugins simplify the FAQ creation process while also providing the means of collecting data and pertinent CMS data to continually optimize your page. Yoast is one such SEO plugin that is currently being used by more than 5 million websites.
A third option is to code it yourself. WordPress uses HTML and CSS for the visual website design and JavaScript and PhP for their backend.
If you’re particularly savvy and know how to script your own page, then this is an effective means of ensuring it’s customized perfectly for you.
Wix
Wix is similar to WordPress in more ways than one, and you can create a FAQ page similarily, too. Like WordPress, you can create your own page and populate it with your own answers, but it’s far more effective to incorporate Wix Apps instead.
Wix Apps work the same way WordPress plugins do; download and customize it to your liking before making it live on your site. Unlike WordPress however, Wix only offers its proprietary Wix Code scripting language for its users to code in.
SquareSpace
Launched in 2004, SquareSpace simplifies website building by offering pre-built web templates and drag-and-drop web elements. The site builder also offers e-commerce tools, domain name services and analytic features. The simplest CMS platform out of the 3, Squarespace does not offer any coding capabilities but the ease-of-access its drag-and-drop elements provide more than makeup for this shortfall.
SquareSpace also offers plugins similar to WordPress. You can purchase plugins from their community of creators or code one for yourself.
FAQ Page Templates
Depending on the type of business or website you run, there are some questions that just make more to include than others. Here’s a collection of common templates you can follow depending on what business you work in.
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Template
Questions within this sector will be relatively more different compared to others. CPG businesses deal with physically tangible goods and will have their questions primarily revolve around payment, delivery and returns.
Some questions for your CPG FAQ may include:
- Why is my package going via another city when being delivered to me?
- Why do I need to sign for my package?
- Why doesn’t my tracking number work?
Media Publication and Subscriptions Template
Customers within the media publication and subscription sector will have their questions primarily include billing costs, changing and/or updating their subscription and how their media will be delivered.
Some questions for your media publication and subscriptions may include:
- Can I share my digital subscription with other people?
- How do I cancel?
- Do I get to keep the digital media I already read, if I unsubscribe?
Software as a Service Template (SaaS)
It’s important for SaaS customers to know service uptimes and maintenance times to ensure that their business and/or product is available.
Some questions for your Software as a Service may include:
- How long do I have the service for, after I cancel?
- What do I do if the service is down?
- Do I get a refund to cover the time that the service is down?
Personal Blogs
Depending on the subject and purpose of the blog, questions can widely vary but there are a few essentials to keep in mind no matter the blog.
Some questions for your personal blogs may include:
- How often do you post?
- What topics do you cover?
- How can I contact you?
To see more example questions and other FAQ templates, be sure to check out our full template guide here.
Amazing FAQ Page Examples With Pictures
With all these guidelines and pointers to follow, it’s hard to imagine what a great page looks like without seeing one first. Below is our collection of 10 amazing examples that adhere most closely to our design guidelines.
Bose
Visually, Bose stands out as one of the most simplistic and clean pages. Question categories are divided up between product questions and general service questions. This division allows users to quickly figure out where to go to find answers.
The inclusion of a search bar transforms this web page into an indexable knowledge base. The “ask the community” link directs users to a forum of other Bose consumers crowdsourcing both questions and answers. Social buttons are large and clearly visible and the right below the “contact us” information.
Unconvoluted and straight to the point, Bose’s page is a case study in simplicity and putting the customer first.
TenTree
Environmentally conscious and eco-friendly clothing brand TenTree’s page visually speaks to their values as a company while also offering users an intuitive and straightforward customer experience.
Categories are both laid out in tiles in the center as well as on the left margin. Customers have the choice of viewing the full offerings by expanding the left margin categories or going to the specific category page itself to see them all.
A search bar makes it even easier for customers to find what they need and the “contact us” button is prominently placed at the bottom right corner of the tile display and at the bottom of the expandable headers.
Adobe Photoshop
Going with a list format, Adobe Photoshop’s frequently asked questions page is easy to navigate and straight to the point with its questions. Making all of the questions and answers available at once cuts down on time navigating back and forth between pages while also making it easier for users to gain access to all of the information all at once.
Including a “last published” tracker helps informs users when new information was added and puts any doubts of outdated information at ease.
Furthermore, the addition of a feedback tracker with the option of including any comments on how Adobe can improve the page adds an element of control for the user.
Toyota
Toyota’s page takes the two-pronged approach and displays all of its questions and answers under expandable headers while at the same time differentiating each set of questions with a prominently placed table of contents.
The included “chat with a dealer” button optimizes the page for outbound sales and capitalizes on the sales opportunity presented once a customer has found all the relevant information they need to consider making a purchase.
Cloudflare
Working in the delicate sector of internet security, Cloudflare offers its users the most involved page we’ve seen yet.
Although the categories and questions are limited on the page itself, the search bar allows users to refine their search further. They even have the option to either ask the community for a crowdsourced answer or to even submit a request directly for an answer. This places Cloudflare as the top contender for most user-involved FAQ page.
Key Takeaways For Creating An Amazing FAQ Page
Despite their early origins, FAQ pages remain as relevant as ever.
Here’s our 5 key takeaways to ensure your page is helping your site rank, your customers convert and your brand shine.
- Keep it short and sweet: Avoid superfluous information and ensure your answers are succinct. Design your page so customers can find their information and return to browsing your site as fast as possible.
- Focus on the customer: Design your page with your customer in mind, and make it the sort of help page you would like to read yourself. Avoid sales pitches and brand information – this can serve to alienate your client base.
- Have some fun with it: Your FAQ page doesn’t need to be boring. Play around the visual design and aesthetic to make it speak to your brand. Answer questions in a light and personable tone to increase customer engagement.
- Allow feedback: Involve your customers in the process and let them help you improve any gaps in knowledge you may have. If something isn’t working for them, you’ll be able to know right away.
- Have an organized structure: Don’t just dump a wall of text onto your reader. Structure your questions and answers into logical and relevant categories so customers can find all the answers in one place.
