3 Tips for Writing an Effective FAQs Page

A lot of businesses will create an FAQ page, but they do so because everyone else is doing the same thing. This is the wrong approach. Your frequently asked questions page (or pages) needs to be useful and serve as an extension of your online customer support.

If consumers are asking the same question over and over, you can help alleviate the demands on your customer service team by creating a stellar FAQs page.

But a lot of pages are written to be bland, boring and aren’t meeting their main goal: to be helpful.

These tips will help you write an effective FAQs page that actually helps your potential consumers:

1. Start with Research Before Typing Away

If you want your page to be helpful, you need to conduct research. Data can help you better understand what your potential customers are having issues with. Most FAQs pages have the basics:

  • Shipping information
  • Return information
  • Warranty information
  • Contact information

But that’s not nearly enough. You need to also consult with your customers, either through a survey or through your customer support’s data to find which questions are being asked most often.

You’ll then use these questions for inspiration on your FAQs page. If you don’t have a system in place to collect all of this data, sit down and talk to your customer support team. Ask them questions. Your support team is your best resource when writing an FAQs page.

2. Add Your Brand’s Personality into the Page

Take a look at good FAQ pages, and you’ll find that a lot of companies are adding personality into their pages. A product like Grey’s Anatomy scrubs may seem self-explanatory, but even this simple product can produce a lot of questions.

Instead of creating a boring FAQs page, but fill the page with personality. Form questions using fun titles, and keep the copy professional yet punchy.

When writing your page, make sure to include:

  • Personality
  • Proper grammar and punctuation
  • Revise and update the page often

You need to develop a voice for your business, and adding this voice into your FAQs page will definitely make your page fun and memorable.

Your voice should also mimic your customers’ language. You need to be able to relate to your customers, and this is something that the writer of your page will need to know before they dive into writing the page. Your marketing team should have a general idea of this voice and how it should be reflected in your page.

3. Follow the Steps of “Big” Companies

If you look at some of the world’s largest companies, you can see what they’re doing right and “copy” some of their ideas. A few of the best tips I’ve found include:

  • YouTube offering the most popular questions asked
  • McDonald’s asking their consumers to share their FAQ pages and experience
  • Twitter offering a sleek FAQs page that has a robust search engine and neat categories
  • Microsoft’s accordion style Q&A page that is easier for mobile users

These small changes can make your FAQs more useful.

Adam Richards

About Adam Richards

Adam Richards is a semi-retired business professional originally from Bangor, Maine. He spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing where he rose to the marketing lead of a Fortune 1000 company. He then moved on to helping people as a career counselor that specifically helped bring families to self-sufficiency through finding them rewarding careers. He has now returned to Bangor for his retirement and spends his free time writing. This blog will be about everything he learned throughout his career. He'll write on career, workplace, education and technology issues as well as on trends, changes, and advice for the Maine job market and its employers.