You may occasionally see Frequently Asked Question format (FAQs) on the web, but we don’t recommend them because current research and user testing suggests:
FAQ’s lead to duplication
If a question is frequently asked, it means you need to improve your content.
Simply structure content clearly so you don’t need a page of FAQ’s repeating the same information in a different way.
If customers are asking lots of question about council tax bills, just have a simple findable heading or link – ‘Council Tax bills’, with relevant information.
FAQ’s confuse web searches
Because FAQ’s often duplicate content that is available on the site anyway they can lead to confusing or competing search results for customers and worse can lead to inconsistent information.
If you feel the need to write FAQ’s look at reorganising your content first.
FAQ’s are hard to read
People don’t read on the web, they scan and they lose patience quickly.
FAQ’s are harder work for readers - questions take longer to scan and understand than simple headings and you can’t take any meaning from them in a quick glance.
Instead we front load content - we put the term most people are looking for at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph. If you write all subheadings with how/what/when/why (which you have to do with an FAQ) you can’t frontload.
This means users can’t scan the words quickly, and they can’t understand quickly.
FAQ’s are too wordy
All sorts of people have to use our website.
We have to write for everyone so we write simply and clearly. We remove all duplication and superfluous text.
FAQ's and artificial intelligence (AI) search
Some early research suggests FAQs might help AI tools, like chatbots, find and show answers more easily. However, the best way to optimise for AI search is still to write clear, short content in plain English, using descriptive and meaningful headings. Our design and content guidelines explain how to do this.
The web team will keep reviewing research and trusted advice to make sure our content follows best practice.
General guidance:
- use FAQs only when there is clear evidence people need them, such as high call volumes or common website search queries
- if users have to rely on FAQs to understand a service, the main content needs improving
- FAQs should support good content, not fix poor or unclear content