Frequently Asked Questions Define Your Business
A well constructed Frequent Questions page is a powerful way to introduce your business. Your website is the way to begin conversations with customers and a Frequent Questions page opens up your business for engagement.
A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
- Saves your customers time
- Manages customer expectations
- Overcomes objections
- Sells your business
- Creates a semantic footprint
Think solutions, speak human to human, and answer your customers’ questions to introduce the key elements of your business.
Best Questions for a FAQ Page
The FAQ page is the place to talk to customer concerns. Start with the questions people ask the most about your business. For service businesses, this may be your rates, what you need from your customers, whether you work alone or collaboratively, a typical turnaround time, and what you don’t do. And, if there is an aspect of your business that you don’t perform, how you can direct them to that additional service. For example, if you are a graphic designer who can help with a website design and imagery but don’t write content, how do you help that future customer find a service for written content?
Trade businesses will have a different set of questions about labor, parts, and service hours. Do you charge more for after hours or weekends? Do you provide discounts for seniors, military, and law enforcement? Is post-work clean up included or an extra service? Do you provide discounts for combined services; for example, carpet and upholstery cleaning?
When you answer these questions, you smooth the path to a customer purchase.
Save Time
Answering standard questions saves you and your site visitors time. You eliminate the guesswork which prompts people to call, send email messages, or request a chat. You also answer the questions for the majority of people who may be interested in your product or service but hesitate to phone, send an email, or chat.
By eliminating the need for basic clarification you broaden your reach to potential buyers.
Manage Expectations
Knowing the questions your customers ask builds credibility. The more you state how your business solves a problem, you build trust. Straightforward answers manage expectations. It’s as if your customer thinks, how did they know I would want to know that?
Answers that resonate with customer concerns, help them feel you understand their needs and make them more likely to buy.
Overcome Objections
Potential customers create many reasons for not buying your product or service. As most salespeople know, often these objections are merely tests for them to hear the answer they want to hear before they make a purchase.
Answering objections in Frequently Asked Questions can resolve these objections to bring your customer closer to choosing your business.
Questions that resolve misconceptions about your industry can reduce hesitation about using your service. For instance, a customer who has heard all SEO practitioners are snake oil, will be more likely to buy your services if you explain how your service meets a need and solves a problem like increasing organic search results.
Sell Your Business
When you answer questions on the FAQ page in a friendly and helpful manner, your conversational tone is subtly selling your business. People who are averse to a sales page may read your FAQ answers to find out more about aspects of your business. The details of your answers help them understand what you have. You build trust by answering questions while a direct sales page may just get a skim, if that. Information that is useful to your customer is much more likely to get a response than a direct promotional page.
The details you provide in the FAQs that aren’t provided by competitors make your business more understandable and approachable and are much more likely to end up in a sale. FAQs eliminate guesswork.
Create a Semantic Footprint
From a search perspective, your FAQ page clarifies your business for search engines. The clear and direct answers you provide are instrumental for disambiguation of your business. Disambiguation refers to the elimination of ambiguity by making something clear.
The clearer your page, the more likely search engines will provide your page as the answer to a search query bringing potential customers to you.
Two FAQ Design Tips
Once a visitor arrives at your FAQ page, make it easy for them to find the answers.
Make Each Question Unique. Separating each question and answer with a simple fine line makes it easier for the first time visitor to skim the questions for the answers they need. It’s a simple design tactic that will get you more readers.
Make the Answer Visible. Every extra click is a potential lost reader. Design your FAQ page so that your answer shows right away. Making readers click to another page is an impediment to the quick answer you want to give your reader. If your answer is long, create a short answer or brief abstract with a link to read the more involved answer. If your reader, really wants all the details, they will click through to the long answer.
No answer on the FAQ page is a gamble that your visitor may leave and go to a competitor who provides visible answers.
FAQs For The Win
Frequently Asked Questions differentiate your business from your competitors by highlighting your skills, expertise, and product qualities. They sell your business without promotional jargon, overcome objections from the beginning, save time for you and your customers, and create an expectation that you understand their needs and concerns. Done correctly a FAQ page can be one of the strongest draws and most powerful selling pages on your site. If you need a help developing your FAQ page, or other pieces of powerful content for your site, Actation Now! can tell the story of your business with our semantic content writing service. Get in touch and tell us what you need.
Zara Altair
