Although your ecommerce site may seem perfectly logical and complete to you, you may find that shoppers feel otherwise.
If you’ve been bombarded with dozens of questions lately that revolve around similar topics, consider adding a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page to your store or improving your current one.
An FAQ page is important for ecommerce businesses in all industries. It benefits not only business owners but any customer service employees they have and, most importantly, their current or potential customers.
In this article, I’ll help you to understand more about what an FAQ page is, what its benefits are for your business, and how it can help you to get customers in ecommerce.
In addition, I’ll explain how you can build the ideal FAQ page—one that will be highly informative yet simple for users to navigate.
What is an FAQ page?
An FAQ page on your website should deal with the details of the most common questions that the average consumer may have.
It may contain information about products, ingredient quality, shipping and return requirements, timeframes for services and options for reaching out to customer service. This page should not just involve the goods or services that you offer but also how your business operates.
The FAQ page should differ significantly from your landing page, which serves as the first point of reference that a consumer has with your business. It should also differ from the “About Us” page, which should provide visitors with simple information about the history, intentions, and future of your company.
Your FAQ page should be more detailed and cover concerns that consumers may have before, during, or after making a purchase on your site.
What are the benefits of an FAQ page for your ecommerce website?
It may seem overwhelming to have to create an entirely new page that includes numerous details and links back to other pages on your site. However, you’ll want to carefully consider the many benefits that an FAQ page can bring your business.
This page should not be put together quickly and haphazardly without sufficient thought. Done correctly, it can significantly improve the way that people see your business.
Makes the customer experience better
The primary reason to build your FAQ page is to increase customer satisfaction. This includes both current and past customers along with new visitors who are currently determining whether your store is the best option for them.
Your FAQ page will have detailed answers to the most prevalent questions shoppers have had in the past. For this reason, visitors will feel confident shopping on their own time and will not end up frustrated with having to reach out to you during business hours.
In addition, shoppers will feel as if their concerns and questions are important and that their complete satisfaction is uppermost in your mind.
Keeping your customers happy obviously needs to be one of your top goals, and a clearly written FAQ page will help you do this.
Boosts conversion rate
While the customer experience is the most important benefit of adding an FAQ page, you can simultaneously boost your conversion rate. This is the rate at which store visitors become buyers.
When people have a question about a product or service, they want to locate a quick answer for it. They don’t want to have to waste time with an email or a telephone call for a simple question.
Directing visitors to an FAQ page can answer questions about shipping charges and times, product sizes, warranties, and much more. Shoppers will have more trust in your site and equally confident in spending their hard-earned cash with you.
Saves customer service resources
When you first launch your online store, you may be the sole person handling any questions and concerns that people have. As sales increase and you start to scale your ecommerce business, though, you might decide to add a customer service team.
While customer service personnel are important to any business, a team of any size can eat away at your bottom line. Although you’ll never be able to eliminate customer service entirely, you don’t have to spend as many resources on it once you’ve got an FAQ page.
Your team will no longer have to take multiple telephone calls each day to answer the same questions. They can instead spend their time dealing with product issues and less common queries.
By covering all of the basics in your FAQ section, you’ll cut back on shopper complaints and wasted time for your customer service department.
Improves SEO
Finally, you’ll notice that building your FAQ page can also boost your search engine optimization (SEO), leading to more site visitors. Many customers tend to type questions about products directly into a search engine.
By including the exact wording of these most frequent questions on your new page, you can increase the amount of organic traffic your shop will see each week.
What’s more, these questions can increase traffic that you receive from voice shopping, which is currently growing in usage throughout the US.
Increasing numbers of people are using voice-based technology to find information about items for sale or to purchase products or services. An FAQ page can help with conversions in this way as well.
Tips for building your FAQ page
Now that you know the incredible benefits of having a FAQ page, I’m sure that you’re ready to create one of your own. However, you may be wondering how you should start, how you’ll know what questions to include, and where you should place this page.
Here are 7 tips for creating a great FAQ page that’ll make life easier for you and your customers!
1. Determine where the FAQs will go on your website
First, you’ll need to decide where you want to place your FAQ page on your site. The easiest option is usually to create a separate page that people can quickly navigate to from your main menu or from all of your product or cart pages.
