FAQ Pages: Examples, Benefits, and When to Add a Help Center

A frequently asked questions (FAQ) page is a simple resource with a big impact. 

It proactively answers common customer questions, clears up any confusion that might get in the way of a purchase, and limits the number of repetitive tickets your customer support team receives so they can focus on higher-impact conversations. 

Plus, an FAQ page sets the foundation for a larger knowledge base or content marketing effort — such as a help center or a blog.

Prepare for a deep dive on FAQ pages: We’ll share FAQ page examples ranging from household brands to smaller ecommerce retailers, simple tips for building your page, and a template generator to get you started. 

We’ll also discuss when it’s time to upgrade your FAQ page into a more thorough help center to provide an even better, more proactive, customer experience. (It’s earlier than you think.)

What is an FAQ page?

An FAQ page is a page on your website that answers your customers’ most frequently asked questions. The questions included on an FAQ page tend to cover key information that’s relevant to most (if not all) visitors: questions about operating hours, product availability, pricing, return policy, basic troubleshooting, and more.

By providing these answers, your customers can get the information they want immediately, without contacting your support team.

FAQ pages are fairly low-tech, but they’re highly strategic. You can spin up an FAQ page in just a few hours and start seeing the benefits immediately, whereas more advanced customer service strategies like customer service automation and omnichannel customer support require a bit more investment.

7 FAQ page examples to emulate and learn from

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits and tips to create the best FAQ pages, let’s study what works (and doesn’t work) on the screen. Check out these seven visual examples of FAQ pages from brands of all sizes and industries.

1) Twitter: A great example for large companies

Twitter’s new-user FAQ places all FAQs onto a running, searchable page. You’ll see plenty of internal links, and notice the navigation bar on the left. Clicking any of those lines will jump users to the relevant section of the FAQ.

On the business side, Twitter has other FAQs that are harder to navigate and much more detailed. But there, the company assumes the user has a higher level of tech familiarity and more specific needs.

For such a behemoth company, multiple FAQ pages make sense. If your company sells many complex products or services, follow Twitter’s lead and consider multiple FAQ pages. But for most companies, the simplicity of one FAQ page is preferable.

2) McDonald’s: Poor organization, good searchability

It’s hard to miss the gigantic search bar on McDonald’s primary FAQ page. Just in case you do miss it, they include a helpful (if gigantic) prompt telling you to search for a question.

For such a sprawling FAQ page, a search bar is a good choice for organization’s sake. The top three questions pictured above don’t seem connected to one another, nor do they seem likely to be the three most popular questions McDonald’s support receives.

Still, for its excellent search and filtering options, McDonald’s is doing good FAQ work.

3) Microsoft: An organized way to provide FAQs for a complex product

Microsoft’s previous central FAQ page was centralized to the extreme, but the company has recently given every service its own FAQ page. Again, for companies with many complex products, this is a good decision. Here’s the page for Microsoft 365, which uses a navigation bar at the top with numerous questions in each section.

The “top questions” section is a smart move, pulling out the most-asked questions from each category and placing them at the top of the page.

Unfortunately, the page isn’t fully searchable: Each answer is hidden from the main page search until you expand the dropdown sections.

4) Nintendo Switch: Great visuals and categories

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The FAQ page for the Nintendo Switch does many things very well. All the questions are on one page, but Nintendo goes above and beyond by providing six visual buttons that jump users to the relevant section on the page. The questions are listed clearly and organized logically, and some questions match search queries closely (“How long will my Nintendo Switch battery last?” and “Can I watch movies on Nintendo Switch?”).

One drawback is that, like Microsoft, Nintendo is using collapsed answers, meaning on-page answers aren’t easily searchable. Worse, there’s no button to expand all answers at once.

5) Wikipedia: Searchable, succinct questions and answers

Wikipedia’s main FAQ page is well built. It conforms to the overall site design (at first glance, it looks like any other wiki page), which is always a good choice. It’s fully searchable, both on-page and using browser search. You can quickly and easily see a list of the 11 questions on the page, and each question is linked to its answer lower down on the page. The answers themselves are succinct and chock full of internal links (as Wikipedia pages tend to be).

