Your website is your digital storefront. Most people will Google you before visiting your physical store—and if you have a good local search strategy in place, they’re going to find you. But once they find you, is it easy to find the information they’re looking for?
This is where FAQ pages come in.
FAQ pages help you educate new website visitors and make it easier to turn them into paying customers. Unless they’re returning customers, your website visitors are likely to have questions that need to be answered before they go through with buying from you.
If website users can’t find the information they need to feel comfortable making buying decisions, chances are they’ll browse other small business websites and go with one of those instead.
What Questions Belong on an FAQ Page
Your FAQ page should cover everything your local customers need to know to fully engage with your business (even if it’s included in your other web content). It should be simple and scannable so that people find the information they’re looking for quickly. After all, convenience is the key to winning the modern consumer’s heart.
Here are a few basic points that every FAQ page should include.
→In-Store Information
By tapping into local SEO, you’re tapping into local customers. Your website visitors are considering visiting businesses in the area—which means you can turn them into physical traffic for your store. Think about what practical information would help them to have a great customer experience in your store. They might want to find:
- Your store’s address(es)
- Your business hours
- Store policies (like return information or payment information)
→Online Store Information
Just because you’ve been discovered through local SEO doesn’t necessarily mean the visitor is going to head in-store. They might prefer to make a purchase through your online store instead, so include relevant information about your online store on your FAQ page. Include information like:
- Where you ship to
- How long delivery usually takes
- Your return policy for online orders
Answers to these questions may reduce the feelings of risk and uncertainty people experience when purchasing from a local business for the first time.
Now that you’ve got your questions sorted, let’s look at what makes effective FAQ answers.
FAQ Section Best Practices for Local Search Visibility
If local search results have brought a visitor to your website and they’re browsing your FAQs, clearly they have a keen interest in your business. That’s the power of local intent. Whether they’re looking to visit brick-and-mortar businesses or want to purchase from your online store, make the most of the opportunity to turn prospects into new customers. An effective FAQ page will help that process.
→ Make it Easy to Find
Most people know to head to the FAQ section if they’re looking for a specific piece of information that they can’t find on their initial browse of the website. If your FAQ page is hard to find, your website visitors might just turn to your competitors.
We’d recommend putting a link to your FAQ section in the menu of your website and even referencing it in other parts of your web content when relevant.
→ Keep SEO in Mind
Your FAQ page presents an opportunity to attract new customers through search engine optimization (SEO). For local businesses (especially brick-and-mortar businesses that rely on footfall), local SEO is a game changer, because it means there’s less competition with big names who have big marketing budgets.
For your FAQ to rank in local search results, include location-specific keywords in your answers. You can use SEO tools (like Semrush or Moz) to help you choose the right keywords to target. And don’t forget to look into what’s ranking on mobile search because customers on the go will most likely use their mobile devices to find your business.
→ Update Regularly
Keeping your FAQ section up to date helps with local search visibility and ensures you’ve always got effective FAQs that meet the needs of potential customers. Maybe you find there are new common questions being asked that you can add. Or maybe your business hours have changed. How about business updates? From a change in business hours to new features, small businesses are constantly evolving and adapting. Make sure to keep your local customers in the loop.
→ Keep it Organized
An effective FAQ page is scannable so visitors can go straight to the answer they need. If you’ve got a lot of questions, you could organize the page into sections as well. Adding a search bar would also increase the efficiency of the user experience massively, especially if you add voice search capabilities which are growing in popularity.
→ Include Actual Questions from Your Customers
There’s no need to overcomplicate this. To provide a better understanding of your local business for website visitors, answer the most common questions you get asked. Once you’ve attracted new visitors from local SEO, it’s your job to keep them engaged. So your FAQ section should give the information potential customers are looking for and typing into search engines.
Tips for Writing Good Questions & Answers
While keeping SEO best practices in mind is important, don’t forget about the value of good content. Good FAQ sections have the following characteristics.
→ Write From the POV of Your Customer
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and answer questions from their point of view. Additionally, try to avoid industry-specific jargon. If they’re struggling to decipher your website content, visitors will quickly click away, upping your bounce rate and potentially adding to your competitors’ bottom lines.
→ Keep Answers Short and Concise
The purpose of the FAQ section is to give information. It doesn’t need to be padded with anything else. Focus on creating a better understanding of your business for your customers.
→ Show Some Personality
One of the appealing factors of local businesses is that they don’t have a corporate veneer. Convey what your business is all about by letting your personality shine across your website content.
→ Fully Answer the Question
Don’t direct readers to another page to get their answer—that defeats the purpose of compiling your FAQs in one place. Provide a complete answer within the FAQ page and include links to other content for more detail where relevant.
Examples Of Great FAQ pages
Now, let’s see all of these tips in action. Here are a few companies that got it right with their FAQ pages.
HelloFresh has a really well-organized FAQ section with categories that help customers to find their answers easily.
Hootsuite has its own help center to direct customers to the information they need to use their tool, ending with a variety of supportive resources.
Headspace has kept its FAQs concise and customer-focus, using dropdown answers for easy browsing.
Your FAQ Page Matters
By creating an effective FAQ section on your website, your business will experience dual benefits. With customers being able to easily find key information about your business, you’ll improve sales and customer loyalty due to a streamlined customer experience.
Optimizing your FAQs gives your business more of a chance of appearing on search engines in local search results. This will make your sales team busier too!
If you haven’t added an FAQ section yet or you haven’t updated it in a while, it’s a task worth doing to improve your bottom line.
