Once a homepage staple, an informal scan by PR News of random Web sites turned up fewer Frequently Asked Questions sections than expected. Of those sites that have FAQ sections, they are often buried—no longer front and center on the site’s menu.
Web site design and content specialists all have FAQ pros and cons. First the cons:
• Today’s sites are all about interaction and video—FAQ sections are too static, and just plain boring.
• In an age of transparency and two-way conversations, FAQs are often fake, invented by staff.
• It’s a design issue: information architecture has changed drastically in the last 10 years, making FAQs unnecessary.
And pros:
• FAQs save a communication staff time and resources.
• They are a tried-and-true way to present more administrative-type information, such as membership info or regulatory issues.
• FAQs allow customer service reps to concentrate on more serious problems.
FAQs About FAQs
There are good arguments for and against FAQs, but perhaps the most overriding one is budget: for a smaller organization with limited dollars for content creation and search applications, FAQs can be valuable. There are ways to upgrade your FAQ sections as well as alternative solutions to FAQ, including the following:
Is the FAQ section on life support?
Not quite, says Doug Davidson, founder and principle of Alacrity Creative, a Dallas-based Web design and content company. “FAQs still have a certain amount of usefulness, but are not as big as they were,” says Davidson. “They are more like a year 2000 feature.” Davidson adds that he tries to avoid building FAQ sections for clients.
My FAQ section needs attention. How can I make it less static and more useful for visitors?
There are ways to improve your current FAQ section(s) to make them more palatable for visitors, says Carla Brown, online project operations manager of Washington, D.C.-based National Wildlife Federation.
In a recent internal boot camp on writing for the Web, the NWF staff pulled up “dry FAQ pages,” including membership information. Here’s what was revised:
• Questions were placed under sub-headings “so visitors can at least get to the main topic they’re searching for,” says Brown.
• Questions were revised using parallel sentence structure, which reduces the amount of reading time. For example:
Question 1: Can I purchase NWF T-shirts?”
Question 2: Can I purchase tickets to NWF events?
• Experiment with highlighting key words in the questions. “We used to underline the whole question, and we’ve experimented with just underlining key word,” she says.
What are some alternatives to FAQs?
On the March of Dimes Web site, within its Pregnancy and Newborn Health Education Center page, there is an “Ask Us Now” box, which provides answers to often lengthy, complex and personal questions, says Michelle Miller, director of e-business at the March of Dimes. While that feature does require considerable resources (questions are usually answered within 24 to 48 hours), it also serves as collection area for FAQs such as “Can I get my hair dyed at the beauty parlor if I’m pregnant?”
Miller says that site visitors have found their own alternatives to FAQ sections—within message boards (which they monitor) and even in comment sections of blogs.
NWF’s Brown prefers to see FAQs in other forms such as Q&As and lists. “I love making Web sites with Q&A protocol,” says Brown, adding that creating the Q&As do require more resources and investment. Brown points to an example on the NWF’s kids site, where “Ranger Rick” answers real questions from kids about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Another play on FAQs comes in list form. On the NWF site, there’s a list titled “Four things you can do to help the wildlife and coastal habitat impacted by the BP oil spill.” Links are provided to landing pages for each option.
How much does search play into the effectiveness of FAQs?
Search plays a big role in FAQ effectiveness, says Brown, since visitors are often thwarted by the inability to find the right FAQ. For those organizations on a budget, Brown recommends a look at the Google Mini search application. Larger organizations with the available dollars go for much more expensive search apps, some with branching logic features, she says. PRN
CONTACT:
Doug Davidson, [email protected], Carla Brown, www.nwf.org; Michelle Miller, [email protected].
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