A carefully constructed set of FAQs, or frequently asked questions, is a useful addition to virtually any eCommerce site. However, it will serve a particularly important role if you sell technical products or offer services that require a lot of information.
If you provide a page that answers common customer problems or queries, a quick check of your FAQs is very often all a shopper needs to do to save themselves the hassle of making a call to your customer support number.
This makes your FAQs page a highly efficient self-service customer support tool that helps to free up your phone lines, meaning shorter waiting times for those people who do need to contact you and less staffing time dedicated to dealing with customer queries.
A well-executed FAQs section can also encourage sales by equipping visitors with the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. It also creates a good impression by presenting you as a professional and helpful online retailer.
But even though your FAQs can make a big difference to your sales conversion rate, you should avoid the temptation to use it for promoting products and instead focus squarely on providing customer support.
Whereas your product details pages give comprehensive information that answer very specific product-related questions, your FAQs should answer the more general questions that customers frequently ask.
A list of FAQs that doesn’t genuinely answer any frequently asked questions is pretty useless. So take some time to find out what questions people really do ask by monitoring your customer support calls, emails and messages and use those as a basis for your FAQs page.
And remember to keep your FAQs up to date as your eCommerce site evolves. Delete any questions that are no longer relevant and add new ones that answer queries about any new products or services that you provide.
Avoid the temptation of simply presenting your FAQs as a randomly ordered list of common questions. Structure your FAQs in such a way to make it easy for customers to find the information they need:
Consider recording a simple message on your customer support line that suggests callers look at your online FAQs first before speaking to an advisor. This can save your business money by significantly reducing the number of telephone queries you are left to deal with.