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Ask HN: Eliminating FAQs

4 points by jakecarpenter ↗ HN
FAQs seem to be a a required feature of most sites these days, and at best they provide answers to the questions the site owner wants you to ask, and at worst they are used only as a marketing tool. I stopped looking at them years ago, and looking at my logs, so have my users. Does anyone have any examples of a well done alternative? Is there a better solution? Are sketchy FAQs even a problem to anyone but me?

9 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] thread
jacquesm
FAQ's are a poor version of 'context sensitive help', the context is usually a lot better known than the 'FAQ' link would have you believe. Over the years we've collected the questions our users have really asked and we really answered them, that's the basis of our FAQ, and it is being used (even by users from off-site that come in through google).

If I would do it again, I'd use a simple 'help' (or ?) button in most places to link directly to the relevant FAQ entry.

If your website is very technical in nature (and some are), I don't think there is a way around the FAQ, the people that use their FAQ for stupid marketing speak ought to be shot for misleading the public and devaluing a genuinely useful construct.

It seems that with the increase of time the probability of any surface turning into a bill board approaches '1'.

Unfortunately FAQs seem to be subject to this law.

jakecarpenter
I guess part of my complaint is also this: People often put a bunch of answers to questions out there that no one asked, usually because the site isn't self explanatory, if people are really asking you questions, you have a great opportunity to fix your site, not make a list of fixes to the stuff that is broken on your site.
jacquesm
But not all questions in a FAQ have to be 'about the site'. For instance, we have an enormous section on how to get various pieces of hardware to work with our software.

Basically the FAQ is our first line of 'defense' in the support process, we hope that the FAQ will help the user, if that isn't the case a 'real live person' (tm) will take care of the request.

Other things about billing and account issues and so on have found their spot there. It saves us tons of support questions and that really helps to keep us productive. If a question was never answered before it goes in to the FAQ in the appropriate section.

So, really we should probably call it 'QTALSAO' but that's a bit non-standard :)

bhousel
Your visitors might not actually ask you the questions, but you can bet that anyone visiting your site for the first time is at least asking themselves similar questions in their head: What is this? Why should I care? Who built it? How much does it cost?
yannis
If a website needs a FAQ, it needs a revamp! If you know what your users are asking, simplify your navigation and copy so that users can find these answers easily.

The answers to FAQ should be on the front page!

If your users stopped looking at them pat yourself at the back and remove them :).

makecheck
You're using a site that has an FAQ. :) And when I look at what's in HN's FAQ, I don't think I'd want all that information on the front page.

On the other hand, there are changes that could be useful. For instance, "rules about submissions" could be on the Submit page, and "rules for comments" could appear when actually commenting. A lot of the other things could be written or linked from a user's profile page.

tokenadult
On the other hand, there are changes that could be useful. For instance, "rules about submissions" could be on the Submit page, and "rules for comments" could appear when actually commenting. A lot of the other things could be written or linked from a user's profile page.

Those are great suggestions for the Feature Requests thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

bhousel
I dunno.. When I'm evaluating whether or not a new site is worth my time, I look at: 1. screenshots/examples, 2. FAQ, 3. About Us (in that order).

These won't show up in any significant way in your logs, because after the users have digested the information there, they won't go back to those pages again. But I still think those pages are crucial in making the initial impression / conversion, and also to a lesser extent, SEO.

bhousel
It's probably also worth mentioning that if a site has a video tutorial describing what it does (or what the company does), I pretty much just forget the whole site completely and go elsewhere. I just don't have time for much more than a quick scan of a bulleted or numbered list, or maybe a page of copy.

Just one opinion..