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Are your FAQs Questions your Customers Actually Ask Frequently?

question-bastWhen was the last time you went to a website looking for some information about a product or service?  Did they have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)?  Was the information you were looking for actually there?  A lot of times FAQs are only marketing driven – trying to cover any doubts a customer may have about purchasing a product.  But there is a real opportunity to provide useful information for your customers by providing answers to questions they actually ask frequently.

Obviously listening to your customers is one way to find out what types of questions they may have – and the best way –  support and sales people often are a good source within your company.  Another source of information is the search functionality on your website (if you have one).  What searches are people performing on your website?  Those may be the types of questions that are worthwhile to provide answers for (and make easy to find).

If you don’t have search on your website, or don’t have a good way to tell what people are searching for (both I would recommend remedying), take a look at the searches (keywords) that people use to come to your site from outside search engines.  This is information that the search engines feel you are good at answering, so it may be a good idea to make sure your answers are well rounded and provide all the information your customers (or potential customers) need.

The best source of FAQs really should be your customers.  Provide contact forms and periodically poll your customers (both in-person and online), to make sure you really do have all their frequently asked questions answered. By providing FAQs that your customers actually need, you’ll provide more support information for current customers and more purchasing information for potential customers.

(photo by -bast- @ Flickr CC)

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RSS Getting Started Guide

rssphotopiahimysyedI recently had a reader ask me about how to use RSS.  He had seen my post about using RSS to monitor his brand, was interested in giving it a try, but wasn’t sure how to get started. So here’s how to get started:

  1. Choose a feed or RSS reader. There are many websites which provide this service – including iGoogle, Google Reader, Bloglines, and My Yahoo.  Most web browsers and some email programs also provide this functionality.  And there are also applications you can download so you can read feeds right from your desktop. You can find a list here or here. I personally like Google Reader because I can read my feeds from any computer and my phone and it stays updated with what I’ve read and haven’t read.
  2. Look for feeds to subscribe to. Feeds will usually be marked with an icon:001_31 or one that says RSS, or you’ll see a link that says subscribe to this site/page.  Sometimes a feed isn’t clearly marked, but the website still has one.  If you don’t see a feed icon, try putting the URL/link to the website into your feed reader – many will detect feeds for you.
  3. Read your feeds. I’m subscribed to many, many feeds.  But I find that I can easy scan what’s going on – without necessarily reading every feed.  It saves the hassle of visiting every single website for updates – but I do still visit some to bookmark a page in delicious or to comment on an article.

So, that’s it.  Pretty simple and straight-forward.  Once you’ve chosen a feed reader, most provide specific instructions on how to use them.  If you have any other questions about how to use RSS, please email me (or leave a comment below).

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17 Tips for Good Business Website Design

designgeishaboy500If you are creating a business website, or looking for ways to improve yours, here are some tips to consider:

  1. Make it Clear – exactly what your company does should be available on the upper half of your home page.
  2. Describe Benefits – Customers only care what benefits your product or services gives them.
  3. Who Are You – Contact information should be easy to find (at least a link from every page, ideally a phone number or email).
  4. Customers Need Support – If customers have a problem, support information should be easy to find.  If the information you provide online isn’t enough, give them a way to contact you.
  5. Minimize Clicks – Keep the number of clicks to a minimum – for any activity on your site, but especially for buying processes.
  6. Purchasing Information – Give customers all the information they need to make a purchase on any product page and/or landing page.
  7. Minimize Distractions – Keep flashing, moving and distracting items to a minimum – even if they provide additional information.
  8. Design Down – Not everyone has state-of-the-art technology.  Design for the lowest generally accepted standards (which are widely available around the web).
  9. Consistent Menus – Menus should be consistent throughout the site to make it easy for customers to find things.
  10. Clear Page Titles – Page titles should make it clear where a customer is – use descriptive words for both the web browser window title and for text on the page.
  11. Don’t Touch the Back Button – Do not _ever_ disable the back button.  Customers need to be able to back out of wherever they may go.
  12. Avoid Popup Windows – unless they provide pertinent information to the current page and are initiated by the customer.
  13. Let Your Customer Be In Control – any extra features, such as audio, video, popups, etc. should only activate when a customer clicks on them.  Have you ever been at work when a website suddenly started making annoying sounds out of your speakers?  Don’t do that to your customers.
  14. Make it Readable – Fonts need to be easy to read in terms of size, font type and colors – include what color the background is.  Make sure to use high contrast colors to make your text easy to read.
  15. Whitespace is Your Friend – Space between items on your page is critical for customers to be able to scan through the page to find what they’re looking for.
  16. Consistent Layout – Try to keep the layouts of your pages consistent, so at least your pages look like they belong to the same website.  Navigation and information about where on the site a customer is should be in the same place.
  17. Search Should Be Easy – Most people expect a search to be in the upper right region of a page – or at least near the top.

I intend this list to be a work in progress.  What other good design tips should be used on business websites?

(photo by geishaboy500 @ Flickr CC)