The term F.A.Q. is an acronym derived from the English Frequently Asked Questions and denotes a section aimed at answering common questions from users.
If you are reading this page, chances are you are wondering how to create a great FAQ page for your e-commerce business. Well, you’ve found the right page!
To understand how to create Frequently Asked Questions, it is first essential to understand why FAQs are a particularly beneficial solution for your site.
So what are the benefits of FAQs?
ORGANIC SITE RANKING
One of the biggest benefits is that a well-optimized FAQ page can help improve your e-commerce site’s search engine rankings.
In fact, if this section actually contains answers to users’ most frequently asked questions, the value Google places on the page can increase dramatically. That’s right, because although the search engine’s algorithm is very complex (it contains more than 200 ranking factors!), its purpose is all in all very simple: to provide the most useful results to users’ searches.
In fact, it is no coincidence that the answers contained in FAQs are often used in featured snippets, i.e., the organic results highlighted by Google when it believes they correctly answer the search query.
REMOVES OBSTACLES TO CONVERSION
Including an FAQ section can be beneficial for many sites, but it is particularly so for e-commerce.
In fact, imagine the case of a user who, while exploring a shoe e-commerce, has finally found a model he or she likes and is about to complete the purchase. Here, however, a doubt arises: “What if these shoes are too small?”
If you think about it, you too will have often had second thoughts just before checking out. This is a very common reaction: as consumers, we tend to want to minimize the risks and doubts associated with our purchases. Consequently, users’ doubts should never be ignored, and FAQs are often a great way to resolve them. In other words, a well-optimized FAQ page can remove the obstacles that stand between the user and conversion.
GREATER EFFICIENCY FOR YOUR E-COMMERCE
Another possibility is that the user, rather than being discouraged, decides instead to address the issue by contacting customer service.
This is certainly preferable to abandoning the purchase intent altogether, but again having FAQs can be a very beneficial solution. Indeed, if well optimized, it allows you to lighten the workload of your customer service department and save time and money (however, it is not the only solution: chatbots, for example, are among the many).
Having thus established why implementing FAQs is a good idea, we can now move on to the fundamental question: how do you create a well-optimized FAQ page?
In this article I will address this question one step at a time:
1.On which page of the site to put it?
How to find (and formulate) the questions to be included in the FAQ?
“Trivial” answer: by selecting the most common questions of your potential customers.
But if you’ve read this far, this probably doesn’t seem like a very satisfying answer. And you’re right! In fact, you will have long since figured out that the questions to be included are the most common ones, but the still unresolved question is: what are the most common questions? Is there a way to find out?
Well, yes, there is! Knowing how to read the thoughts of one’s customers is perhaps every marketer’s pipe dream, but the good news is that in this case no extrasensory abilities are required. 😉
The secret is encapsulated in two words: keyword analysis. In fact, keyword analysis, when done correctly and with the proper tools, can provide a world of information and unravel users’ most common doubts.
More precisely, in the case of FAQs for e-commerce, it will be a matter of identifying so-called “long-tail keywords” (composed of three or more words), which correspond to very specific search intents that can be answered extremely precisely.
Frequently Asked Questions can then be integrated in various ways. For example, if yours is an e-commerce that has been active for many years, you will probably have accumulated a number of tickets from all the users who have contacted customer service over time: in this case, the advice is to select the most common queries and place them directly on the FAQ page.
Also, there are guidelines to keep in mind for the correct wording of questions:
1.Don’t forget that often the most frequently asked questions are not the ones we would like. Therefore, do not fall into the temptation to use this section for promotional purposes-it is not the place to advertise!
2.The questions to be selected should be, yes, questions! This may sound obvious, but I have often seen simple statements entered.
3.In general, the advice is to empathize with your customers and always use the same tone of voice, which may vary greatly depending on the brand and demographics of your target audience.
How to respond to FAQs?
1.Once you have identified the most common questions to include, the next step is to figure out how best to answer them. Again, some guidelines will help you here:
2.Don’t digress: answer the referenced question without ranging to other topics. The goal is to provide the user with the solution to the question of interest. Above all, do not propose solutions to additional questions.
Use simple and clear language. It is advisable to use a positive and friendly Tone of Voice (but always taking into account brand positioning and what your target audience expects).
3.Respond in a comprehensive but at the same time concise manner. Of course, this is not always possible, because difficult questions often require an answer that, to be comprehensive, will necessarily be very long. In this case, the advice is still to keep the wording brief but to offer the user the opportunity to elaborate further on the topic through anchor text to a dedicated page (in this way the FAQ can contribute to the development of the internal linking of your e-commerce)
How to structure the FAQ page?
Once you understand how to select questions and how to write answers, the next step is to “make order.”
In other words: in what order should the questions be presented? There are several criteria that can be used, but although there is no one best, some are more advisable than others. For example, I do not recommend applying alphabetical order: while this is a more suitable criterion than “chance,” it is rarely the most efficient solution.
In fact, it is preferable to sort questions according to a logical criterion: for example, if you have an e-commerce business that sells different types of products, grouping questions according to the category they refer to might be a good solution. Or again, questions could be grouped according to the type of request (“returns,” “payment method,” “delivery method,” etc.) as in the case of the Zalando site:
Where to put the FAQ page?
The “where” is an aspect often overlooked but not to be underestimated. The best way to address this question is to think about accessibility.
To understand why accessibility is so important, it may be useful to take the example of the user who, just before buying shoes, has the fear of buying a pair that is too small.
Suppose, then, that there is actually an FAQ section in the e-commerce explaining how, in case the size is not right, the return is free. Such an answer would solve the user’s fear, who could then proceed with the purchase in peace.
There is only one problem: the user has never read this information because the FAQ is located somewhere else on the site. For this reason, we recommend making the FAQ page accessible directly from the main navigation menu, or from the footer.
However, remember that a well-developed FAQ page cannot become an excuse for not including the most important information on product pages as well.
How so? Let’s return to our fateful example but imagine that, in this case, the FAQ section is actually prominently displayed among the main menu items. Our user, having located the right item, will click on it to be redirected to the page containing all the Frequently Asked Questions.
Perfect! But here suddenly the phone rings: a Facebook notification! And three seconds later: a WhatsApp message! In this case, it is likely that the average consumer will be easily distracted by the various notifications, and then return to the FAQ page without remembering what brought him there.
In other words, the FAQ has pulled the visitor away from the conversion page, which is now several clicks away. Given all the possible distractions, he may not necessarily decide to return to the product page and the “buy” button.
To avert this risk, it may be a good idea to include some particularly important information from the FAQ (such as the return policy) in the product sheets as well, presenting it in a summarized manner:
Consequently, user experience is, along with SEO optimization, an indispensable factor in the creation of the FAQ page.
Conclusions
In this guide, I have tried to provide an overview to help you understand, step by step, how to create Frequently Asked Questions and make the most of them to increase your e-commerce sales. So let’s recap the main points:
- Don’t have an optimized FAQ page yet? Now is the right time to start! It will help improve your site’s organic ranking, but it will also help remove obstacles to conversion and make your e-commerce more efficient. And all of this can increase sales!
- The best way to select Frequently Asked Questions is through keyword analysis, but if you’ve had an e-commerce for a while, make use of the information you already have as well, and don’t forget to study your competitors!
- Answer the questions using simple language and without rambling.
- Regarding the structure of the FAQ, there are several criteria but categorizing the questions according to the type of request is the most common as well as the most logical way.
- Don’t forget to make the FAQ page easily accessible from the menu or footer (but put the most important information in the product sheets as well).
- An experienced SEO agency will help you optimize your e-commerce and sell more!
And now, have fun!