Wikipedia also has a FAQ index page, which lists out the 20+ different FAQs on the site. This page is well designed, too: While it doesn’t (and can’t) list out all the questions for every FAQ, it does include strategic keywords that can quickly guide the user to the right FAQ for any use case.

6) Zappos: Great categorization for a complex service

What the Zappos FAQ page lacks in attractiveness, it makes up for in utility. Every question is listed in the navigation section at the top, neatly organized into categories. Each one is linked, too. Scroll down, and you’ll see complete questions and answers without collapsable menus, which is great for on-page searching.

You’ll also see a ton of keyword-rich answers and internal links to other Zappos web pages, increasing the SEO value of this FAQ page.

7) Parade: Good navigation and showcase of company values

Parade, a DTC underwear brand, has an FAQ page with great navigation thanks to the buttons in the left column. And while the dropdown menu might be an opportunity for improvement, Parade is very wise to include a section on sustainability.

Parade markets itself as a sustainable underwear company and attracts customers because of it. Calling yourself sustainable is one thing, but detailing your sustainability efforts in a public, visible place could help convince skeptics that you practice what you preach.

If your brand rests on unique values like Parade, consider including a section in your FAQ page to highlight and explain those values in more detail.

Key benefits of an FAQ page

We identified the FAQ page as one of our top customer service trends because more and more brands have realized just how much time their customer support teams can save by implementing effective self-service resources.

FAQ pages aren’t just great for agents, they’re great for customer experience. A Microsoft study shows that 66% of all customers consult self-service resources before contacting an agent. Think of all the tickets that would save your team.

Ticket deflection is one of four key benefits of an FAQ page, which include:

Deflects repetitive, low-impact tickets from your customer support teams’ queue

FAQ pages free up time for customer support team members by deflecting all the simple frequently asked questions that would otherwise find new life as tedious tickets. Your agents don’t need to spend hours of their day answering questions about your return policy, your shipping rates, or your customer’s order status. These tickets aren’t conversation-starters or relationship-builders — in other words, you’re not missing out on an opportunity to “surprise and delight” your customers by making this kind of administrative information easier for them to access.

Reducing repetitive tickets improves your customer service response time and frees up agents to work on sensitive, urgent, or higher-value support tickets that would otherwise get buried in your helpdesk.

By the way, creating an FAQ page to answer common customer questions is one of our top tips in our CX-Driven Growth Playbook. The playbook shares 18 actionable tactics to boost revenue by 44% by improving CX, which our team put together based on data from 10,000+ merchants who use Gorgias and in-depth interviews with 25 top ecommerce brands using the platform.

Saves customers valuable time

Customers who visit your FAQ page will immediately find answers to your most commonly asked questions in one easily searchable page. They can learn about your product, shipping costs, return and refund policies, and much more — without having to contact or wait for an agent. 

For simple inquiries like these, 68% of people would rather use self-service resources like an FAQ page than contact an agent (and wait for their response). They may clicke a help button on your website, search on Google — more on that below — or even click a link to your FAQ in post-purchase email. Regardless, you want to make information easily accessible, no matter how a customers tries to find it.

Of course, some customers prefer human support, and many questions are too complex for an FAQ page. So, offer a healthy combination of self-service and human support to cover the entire range of customers and questions.

Adds value to search engine optimization (SEO) efforts 

FAQ pages also contribute value to your company’s SEO efforts. FAQ pages, and especially more in-depth help center articles, are a great place to include keywords relevant to your business. If properly search-optimized, your FAQ page can be another entrance point into your website from a search engine results page.

Here’s an example: Someone who wears scrubs at work might Google whether they can wash their scrubs in hot water. A help center article from FIGS, a DTC scrubs brand, appears on the first page of Google’s search results for the question:

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The person who searched the question might click on this link, find their answer, explore FIGS’ website, remember the brand, and eventually return to make a purchase. 

