FAQs

A couple of Susan’s points

I’m only going to talk about a couple of Susan’s points. I’m aware it's Christmas Eve eve. I'm sure you want to get to the mince pies.

“Good websites don’t need FAQs; we already have search”

This point went on to say how search doesn’t always work and that sites use organisational vocabulary and not user vocabulary – that’s why we should have FAQs. I disagree.

If search isn’t working – fix search, don’t duplicate content to mask the problem.

If you write using the audience’s vocabulary (and if you aren’t doing that, what are you doing?) and use good content design principles, then you don’t need an FAQ to help you out.

“FAQs will expose our bugs and usability issues”

The supporting argument for this one was about showing that your organisation cares.

My first thought was: fix the problem instead of writing an FAQ about it. Of course, sometimes this isn’t practical. But an FAQ page?

What about an ‘our services’ page where you can constantly talk to people. Or use social media etc to address problems proactively. Or, if you are lucky enough to have a planned outage etc, communicate with your audience before it happens, or put it on the pages when it is necessary for the customer journey.

Not sure putting it in an FAQ says ‘we care’.