HOW TO SAVE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN TWO HOURS

Using Your Web Site To Save Money, Give Your Customers The Answers They Want AND Get You And Your Employees Off The Phone

An Armchair Webmaster™ report by Ty Belknap

Page 5 - Giving Your Customers Peace of Mind: Organizing Your Information For Best Results

TOC
FAQ Page Layout
The “Top 10” Rule
Naming The Page
Keep Your FAQ Page Up To Date

Organization is the key to an informative FAQ page. Have you ever looked for the spelling of a word in the dictionary? The problem is, if you don’t know how to spell it, how are you going to find it, right? I’ve spent hours trying to find the spelling of a word before. Don’t let your FAQ page be like that.

FAQ Page Layout

Web designers are a creative group of people, and we sometimes go for the aesthetic rather than the practical. Don’t fall into that trap with your FAQ page!

The layout of a FAQ page is just as important as the information that goes into it. The page must be arranged to be visually appealing and easily read. This is not the place to use small script fonts with bright, contrasting backgrounds (unless you must to keep the feel of the site in general). The FAQ page is where your customers are going for answers. They are confused, and they may be a bit frustrated also. Give them a safe haven from the Internet Information Storm.

Ebay(www.ebay.com and click on help) does a much better job of making a FAQ page look inviting than Amazon.com (www.amazon.com and click on help). Look at both of the sites, can you see the difference?

Some helpful tips:

• Use a decent-sized, easily read title.
• Don’t clutter the page.
• Use simple, direct questions.
• No more than 10 questions/answers unless you split them into categories.
• Keep a list of the top-asked questions as the main focus even if you use categories.

Let’s look at each of these.

Use a decent-sized, easily read title

Have you ever been given directions to a place, and one road (that you needed) was missing the street sign?

Not using titles on each Web page is the second worst mistake anyone can make in creating a Web site (***SIDEBAR the first is terrible navigation, but that is another ebook.). How are people going to know where they are if you don’t tell them? And, if you don’t tell them, they are going to LEAVE. Here are some consequences that may happen when someone gets frustrated with your Web site and leaves.

• They will never come back.
• They will never buy from you.
• They will tell their friends not to go to your Web site.

I read a report that, in general, we tell 10 people about a bad experience we have as a customer, but we only tell 1 person about a good experience. The statistics are against us, and our goal (yours and mine) is to GET customers, and KEEP them happy, isn’t it?

Don’t clutter the page
A cluttered page makes finding information very difficult. This is not the place for marketing or advertising, This is the place to help clear your customers’ minds. Use white-space to give the air of a simple, easy-to-follow page (white space can be used in every page of your Web site. Go to www.intra-designs.com/tips to learn more.

Use simple, direct questions
Keep to simple, concise questions and answers. See the “Top 10 Rule” below for more information.

No more than 10 questions/answers unless you split them into categories
See “organizing a FAQ page” and the “Top 10 Rule” below

Keep a list of the top-asked questions as the main focus even if you use categories
There will always be certain questions that get asked more than any others, and they may span categories. Keep the top 5-7 asked questions as a highlight on the page, even if you have categories. Your customers will love you for it.

You should have all your questions and answers written down by now, so the next issue is how to organize them. There are several ways to organize the information in a FAQ page:

• Alphabetical listings
• Most-asked questions
• Categories
• Most-asked categories

Lets look at each of these.

Alphabetical listings
Alphabetical listings are the simplest way to organize the FAQ page, but not always the best. For instance, consider these questions on a FAQ page:

• What is… {your business}
• Why should I shop with you?
• What are your hours?
• How are you different?

These are all legitimate questions for a FAQ page, but they are all part of the “who, what, where, why, how” group, and putting them into alphabetical order won’t help much.

Most-asked questions
The best way to help your customers is to give them the most-asked questions first. Your goal isn’t to just answer questions, it’s to answer questions so the customer is more willing to buy. The customer isn’t going to get that “warm, fuzzy” feeling if he/she can’t find the answers.
Use the results of researching your questions to determine which are the most important and, therefore, the questions that go to the top of the page.

Categories
You can use categories if you have a larger site (several hundred pages of information), but only if you absolutely have to. Remember, keep it simple. Your customers will like you more if they can easily navigate your FAQ page. For instance, Ebay has the top 5 most-asked questions at the top of the page, then category listings below that.
FAQ pages with alphabetical category listings are rare. In fact, I couldn’t find any.
Never put more than 7 questions in a category on your main FAQ page, and try to keep it under 5. Remember, we want to keep it simple. Each category should have very few popular questions. Put those on the main page, with a more… link below to the category page. Answers to all category questions should link to another page for that category.

A category FAQ page should be several pages long, with a separate page for each category. Only the most popular questions of the entire site should be answered on the main page.

