Help and FAQ page best practices: Really helpful help

Depending on the nature of your site, the Help and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) can span a few pages or several pages. Creating these sections of your site can greatly improve a visitor’s experience with your website. These pages are often searched for by shoppers looking for a little extra information to help them feel confident about their purchase.

Comprehensive FAQ and Help pages can often reduce visitor confusion, reduce repetition of support calls, and create higher conversion rates as more shoppers feel satisfied and confident that you can meet their needs.

Zero in visitor needs

The most important aspect of the help and FAQ pages is that you answer the questions that your visitors actually ask, not just the ones you want them to ask. Speak with customer service and sales to find out what these questions are, and check back frequently. You want to make sure you don’t miss any new questions or issues your customers face.

Once you know what questions customers have and what they need help with, you’ll want to make sure that the Help and FAQ pages comprehensively cover these issues.

best practices

Here are some additional tips to make the Help and FAQ pages as useful and usable as possible:

1. Help pages are not limited to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s). Provide links to other useful resources, including:
   • User Manuals
   • caller data
   • Product Support
   • Customer Support Downloads
   • Customer Forums
2. Allow visitors to use the search function of your site to search exclusively for help and FAQ pages. If the requested information cannot be found in the Help or FAQ sections, the search should yield more results than the rest of the site.
3. Make the help sections print-friendly. Visitors often print answers to their questions to show other decision makers. Having pages that are easy to print benefits you and your visitors.
4. Avoid marketing. The Help and FAQ pages must not contain any marketing or sales material. These pages are there simply to direct your visitors to the answers they are looking for. Stick to the basics.

Help & Divert

Help and FAQ pages can be important to your conversion process. The better your site is at addressing visitor questions and issues, the more likely it is to acquire and retain long-term customers, all while reducing pressure on your sales and customer service teams.