Yext : How Including A Q & A Section On Your Website Will Help You Retain Customers

A Q & A section may sound like a trivial part of your website, but it brings a lot more value than first meets the eye. Not only will it help answer potential and existing customer questions, but it can also point new customers to your business, increase activity, and thus increase conversion rates.

Q & A Sections are a Time-Saver

People are busier now than ever before. Our schedules are overflowing with tasks, and we're all craving convenience in our lives so we can try to find more time in the day.

52% of shoppers say at least half of their purchases are influenced by convenience, and an overwhelming 93% say they are more likely to choose a retailer based on convenience. With numbers like that, it's clear your business strategy should focus on being convenient for today's shoppers.

For many of us, our phone is the first place we look when we need information. And when we have direct questions, we want direct answers - fast. No one has the patience to sit on hold, so if you can anticipate the most popular questions pertaining to your brand and answer them in text on your website, you've answered the customer's call for convenience.

Imagine yourself moving through the customer journey and what types of questions you would have about your brand along the way to provide the most current and accurate answers.

Maintain Control of Your Digital Footprint

Users can find the answers to almost any question on their trusted search engine, but when you offer a Q & A section on your site, you're able to control the real facts and keep the most up-to-date information readily available. If you leave it to Google, you're more likely to lose them to a distracting ad, or worse yet, your competitor.

With that in mind, it's important to have an on-site search bar that's easy to find on all pages of your website. This way, if people don't want to spend time skimming questions, they can do a quick search that will lead them to the correct answer.

The goal is to be the official source for all things related to your brand and keep the answers users are looking for within your site.

The Q & A Section Will Save You Money

Live support doesn't come cheap. It takes a lot of resources to run a call center, but you may be able to cut down on some of the calls by providing answers on your website. Even if your business is not quite big enough for a call center, the old adage is still true: as Benjamin Franklin wrote all the way back in 1748, "time is money."

If you can publicly answer the most common questions, it will take some of the burdens off your support staff so they can handle the more difficult queries. The Q & A section is a great supplemental resource for lightweight questions, but it can't replace product support altogether.

Consumers still enjoy interacting with a live person for more complex issues, so it's also important to display different support options. Live chat is an added convenience, but if that's not possible, provide a phone number and email where someone can get in touch with the right department.

That being said, the staff that currently handles product inquiries should be the first place you turn to when putting together a list of questions users are looking for. The support team can be your ally in identifying the most frequently asked questions and the team can look forward to focusing their time on the complex issues. To stay ahead of the curve, you should confer with them regularly and update the Q & A page as necessary.

Q & A Sections Build Trust and Loyalty

Admittedly, this one can sound far-fetched at first, but it's actually true. If your company seems to understand the customer's concerns and is addressing them head-on through the Q&A section, visitors to your site are more likely to become loyal, repeat customers.

Although you're not personally handling each inquiry, Q&A creates a sense of availability to the customer. You can establish trust in your brand and showcase your product expertise by establishing authority in your niche. You and your team know the best way to answer the difficult questions that will ease concerns and lead them towards confidence in your product.

Q & A Pages Drive Traffic

This one is particularly exciting because many people don't realize what Q&A can do for SEO and site navigation. A well-thought-out FAQ resource can be optimized like a sitemap with applicable hyperlinks to the pages you want the most eyes on. In addition, addressing user questions on separate pages will help your URL appear in search.

Search engines were created to deliver answers to consumers. You can bring in new visitors with organic search and drive them to related pages - usually relevant blogs or product pages with information similar to the questions being answered. You'll be able to capture an audience that may not be looking for answers related to your specific brand, but has questions related to your industry and competitors. When you link them to an article or a product page that goes into more detail, it helps provide shoppers with the full story before making a purchase.

As users have more facts to feel confident in their purchase, conversion rates go up.

Site Optimization & Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets are helpful short snippets of text that appear first in Google search results to quickly answer a searcher's query. The content that appears in a Featured Snippet is automatically generated from web pages in Google's index. It's a prime spot to be in as it appears below the ads, but right above the #1 organic search result.

There is no guaranteed way to have your content appear as a featured snippet, but you can increase your odds by providing answers to popular searches. Snippets are programmed with an algorithm that searches for the page that best answers the user's question.

As more and more users are using voice search and virtual assistants today, you can make it easier for search engines to pull your content when you write the most frequently asked questions in a longer, more conversational manner. Q & A sections are perfectly suited for voice search and featured snippets because they naturally have the requirements needed, like being in the Question-Answer format.

A Q & A Section Can Provide Valuable Insights

By researching the data and click rate for links on your Q & A page, you can gather valuable insights about your product or service. For example, if you have a high rate of clicks on a question asking how to utilize a specific product feature, you'll know you need to work on making it more user-friendly to the average consumer.

As you meet with your support team to stay up-to-date on the most common user questions, you can look back to the original categories used to segment your support cases and analyze the data further. Are there any differences in consumer behavior between now and before? Are customers experiencing the same problems?

Having your staff put time into these "bigger picture" questions will be more beneficial to your business in the long run than overwhelming them with ongoing simple issues.

Stay Proactive

You are likely to see a decrease in negative reviews and experiences with a detailed Q & A page. A lot of problems can be avoided by keeping people well-informed - and when consumers have realistic expectations, they're less likely to be unhappy.

Be sure to keep the information you offer convenient by creating appropriate categories and providing answers clearly and concisely. You want it to be aesthetically pleasing, but keep it simple so users can quickly find what they need. Most people do like to see a little brand personality come, but don't go overboard in this section.

Conclusion

A well-optimized Q & A section is a very important component of the overall user experience. Of course, it's a helpful tool for both existing and potential customers, but it's an asset in more ways than one. When you combine critical thinking with a little creativity, your Q & A page can successfully pull in new visitors, keep them there longer, and produce a higher conversion rate.

It's a time-saver to busy shoppers looking for quick answers and helps your employees save time to focus on the bigger issues. With a smart device in nearly everyone's hands now, it's much more reasonable to provide answers they can locate quickly on the web. This can help cut the costs of dedicated support staff, or in the least, allow them to utilize their time more efficiently.

You can maintain control of the customer journey for your brand by offering complete and accurate answers on your own domain. With voice search and AI technology in mind, you can optimize your site to answer questions more conversationally and increase your odds of being featured in search engines. Don't forget to utilize data analytics to your advantage so you can continue perfecting your product and steer users in the right direction.

If you would like to learn more about Yext Pages, schedule a personal demo today.

Sources:

1. Consumer View Winter 2020 | National Retail Federation
2. How Adding Q&A Content to Your Product Detail Pages Can Increase Conversions and Drive Traffic | OMG Commerce
3. Number of voice assistants in use worldwide 2019-2024 | Statista

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Optimization