Featured snippets are another SEO consideration. These are the boxes that pop up on search engine results and provide an answer to the query directly at the top of the page. You likely won’t capture featured snippets with a short FAQ page, but an in-depth help center or blog could help you capture that valuable real estate.

If you’re interested in getting your FAQ page to rank on Google, check out this resource on creating SEO-friendly FAQ pages. It walks you through SEO tactics like internal linking and keyword placement to help you appear in more search results.

Also, if you’re just interested in appearing in more Google search results (even if it’s not for your FAQ page), check out our guides on ecommerce SEO and creating ecommerce blog content that ranks on Google.

Encourages trust with your website visitors (which may turn them into customers)

Shoppers — especially potential customers visiting your site for the first time — tend to be a bit distrustful. This is even more true in the world of ecommerce. Everyone has been burned by long shipping times, lost packages, or poor product quality from online shopping.

Earning shopper trust is key to growing your store, and a good FAQ page goes a long way toward that goal. It shows your site visitors that you have clear policies for essential buying considerations like shipping and returns and care about providing a helpful, low-effort customer experience.

Serves as great material for a larger help center or templated responses

An FAQ is helpful on its own, but it can also serve as the bones for additional resources. Specifically, you can use the answers in your FAQ as a templated response — we call them Macros at Gorgias — to quickly answer repetitive questions even if they do submit a ticket.

Likewise, your FAQ can be the beginning of a larger help center or knowledge base. These resources are more robust, organized, and searchable databases of help content that customers can also access on their own, no agent needed. Gorgias takes these self-service help centers a step further by giving customers access to real-time information (like the status of their order) or even modify orders, no agent needed.

Learn more about these advanced self-service tools that make up Gorgias’ Automation Add-On.

What should your FAQ page cover?

Your primary FAQ page should answer questions related to your brand’s:

• Order tracking and management: Explain how and when customers can locate, edit, and cancel their order
• Shipping policy: Explain the cost and estimated time it takes to ship a product (including internationally, if applicable)
• Payment and tax FAQs: Explain how and when sales tax applies to purchases in your store 
• Location and hours: Explain when your staff is available on support channels and (if applicable) your physical location
• Returns policy: Explain how and when customers are eligible to return a product
• Refund, return, and exchange policies: Explain when and how a customer can return a product for an exchange, cash refund, or store credit
• Product FAQs: Answer common questions about your products, including sizing, compatibility, and troubleshooting
• Company FAQs: Summarize your company’s backstory, mission, and any important brand values
• Contact options: Explain how customers can reach your support team, including the estimated response times of each channel
• Safety and security: Explain the precautions you take to protect sensitive customer information

Try to provide succinct, accurate answers to questions in these categories, plus any other common queries your website visitors ask your support team. If you try to cover too many questions on your FAQ page (or answer questions with too much detail), you risk information overload and burying key information.

That said, your FAQ page should not be the entirety of your website’s self-service information. Consider adding more specific, contextual information throughout your website, like product-centric FAQ sections on product pages, or an in-depth, searchable knowledge base with much more information.

A step-by-step guide to creating an FAQ page

If you’re building your first FAQ page from scratch — or revamping an existing one — follow this step-by-step guide.

1) Gather the questions your customers actually frequently ask

The first step is to compile your brand’s most frequently asked questions into a single document. While every brand should cover some essential information — like the categories in the checklist above — you should also compile a list of questions customers have actually asked to make your FAQ page strategic and complete.

If you’re using customer support software, review all your tickets from the past one, two, or six months (depending on the volume of tickets you receive). Sort those tickets into categories like “shipping,” “product,” and “order status” to give you a sense of the areas your FAQ page should cover.  

If you use Gorgias, our customer intent detection can automatically give you this information:

2) Create concise answers to every question

A great FAQ page will provide concise, no-frills answers to specific questions. Keep it brand-friendly, even fun — but keep it concise. 

