If you landed on this article you most probably either have a website that you manage or you will have one very soon. Also, you are probably in the business of ecommerce and that means that even the smallest detail regarding the way you do your business online and manage your website has a direct effect on your website traffic, customer base number and conversion rate.
Yes, your homepage is so important as it is the entrance to your shop and the first contact with your business; visitors will get their first idea on how much they like what you have to offer as soon as they hit your homepage. They will either stay. Or leave.
And yes, your product pages are just as important as your homepage is. The visitors that landed on your product pages either coming from your homepage or by clicking a link on your social media or elsewhere, are interested in the product you sell, otherwise they would not find themselves on your product page. If they like your products and the way you market these, they will either stay. Otherwise, they'll leave.
However, when it comes to pushing visitors to click on that Add-To-Cart-Button, there are so many factors that come in place; product pages design, the information that you have there and how good and engaging it is, obviously pricing, user-friendliness, user rates if you have these enabled, even images and any additional element you may have that could influence the purchasing process of a customer; these are all factors that matter.
Then, there are also factors that come into place but are often neglected by so many eCommerce owners. One of this factors is the FAQ page; you have one, right?
What is the purpose of your FAQ page?
As you very well know, FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. Now put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. All those visitors that land on your page but have never purchased from you before will certainly have a lot of questions concerning your brand and the products you sell. Wouldn’t you have questions?
So yes, the purpose of your FAQ page is to provide straight to the point answers to all those questions that most often are harder to find (or even not to be found) on product pages, or under your About Us page.
And believe us when we say that when a potential customers can’t find the answer to a specific question on your website, in most cases, he will search for a brand who can provide him with all answers to his or her questions.
Now that is not all. In reality, the FAQ page serves many more purposes both from a customer-service point of view as well as your website’s optimisation, as it:
- answers a whole series of questions that are usually not included on your product pages but are still questions that need to be addressed
- serves the purpose of partly reducing your customer support duties as it answers general questions that you would otherwise be getting via email or social media
- helps in building trust in your brand by publicly displaying extensive information on your way of doing business, selling products, delivering services
- helps improving the overall SEO of your website as an FAQ page is to be considered a value page, an informative page targeting all your potential customers; Google loves whatever is written with the purpose of making your visitors more informed
A Guide to Writing a Really Good FAQ Page
What is a FAQ?
Before writing or rewriting your FAQ page, think first what is it exactly. Your FAQ should address questions, issues or concerns that your potential customers may have while browsing on your website or even during the purchasing process.
Remember that an FAQ page is not your About Us page. The FAQ can still address information about you but in specifics. For examples where your business is headquartered. Or how to contact you if their questions remain answered even after reading the FAQs.
When do you really need to either write or rewrite your FAQ page?
If you don’t have a FAQ page and things work just fine, well that is great. Maybe your type of business is structured in such a way that customers don’t have any questions (if that is so, seriously, get in contact with us as we want to know more about it). However, it is time to write or redo your current FAQ page when:
- you keep getting the same questions by customers over email
- you have information that you regard as important but don’t really know where to publish it
- your brand has had reputation problems or is being criticised for a particular reason and you want to address these issues publicly
How to decide what to include in your FAQs?
First things first, look at your inbox. What are the questions you get from potential and current customers? Are any of these questions asked by more than one customer? If yes, there is your FAQ.
We are not saying you need to include every single question you get; pick relevant questions, those that may affect customers’ decision to purchase from your website. Also, include those questions that may give you an opportunity to highlight and prove the quality of your services ad products.
If your list of questions gets seriously long, consider grouping questions by topic (products, delivery & shipping, guarantee of quality etc).
How to write each single answer to an FAQ effectively
Remember that it’s not just about giving an answer, but also how you will spin the answer. For example, if you are addressing a general concern expressed by some customers towards your products or brands, make sure to answer thoroughly and state why there won’t be any shortcomings on your part when providing your services or delivering products.
Also, try to write FAQs by answering questions written from a visitor’s perspective:
where do I find…
how do I…
do I have to…
Anticipating a possible question from a customer’s perspective is a great way to show customers you thought about any concern they may have and you want to deal with these concerns in a proactive way.
Make sure to link your FAQ page
Finally, once you are done and you are happy with the result, make sure to link your FAQ page to your main menu as well as your footer and product pages. Customers need to have a clear and visible path to your FAQ page.
In some cases, if your FAQs require extensive answers, you may provide a short answer on your FAQ page and then link further to either another page on your website where more information is available, or even to a newly-created page and dedicated to answering the question in your FAQs.
Needless to say that having informative, quality content written for your customers well help improve your SEO naturally and will probably target some long tail keywords (3/4 keyword phrases specific to what you are selling).
Time to review your FAQ page guys!