When you visit a website, what are you trying to do?
Solve a problem.
Need new shoes? Your problem is lack of footwear. So, you visit online shoe retailers to find out if they have what you want. That’s the solution.
Whatever problem people are trying to solve by visiting your website, it’s your job to give them the solution they want. You can offer a service, distraction, product, or knowledge. No matter what you sell, you’re in the business of solving problems.
But often, the problem isn’t resolved as soon as someone arrives at your site. Questions come up. They’re a natural part of the buying process.
Questions reflect interest. It’s one way that customers consciously or not seek to feel confident about their decision to buy.
That’s why every site needs an FAQ page.
Read on to find out why and get tips for effective FAQ pages.
Weeds Out Inappropriate Customers
Do you sell something to everyone who visits your site? No, of course not.
People can arrive at your site for all kinds of reasons. Not all of them are truly looking to buy.
But even among those that are, not all of them should. That’s right, there are some people who shouldn’t buy your product or service. It’s not about the quality or value of your offering. It’s about who they are.
Buyer personas are a critical building block of any marketing plan. They reflect the ideal customer, the one who is like to put money on the table.
Every site needs an FAQ page that appeals and serves that ideal customer.
A visitor who doesn’t connect with the tone, type of questions, and content of the answers is likely to move along. And that’s okay. You can’t (and don’t want to be) everything to everyone.
Saves Time for Your Ideal Customer
But you do want to be everything for your ideal customer.
Every site needs an FAQ page to proactively address questions common to your ideal customer.
For example, customers who have a strong connection to a brand’s image, like origin stories. Including a question like “Is it true that Company X started as a school project?” on the FAQ page is a great way to reinforce an emotional connection with the brand.
A good FAQ page also saves time for your customer. Removing any doubts or uncertainty about your expertise, processes, prices, guarantees, shipping options, or the value they’ll receive helps them make a quick and confident decision.
Builds Confidence
Customer confidence is essential for sales. When someone spends their hard-earned money on your product or service, they are showing confidence in what you have to offer. This is especially true for repeat sales.
Using an FAQ page is a simple yet effective way to build that confidence. It’s an opportunity to give them more information in an easy digest way.
Sometimes, FAQ pages aren’t called that. For example, Beverly Hills TMS uses the heading “What Is TMS?”. Yet the content is FAQs.
The effect is a seamless exploration of the service offered. It’s designed to answer a potential customer’s questions and remove any barriers to making contact.
Saves You Time
While every site needs an FAQ page to help customers, there are also benefits for you, the business owner.
Well-crafted questions and answers save you time. Instead of responding to individual calls, emails, texts, or chats about common topics, you address them up front. That allows you to spend more time on the unusual or complex issues and offer the value of individual attention.
Make sure the scope of your FAQs is broad and relevant. If you’re not sure what to include, talk to your sales reps, customer service agents, or anyone who interacts with your customer base.
Ask them what questions they get all the time. Those questions must be addressed on the FAQ page.
Be sure to keep the FAQ page uncluttered and easy to navigate. Find logical ways to cluster questions and answers. Or program the page so that answers appear only when the user clicks on the question.
Contributes to SEO
Strategic use of keywords throughout a website is key to SEO. Including varied yet relevant keywords on your FAQ page can help boost your page ranking with search engines. Better ranking contributes to higher traffic.
Including long tail keywords on an FAQ page is easy and seems natural to the reader.
Also contained in the content of a good FAQ page should be a few links to other pages on your site. By the same token, other pages with core content should have natural links to the FAQ page.
Don’t go overboard on the internal links and you’ll improve the SEO value of your FAQ page and site. Including relevant images and how-to videos is also a good idea. Be sure to optimize them to keep your site running at ideal speed.
Closing Thought About Why Every Site Needs an FAQ Page
There’s no doubt that websites and online stores have made business easier in too many ways to count.
But one challenge the digital world presents is diminished face-to-face interaction. Helping a potential customer get what they need is often easier when you can see their expressions and read their body language.
On the web, you have to make informed guesses about what might cause someone to hesitate. Every site needs an FAQ page to proactively address potential points of hesitation and give the customer confidence about moving forward in the buying process.
At SiteUpTime, we’re serious about customer service. We update our FAQ page on a regular basis. We address real questions and potential issues to help our customers remain confident in our abilities and capacity.
We’re in the business of making sure our customers’ online presence never takes a break. We do all we can to gain and retain the confidence of every one of our customers.
Having a comprehensive and dynamic FAQ page is one of those ways.
And, if you’re curious about the other ways we deliver for our customers, check out these testimonials from businesses of all sizes.