If your FAQ page starts to look more like Wikipedia than a clean, friendly web page, you might need to scale back your FAQ page and build a more organized knowledge base.

3) Provide a navigation system to keep your page clean

Ideally, you’ll continue adding new questions to your FAQ over time. But as your FAQ page grows, the customer experience could suffer without a clear navigation system. Here are a few navigation ideas you might implement:

• Consider organizing your questions into topic areas with their own headers
• Add a navigation bar to the web page’s sidebar that jumps to topic headers on the page
• Add a search function or search bar (don’t assume all users know how to ctrl + F / command + F their way through your page)

Some of these FAQ page design elements will require some extra coding, but your customers will appreciate this level of page enhancement.

If you use Shopify, you can also search the Shopify App Store for pre-built FAQ page apps with some of these advanced elements.

4) Make the FAQ accessible

When building your FAQ page, aim to make information findable for every customer, no matter how they might phrase a question or try and find the answer. A recent Feefo survey finds that 53% of consumers rank not being able to find the answers to their questions as their top online shopping frustration, so we recommend prioritizing clarity, searchability, and user experience over other aesthetic factors.

When it comes to phrasing, consider all the ways someone might find an answer for the most user-friendly search experience. In your section on refunds, for example, also use phrases like “money back” and “return.” This way, if someone uses Ctrl + F or a search bar, they’re more likely to find the information quickly.

On the topic of Ctrl + F, consider the limiting factor of design elements like dropdowns, or accordions. FAQ pages with dropdown answer sections that collapse and expand may make your FAQ page a little less searchable because collapsed sections don’t always appear with a Ctrl + F search. 

Also, make sure your FAQ page is accessible and highly visible within your website. If the page is buried it won’t serve a purpose. Link to your FAQ from key pages on the website, like the homepage, the checkout page, and product pages. 

5) Make timely updates and refreshes when necessary

An FAQ page is only useful if its information is trustworthy, relevant, and up to date. As a part of your content strategy, make sure you schedule reviews and refreshes of your FAQ page at least once every few months. This way, it will never become outdated or inaccurate.

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Expanding your FAQ page into a full knowledge base or help center 

While an FAQ is a great starting point, a comprehensive knowledge base (also called a help center) is much more effective in preventing unnecessary support questions. Help centers require a bit more front-end work than basic FAQ pages, but their depth and flexibility make them one of the most powerful customer self-service tools.

Your customer support platform should help you create a help center. Gorgias’s native help center integration makes it easy to spin up an in-depth help center to ease the burden on your customer service team and improve customer experience. You can include screenshots, videos, and GIFs to give your customers more user-friendly resources for learning about your products and services.

FAQ page vs. help center

The main difference between an FAQ page and a help center is that FAQ pages are simpler, more concise, and occupy a single page on your website. Help centers are more comprehensive, including multiple categories with several pages or articles in each one.

A help center can be as simple as having multiple FAQ pages by category, or it can be a robust resource for customers that includes tutorials with videos and images, articles for common questions, and even technical documentation. 

Even if you build a help center, keep a separate page for FAQs. This way, you can answer the most common questions on the FAQ page without crowding them with other, more specialized help center articles.

When to start building a more robust help center

Several signals indicate your ecommerce store needs to expand beyond a simple FAQ page. You might need a more robust help center if:

• Your website analytics show heavy traffic to your FAQ page
• You see fewer support tickets after launching your FAQ page, but still get several tickets asking repeat questions (that aren’t addressed on the FAQ page)
• You need categorization and organization as you build out your FAQ page to capture the full breadth and depth of your services

Considerations for building a help center that’s actually helpful

Help centers are valuable resources for ecommerce customers and ecommerce support teams — but only if they’re done right. Keep some of the following tips in mind when planning your help center to ensure that it’s as helpful as possible.