Most-asked categories
Categories shouldn’t be used at all unless you can create at least three. Even then, you should put a “top 5” list above your categories, because you will find that there are a select few questions that most people ask.

Put the most popular category at the top, if you must use one, and each lower category should be in that position of popularity. Ebay’s help page shows how categories can be used effectively.

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The “Top 10” Rule

Customers don’t want marketing materials in the middle of a FAQ page. Your Web site is a marketing medium, so keep the FAQ page simple and limited to answers your customers really want.

We are on information overload and sometimes it seems our brains cannot hold another thought. This isn’t limited to just us, either, it’s a world-wide problem, and your job is to be part of the solution. Look at a normal FAQ page (my apologies, I was hoping to compare the FAQ pages of several restaurants, but, after searching for some time, I couldn’t find any). Lets compare the FAQ pages of two companies, PayPal (www.paypal.com) and A&W restaurants (www.awrestaurants.com).

A&W Restaurants: This restaurant chain spans most US states, yet it’s FAQ page has a total of 4 (four) questions and answers. The first question is whether the root beer and restaurant are owned by the same company (they aren’t), but is that a question you, as a customer, would ask? I might, but it wouldn’t be in the top four questions I have. I’m more interested in how they cook their food, where I can find their restaurants, and so forth. Neither of these questions is answered in their FAQ though.

PayPal Online Payments: “The leader in online payments” (their motto), and possibly the leader in long lists of questions. PayPal is the opposite of A&W. Their “top questions” list goes down two screens. I stopped counting after 30. While I’m sure the questions are important, anything over 10 should be put into categories.

Keep your FAQ page to 10 questions or less. As a good example, look at Amazon.com (www.amazon.com). Go to their Help page and look at how many questions show up as “most common.” Yes, there are a lot of questions, but they are split into categories. Each category has up to 5 questions, with a “more…” link at the bottom to go to that category.

Most small businesses won’t need more than 10 questions in the FAQ page. As you listen to yourself, your employees, and your customers, you will come to find that all the questions can be boiled down to much more basic questions and answers.
Make It Easy To Find The Information, And Get Back To The Table Of Contents.

• Use broader, simple questions
• Keep it simple to read and understand
• Link to the menu after every answer

Let’s look at these items.

Use Broader, simple questions
Keep the questions simple and broad.
For instance,
How long is your store open?
What are your hours?
What days are you open?
You don’t want to make each of these a separate question. They can all be answered with one simple question/answer.
You should already have a long list of possible questions. Now is the time to pool those questions into categories and determine how often they are asked. Look for questions that can be solved with one answer, and popular questions that have an easy answer.

Keep it simple to read and understand
I come from a networking background, and I could write a FAQ page about computers. A very popular question among peers might be:
What is the maximum overclocking capabilities of the P4 chip on a Asus MLB?
Now, if you are a normal person, I probably just sent your mind spinning, but the question makes sense to networking engineers. Ah, I see the light going on in your head. You are an expert at your type of business, and it’s easy to think over the heads of your customers. What if I said:
How can you speed up a computer without buying new parts?
That’s understandable by anyone, and it’s just a simplified version of the question above.
Keep it simple, and you will have happy customers. Look at every question you’re going to put into your FAQ page and ask yourself if it makes sense to a 10-year old. 10-year olds are smart, and very savvy these days, but they look at things a lot more directly than us adults do.
Once you think you have it down, ask the opinions of friends, neighbors, strangers, kids, or anyone’s arm you can grab. These are the people that will be looking at the FAQ page, so design it for them.

Link to the menu after every answer
This is simple. Just put a <back to menu>, or (back to top), or just “back” and link it to the top of the page.

Brain-Filler: Linking to different spots on the same page is called anchoring.

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Naming The Page

The actual name of your FAQ page can be almost anything, depending on whether you want your customers to find it or not. You can always use simple, easy to understand words like:
FAQ
Help
Support
Guidance
Assistance

Or you can use other types of words like:
Illumination (not good for a lighting company, it would be confusing)
Advisement
Information
Be careful, though. You want your customers to find the page easily. Most Web sites stick with FAQ.

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Keep Your FAQ Page Up To Date

The information on your FAQ page will become obsolete. You may have a whole new set of frequent questions come up after you’ve answered your first list, or the order of importance may change.
Look it over every 6 months or so to make sure it’s still up to date. Is there something that needs to be changed? Change it! An out-of-date Web site is a turn-off for your customer.

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Page 1 - Introduction | Page 2 - Saving Time, Man-Hours and Money Using the Internet | Page 3 - Stress Relief 101: Creating the Information That Goes Into A FAQ Page | Page 4 - Taking The Time To Save Time | Page 5 - Giving Your Customers Peace of Mind: Organizing Your Information For Best Results | Page 6 - Put It All Together! | Page 7 - Conclusion