How to write your own FAQ

Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) pages can be great. If you have no site map or search facility on your website, an FAQ is a way to interface with your interested customers and make their experience of your site more user friendly. A frustrated visitor to your site is much less likely to pull out her credit card!

Here are some tips for writing a really good FAQ.

1. Link it from your Navigation bar or menu. FAQs are no good if they’re hidden on the About Us page or at the end of your Terms and Conditions!
2. Ask people outside your business to help you formulate the questions. These might be friends or family members. Use someone who isn’t involved in the business. This will take care of the entry-level questions.
3. For the more complex or industry-specific questions, ask yourself or your employees/colleagues what many of your customers email or phone to ask.
4. Group your questions in a logical way and consolidate many similar questions into one more general question.
5. Use bookmarking to create a linkable, at-a-glance list of FAQs at the top of the FAQ page.6. Be concise. Don’t create a War and Peace answer to a simple question. Give just enough information to answer a basic enquiry, and provide Contact Us links throughout for customers who want more. This is part of your sales funnel.
7. Don’t feel obliged to provide costings. What is your webpage for? It’s probably there to advertise your business or services, but if you don’t provide pricing on your main pages, you shouldn’t go outside your overall website strategy in the FAQ. This is one instance where a question asked frequently by customers who phone or email should NOT appear in the FAQ!

Usability expert Caroline Jarrett has some more tips for increasing FAQ usability here.

And don’t forget Sasha’s 2 golden rules of web writing: spell/grammar check and consistent formatting!