• Use clear category headings and subheadings to help people find the information faster
• Include a search bar to make it easier to find specific articles
• Link to articles that answer related questions to improve searchability and navigation within your help center
• Put your help center in a prominent place in your website’s navigation bar so it’s easy to find, and link to help center articles in relevant content you publish

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How Gorgias makes it easy to launch a full help center

Building a help center from scratch can seem intimidating, but Gorgias has you covered. You can easily customize your Gorgias help center and spend more time crafting effective answers with your internal expertise.

The Gorgias help center is clear and easy to navigate, so your customers can always find what they need. And because Gorgias’ help center integrates with the rest of the customer service platform, it’s easy to incorporate help articles into customer communications. This is a seamless way to give customers more support resources, contributing to a better customer experience.

If you have our automation add-on, you can also let customers track and manage their orders from within the help center — no need to contact an agent:

Once a customer clicks “Track” and identifies themselves, they’ll receive detailed order information without talking to an agent (or having to wait):

5 help center examples

Take a look at how these four companies keep their help centers organized, easy to search, and comprehensive. 

1) Yoto: Great organization and contact form

Yoto’s help center is an excellent example of an effective, well-organized, and searchable customer resource. This Gorgias-run help center is divided into FAQ blocks under several categories: deliveries and returns, general trouble shooting, using the product, FAQ, and other popular questions.

On top of great organization, Yoto’s help center offers a contact form where shoppers can send a detailed message to the customer care team at Yoto. The contact form features customizable topics, which get automatically tagged in Gorgias. 

2) Dropbox: Prominent, auto-fill search bar

The Dropbox Help Center (not built on Gorgias) straddles the line between FAQ page and knowledge base, but it does so very intelligently. You’ll find top articles with tons of internal linking, plus links to significant service areas.

But the best part by far is the search bar. It’s quite responsive, proactively suggesting full article titles even as you begin typing a portion of a keyword.

3) Bank of America: Detailed organization and trending topics

Banking can get complex in a hurry, which is why Bank of America’s Help Center (also not built on Gorgias) impresses. After choosing your state of residence (which customizes certain rate information), you’ll land on a rich page with six service areas, each with five or more sub-areas. You’ll also find trending topics across the top, a powerful search bar, and a button that breaks out several additional topics.

4) Branch: Helpful self-service order tracking

Branch’s help center is another prime example of a well-executed self-service strategy. It includes a search bar, self-service order tracker, issue reporter, and a host of support articles under nine different categories. This is all possible because the help center brings in the full power of Gorgias’ self-service features.

And if the customer can’t find what they’re looking for within the articles, Branch provides contact information at the bottom of the main help center page with two simple options: chat or email.

5) Bully Max: Integration into the core website

Bully Max’s help center, which runs on Gorgias, features the same great search bar, automated order tracking, and clear categorization of Branch’s help center. The major difference is that (with the help of some additional coding), Bully Max embedded the help center in their core site. 

This way, customers can still see the store’s regular header and footer, and will still get notifications, pop-ups that offer discounts, and any other features that would get left out of a standalone help center.

Ready to build an FAQ page? Use Gorgias’ template generator to get started 

Ready to add an FAQ page to your website? Use our free FAQ page template generator to create a page with general categories like payments, shipping, and returns. Use this template as a starting point — most brands will need to add sections:

• A section on product FAQs: This is where you can answer questions that tend to occur around your product, like sizing for clothes or compatibility for electronics
• A section on brand values: This is where you can show off any differentiators you want to show off, like sustainability or locally sourced materials

Combine self-service with agent support for the ultimate customer experience

Your new FAQ is just the beginning of your investment in customer experience. As your brand grows, improve your customer experience with other self-service tools like auto-responses and self-service flows in your live chat widget. And your helpdesk can still send customers who need human support to live agents — who will actually have time to answer:

Gorgias is the ecommerce helpdesk solution that powers exceptional customer service on every channel, including email, live chat, social media, text, voice, and more.

By combining Gorgias’ self-service features with empowered agent support, you can create a customer experience that reduces effort shoppers, lets your customer support agents focus on high-value tickets, and ultimately drives revenue.

Ready to see what Gorgias can do for you? Sign up for free today.

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