Most website owners are using their FAQ sections all wrong.
A well crafted FAQ section on your website can increase your chances of pulling in perfect leads - there’s no doubt about it.
The problem is, most FAQ sections are tragically underused, and many website owners are missing an amazing opportunity to convert visitors into clients.
These are the mistakes most businesses make:
❌ They use their FAQ sections to dump SEO keywords, or see them as extra wording to make Google happy.
❌ They add a tonne of irrelevant questions that their customers would never actually ask.
❌ They make their FAQ sections too generic, addressing questions about the company itself or their services as a whole.
❌ They don’t really understand the purpose of an FAQ section, they just add it in because every other website in their industry has one.
Imagine this scenario:
Your ideal client or customer has nearly finished reading a page on your website that details one of your services. She’s really interested, but she’s got another web page open from a different business who provides a very similar service to yours (ie. your competitor).
Your website visitor is trying to decide which business to contact.
She scrolls right to the end of the page, eager to take in every detail to help her make her decision. What you offer sounds like exactly what she needs, but she’s hesitating.
There are some niggles at the back of her mind. She’s super busy, and she’s not sure how much time will be needed from her if she books your service. It would also be a bit of a financial hit to pay this amount of money upfront, but if there was a payment plan…
She flicks over to your competitor’s web page, and, after scrolling all the way to the end, sees ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.
Right there, she reads:
“How much time will I need to commit to this process?”
Underneath is a breakdown of exactly how much time is required of her.
Then:
“Do you offer payment plans?”
Yes, they offer a payment plan which sounds a lot more manageable than paying the whole lot up front.
There are two or three more FAQs, but she’s already heading over to the ‘Book a Call’ button.
FAQs are for potential customers who are on the verge of making a decision
The website copy on your main pages needs to be concise and to the point. It also needs to clarify the key points of what you offer, talk about the benefits, explain exactly who your service is for… but this article isn’t supposed to be a lesson in writing web copy.
The FAQ section is to address extra concerns and objections that potential clients might have, but which don’t need to be discussed in your main page copy.
This way you can keep your page scannable and concise, without boring the pants of your visitors and making their eyes glaze over (you’ve read those mega long sales pages - you know what I’m talking about!)
How to come up with FAQs that are actually useful
➡️ Think about the questions people have asked you when they were on the verge of buying. Maybe you sent a proposal over already, but they had a few concerns that needed to be addressed. Maybe they sent you a quick email before booking a call with you, just to clarify something. Chances are they’re not the only ones who have had these questions cross their mind.
➡️ Use ChatGPT (stay with me). Copy and paste the text from your service/sales page into ChatGPT. Ask it to come up with any concerns or objections that potential buyers might have. Then you can address them in the FAQs.
➡️ If you’re anti-AI and want to use your own brain, imagine you’re having a conversation with a potential client. They say ‘I really wanna go ahead, but “…” and then they tell you what they’re worried about.
DON’T do these things with your FAQs:
These are based on mistakes I see all the time ‘in the wild’.
(Ps. I never imagined I’d become someone who gets annoyed by seeing an underutilised FAQ section… but here we are.)
Don’t use generic questions like ‘What is a copywriter’?
Believe me, if you run a copywriting business, and your ideal client has read all the way to the end of one of your service pages, they’re not going to be asking ‘what’s a copywriter’?
Using irrelevant questions like this is a waste of space, and if you do have some relevant, useful questions in your FAQs, they’ll be obscured by the irrelevant ones.
Don’t use questions that might be better as a blog post
If you feel the need to write a super long explanation as an answer to a ‘question’, OR you’re trying to get a few more keywords into your page… congrats, you’ve found yourself a new topic for a blog post! Type it up properly and publish it on your site - you’ll find it does a lot more for your SEO that way.
Don’t put all your FAQs on a separate ‘FAQs page’
FAQs have way more impact when they’re relevant to what your visitor has just read. Sticking them all on a separate page means they’re less likely to get read, and they’re probably likely to end up being more generic (and less useful).
Don’t use more than 5 or 6 questions
Just like all the other content on your website, the more concise and to the point it is, the more likely it’s going to get read and absorbed. Don’t dilute your FAQs with a huge long list of questions. If you find yourself with more than about 6 genuine concerns a customer might have, it might be a sign that you haven’t covered the key points well enough in the main page copy.
Don’t display all your answers in full, immediately
What I mean here is you should use a toggle or ‘accordion’ to show just the questions, so visitors can click on the ones that are relevant to them. Listing out all the answers in full just means your reader has to scroll through a lot of text that might be irrelevant to them, before they come to a question that’s useful.
Here’s an example - it’s a screenshot of the FAQ section for my Website Strategy Consultation service:
Here’s a quick ‘to do’ for you:
1. Open your to-do list or your calendar, whatever you use to make sure stuff gets done.
2. Schedule a bit of time to re-think the FAQs on your website.
3. Think about the most useful questions you can answer, and where they’ll have the most impact.
4. Then make sure the changes happen!