{"id":1802,"date":"2020-12-04T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T07:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.lexsys.de\/hoechste-zeit-ihre-faqs-loszuwerden-nicht-so-eilig\/"},"modified":"2024-09-20T17:09:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T15:09:27","slug":"faqs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/faqs\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to kill your FAQs? Not so fast!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve all been there \u2014 new to a service or product and desperate for information on how to use it. We have questions and we want them answered NOW. But anyone who has ever reached out for tech support knows that the difference between what you as a buyer want to know<\/em><\/strong> and what they as a seller think you want to know<\/em><\/strong> can make the difference between a satisfied customer and an unsatisfied one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is that when we\u2019re in the driver\u2019s seat \u2013 that is, creating for a customer instead of being one \u2013 we can\u2019t seem to provide the right information at the right time? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rightly, criticism has been lobbed at the ubiquitous FAQ pages on websites. FAQs, shorthand for frequently asked questions, often lead customers from \u201cknow where\u201d to \u201cnowhere,\u201d say critics. Most FAQ pages don\u2019t contain frequently asked questions at all \u2013 instead, they serve as a kind of dumping ground for the \u201cfrequently assumed questions\u201d that product teams think customers want answered. As James Hupp, a content strategist and supervisor for the US government agency 18F, put it: “FAQs are a way to show you’ve thought about what your users should know but haven’t thought about your users.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, there are many good reasons to get rid of your FAQs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re old<\/a>, a holdover from the earliest days of the web when content was more company-centric than customer-centric. They\u2019re not well maintained<\/a>, because they are often created for new sites and get ignored, despite new developments in company sales and services. Or, worse, they\u2019re too slow for a fast world<\/a>, because instead of being properly maintained they become long and unsorted lists with trivial questions ranked as important as the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If this is the kind of FAQ page you\u2019re offering your customers, stop reading this post and give us a call. We are happy to help you create the right website content that can improve the customer service experience of your brand, worldwide.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you\u2019re not convinced that your FAQs need to go, don\u2019t worry \u2013 you\u2019re in good company. Amazon, Siemens, Google, Apple \u2013 they all have an FAQ page, several in fact! Indeed, despite the reasons we listed above, FAQ pages continue to play an important role in the websites of the world\u2019s leading companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what can you learn from them to make your company\u2019s FAQs more meaningful for your customers? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use FAQ to win at SEO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Search Engine Journal, FAQ pages are one of nine essential website pages that create the most value in search<\/a>, right alongside the home page and the contact page. The rise of Google rich answer boxes is a major reason. \u201cFAQ pages are ready-made for getting your content to appear in the coveted answer box,\u201d said Stoney G. deGeyter, vice president for search and advertising at the Karcher Group. Google even offers tools for web developers to help them structure their FAQ data<\/a> to yield the best search results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Audit your FAQs for performance <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau answers thousands of questions on issues ranging from auto loans to mortgages through its FAQ tool, AskCFPB. In an interview with Digital.gov<\/a>, the then product manager Ashley Gordon stated that just 10 to 15 percent of its content draws the most traffic. \u201cWe are going through a three-phased approach to determine why some questions get more traffic than others,\u201d said Gordon. \u201cIn addition, as relevant rules change, we have to audit our content. For example, we have 300 questions about mortgages, and many of them will need to be updated in the near future.\u201d Besides improving search results, an FAQ audit can help you identify and fix the customer pain points that are damaging your company-customer relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to (and answer) your users <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Steve Krug, author of the bestselling web usability book Don\u2019t Make Me Think, put it simply: \u201cWhen you\u2019re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks.\u201d Don\u2019t make the mistake of creating an FAQ page that tells more than it answers. If Google rich answer boxes are any indication, it\u2019s that customer\u2019s are eager to have quick and ready access to their most pressing questions. So it\u2019s your job to ensure that, for your customers, answers are easy to find and useful, whether these are pre-sales questions or post-sales support queries. This effort in designing the FAQ page can be invaluable for also showing your customers that your organization is already and actively listening to their concerns. As the usability consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group<\/a> said, \u201cThe flow of information in and out of the FAQ shows visitors that sales, marketing, customer service, and UX [personnel] are on top of active customer issues.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same respect, we want to hear from you about your experience with FAQs. Share with us in the comments below or call us to get help with your own! <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking about ditching your FAQs? Maybe you should think twice before you do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-creation-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexsys.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}