As markets become more competitive, product marketers have to climb an uphill battle to get into the mind of their prospects within eight seconds or lesser
Every customer has their own set of problems, to which they want a solution quickly. They wouldn’t want to take the effort to navigate one page after another, just to look for one piece of information.
This is where FAQs come in. They can be shown in a dedicated page in the website, or embedded in a product page visited by prospective buyers before making a purchase decision.
Over the last six weeks, we at Airim analysed FAQ pages of 280 websites in three industries – financial services, education (including universities). We checked their bounce rates from SimilarWeb and noted their bounce rates. Then we narrowed down to 42 websites that had a bounce rate lower than 45% and traffic of more than 10,000 visits per month.
Websites with lower bounce rates actually had surprisingly different ways of approaching their FAQs. Six aspects made them stand out:
- They answer basic questions such as “What is X” and “How it works” : Search engines love FAQs page. If your target audience is searching for a question in natural language that involves the problem your product is solving, the text you write in your FAQs page can shoot your website up in the search results. Even a new user on your website is more likely to check FAQs right after the homepage to understand what you do in a non-salesy language.
- Write your content using the same words your customer speaks: The best way to connect with your customer is by using the same lingo as them. Successful marketers usually do that by including keywords and phrases their buyers search most in Google, which also helps boost their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) ranking.
- Shorter the question, the better: Let’s be honest here, who wants to read a three sentence question? Long questions tend to confuse and disinterest visitors. On the flipside, a long list of short questions isn’t any better. Finding the right balance is key. When in doubt, phrase questions like a child would ask them.
- Shorter the answers, the better: Answers should be in three sentences or less. One sentence is ideal, but sometimes it may not provide enough clarity. If you cannot go below 3–4 sentences, use bullet points. Visuals and video links can be more effective than plain text.
5. Consider having different FAQs in each page: Many companies have one page for all FAQs irrespective of topics they belong to. From the reader point of view, navigating through miles of questions can definitely get annoying. More so on a mobile screen. Websites with best UX design usually have a small set of FAQs on different pages such as Pricing, How it works, etc. in addition to a dedicated FAQ page. Implementing this is a bit tricky, so here is one way to make it easier.
6. Keep your FAQs updated: Your business is constantly evolving, which makes it important to keep your content updated as well. This becomes especially important for companies in SaaS (where product layout is prone to change), financial services (where regulations keep changing) and education (where change in academic year can mean updating several data points).
Hope this was helpful. Got more suggestions? Let us know in comments below.