1 - Design Is Still Important For FAQs
FAQ page design is just as important as the questions and answers themselves. An effective layout can improve the user experience and make website visitors more likely to actually use the page.
A good FAQ page should have a clear and organised structure with headings, subheadings, and categories to help visitors find the information they're looking for. Expandable sections let you keep the page short to avoid overwhelming the visitor with too much information at once, making it easier to scan and scroll.
In addition, whether you're using an FAQ page template or creating it from scratch, you should maintain consistent formatting, which means headings should be the same size as other headings with use of bullet points, spacing, and alignment.
Your FAQ page should also include engaging visual elements like icons to help customers visually identify questions and answers.
2 - Keep The Page Updated
Once the page is live, it doesn't mean it’s finished. We recommend revisiting it every 6 months to ensure all the information is up to date and accurate - making sure you remove anything that’s incorrect, and adding new information where necessary.
One great tip is to mine content from your customer-facing teams - they’re the ones best placed to understand your customer pain points as they’ll be dealing with them day in, day out. Ask them what questions they’re asked and make sure they’re incorporated into the page.
3 - Use a Q&A Format
A clear ‘questions and answers’ format is useful for SEO - people search on Google using questions, and some results snippets in Google search results are presented in the same way. If your page is formatted in a Q&A style, it sets the page up to perform well in search.
4 - Internal Linking
Your FAQ page is also a good place to improve your internal linking (this refers to links between key pages on your site, which is also beneficial for SEO). You can link from your FAQ page to other key, related pages such as your shipping page, returns page, privacy policy, articles with more information etc.
5 - Structured Data
Use structured data, or schema, to format your content (this is a great tip that can be applied across your Shopify site, not just your FAQ page). Here’s an overview of what schema is and how it can help.
The main purpose of Google’s search engine is to provide users with the best possible results. And you want Google to understand everything about your business so it is more likely to be presented to your potential customers in the results pages.
This is where ‘structured data’ comes in.
Structured data is a standardised format which provides information to search engines about a web page and its contents. For example if you have a recipe page, structured data will enable you to classify details such as ‘ingredients’, ‘cooking time’, ‘calories’ etc.
When it comes to ecommerce stores, there is structured data, or ‘schema markup’, available for products, collection pages, homepage and blogs, for example.
Structured data doesn’t change how your website appears to visitors. The code is amended behind the scenes to organise information into categories, to help search engines better understand your content.
It helps to optimise your Shopify store for faster indexing and better results in search, leading to higher traffic, and hopefully more sales on your store.
Using structured data can also help you win those coveted ‘rich results’ places on Google, like featured snippets, the knowledge panel, local packs, video carousels or a place in the ‘people also ask’ section.
There are two main ways I’d recommend adding schema. The first one is by hiring a Shopify expert to add the structured data to your store.
The second is by using a Shopify app. If you type ‘schema’ into the search bar on the app store, you’ll see lots of apps available that can implement the structured data on your store. They guide you through providing the relevant information, which is then implemented automatically onto the page.
You can test if it's been implemented properly by using Google’s Rich Results Test. Just paste in the URL you want to check and it will give you suggestions, warnings, and let you know what structured data is present on the page.
6 - Get The Questions Right
As mentioned in point 2, use real questions that your customers ask you. See which questions keep being asked. What gives people pause before purchasing? What doubts might they have? The more you can automate the answers to these questions, the easier you’ll make it for your customers to make the decision to buy.
Look at your competitors’ FAQ pages for inspiration. See if you can answer the questions better than they can - this will help increase your chances of being featured in the results pages, plus earning extra credibility points from your customers by becoming the trusted source.
Use other resources like Google, Quora or forums. Google’s Autosuggest feature lets you see the commonly asked questions people search for. This can be a good place for inspiration for what questions to put on your own FAQ page.
Quora is a site designed to answer people’s questions. Type in a topic and spend some time seeing what’s being asked and answered.
7 - Keep Answers Short and Avoid Jargon
Get to the point quickly - people want answers, and they want them fast so give the people what they want. Also, make sure you explain any jargon, acronyms or industry-specific language to avoid confusing your readers.
8 - Make It Easy To Find
Help users find your FAQ easily by linking to it on highly visible web pages like:
The homepage
A landing page
The navigation menu
Also link back to your FAQs wherever appropriate from other areas of your site.
9 - Make It Easy To Contact Support
On an FAQ page, you should also incorporate multiple opportunities for a customer to contact a person if they can’t find their answer. You can do this in a few different ways.
Link to your contact page in the navigation bar at the top of your website. You can make it ‘sticky’ so it remains in place even as the visitor scrolls down the page.
Insert call-to-action sections so people can easily contact someone for help.
Add a chat widget so users can receive help from a chatbot or via live chat. These are great for delivering real-time support, especially for recurring or common issues that are relatively simple to solve.
10 - Add Social Buttons
If you add social buttons to your FAQ page, you can let people share your helpful answers on forums or in social media. This is free promotional activity and might even bring some extra visitors to your site.
Also, during interactions with users on social media, if you have a shareable FAQ you can save time and effort. Just copy the relevant URL and send any user directly to the answer.
FAQ Page Examples
Here are some examples of brands who have done a great job of creating FAQ areas on their site that are comprehensive, useful and easy to use.
Beer52
Beer52's FAQ page is pretty comprehensive, and laid out in a simple way. Each question opens in an accordian when clicked, and in a nice touch, at the top they've included links to some key pages, including a contact us section with a phone number and postal address (strangely, no email address though).
Liquid Death
A lovely, clear, and straightforward set of FAQs for Liquid Death. It starts with some general questions and further down has sections for key areas like 'orders', 'payments' and 'shipping'.
The only thing missing is a clear contact form in case the customer's question remains unanswered and they want to get in touch.
Lucy and Yak
We really like the layout of this FAQ page - they've directly addressed the top queries at the top (returns, problems with products, order tracking etc). It's all clearly separated in clean boxes with icons for clarity.
Further down there are categorised sections that click through to articles on those topics.
Finally, at the bottom of the page there's the option to send a message to the support team, in the event that your query hasn't been solved by any of the content above.
Figs
Figs looks kind of like Gymshark but for medical professionals who wear scrubs. Their FAQ page (or 'help centre') is another great example. A search bar is at the top, and based on what you type, a dropdown opens with a list of articles and resources containing that keyword.
The sections below the search bar are clearly labelled with a title and icon, and click through to a list of questions and articles on each of the topics.
Bonus points for the 'contact us' box at the bottom, just in case.
A drop-down on the left that opens each section in an accordian when clicked, or alternatively you can use the pastel-shaded blocks to click through to more information on each topic.
Beneath the blocks are a list of 'popular articles' to save people looking for the most common answers like 'how to make a video call'.
If you follow our tips and use these examples as inspiration, you can create an FAQ page on your own Shopify store that will help your customers find the answers they need and save you a whole lot of time answering the same questions time and time again.