If you don’t have enough room left in your main menu, you could consider adding a link to this page in your footer. A separate page is definitely the option to choose if you have a very large ecommerce site.
However, if you only sell a few items or offer a few services, you may want to add a specific FAQ section to each product page. This will give shoppers the answers they need immediately.
2. Format your FAQ page for easy navigation and to match your brand
Once you know where your FAQs will be located, it’s time to consider how you want to format the actual FAQ page. It should match the complexity of your brand.
If you offer numerous goods that are highly customizable, create an in-depth page that utilizes drop-down menus.
You could also use an interactive design to save space and help direct users through the answer process. However, if the goods you sell are simple, you may only need a simple list of questions and answers.
Perhaps all of your questions and answers can easily fit on a single page without making viewers scroll too far down. If this is the case, keep your page simple without the need for additional clicking.
Have a lot of questions to answer? In that case, use drop-down arrows on a single page to reduce the number of words through which users will have to sift.
If your FAQs cover a variety of topics, you can organize topics under headers and link to separate pages from there. You may also want to think about adding a search function for very large FAQ pages to help with navigation.
As you format your page, you must also consider how you’ll write the questions and answers.
Write out your questions and answers fully, using words that people would be most likely to use in search engines. Try to create a narrative, and address your customers directly.
3. Add relevant links to direct customer to where they want to go
The worst option for any FAQ page is numerous dead-end answers that don’t lead shoppers anywhere important. This is why it’s so vital that you link back to other pages on your ecommerce site as much as possible.
By creating a journey through your store for visitors, they’ll spend more time on your site, which can lead to a higher conversion rate.
For instance, you can easily link to pages involving information on shipping and returns in your FAQs. You can also link to main product pages if you’re discussing customization or product size options.
Once a shopper’s question is answered, they’ll be more apt to click through to another one of your store’s pages for further exploration.
4. Decide what questions you want to include
The specific questions you feature will be determined by the type of online store that you have. Some of the most popular questions include those regarding shipping and returns, the history of your business, specific or customized products, and how to order.
You may also want to add information for payment and delivery options, product guarantees, and details related to the security of shopping with your business.
Your customers basically want to know how the ordering experience will work and what they can do if they’re not satisfied.
In addition, they want to learn how your products or services are designed to benefit them. You may also need to include a few general questions and answers about your store at the top of the page.
5. Use positivity when writing the questions and responses
Tone of voice is clear through oral speech but can be much harder to determine through the written word. You must take great care to word both your questions and answers in such a way that customers come away with positive vibes rather than a negative impression of your business.
Always be confident and upbeat in all of your answers, even if you’re describing the solution to a particularly distressing problem.
List the benefits of following your tips or policies rather than scaring away potential customers with unreasonable expectations or possible problems. The latter could cause them to want to leave your store, and it’s likely that they’ll never be back.
6. Add your business contact info at the end
No matter how detailed your FAQ page is, some visitors are bound to have other questions that aren’t covered on your site. For this reason, you must give them an option for easily contacting you or your customer service department.
List this information at the bottom of your FAQ page to eliminate confusion. Include your business hours as well. If they’re planning to email you, tell them when they can expect to hear back from a team member.
With this information, visitors will get the impression that you’re open to questions and that you want to work with your customers to find solutions for their problems. For this reason, you may also want to give them links to your social media pages where they can interact with your business further.
7. Continue to update the FAQ page as needed
Much like many other parts of your store, your FAQ question page is not something you can complete once and cross off your list forever.
You must instead see it as a living page that’s constantly changing whenever your business, policies, or products change. An outdated FAQ page tells visitors that you’re not active on your site and may give them pause before making a purchase.
If you notice that you’re suddenly getting numerous questions about a topic that you didn’t cover in your FAQs, be sure to add this to the FAQ page as soon as possible. As consumer needs and concerns change over the months and years, popular questions are sure to also change.
Conclusion
If designed and worded correctly, your FAQ page can be one of the most powerful parts of your online store.
It can direct new customers who are completing online searches and keep people browsing by quickly answering their common questions. This in turn may lead to higher conversion rates as customers feel more confident in shopping on your site.
Although it may take some time to craft the perfect FAQ page, it’s a task that can significantly improve your online business and set you apart from your competition!
