pompey_john Posted September 22, 2005 Posted September 22, 2005 Is there any correct etiquette, or format. What makes a good FAQ? I have had a look online but not found anything yet - anyone have any ideas? thanks in advance, Quote
owatagal Posted September 22, 2005 Posted September 22, 2005 As something of a FAQ addict-- A good FAQ will fit in with the site. So if you have a serious, business-like site, the FAQ should also be serious and to the point. If you have a sarcastic or snarky site, your FAQ can reflect that sarcastic/snarky tone. No matter what the tone, the FAQ should always provide actual information for your visitors--questions (and answers!) they actually want. If you don't already know what your visitors would be looking for on this page, check out your competitors and use their pages as an initial guide. Eventually, you'll get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly from your visitors and will realize those questions need to go on your FAQ. The standard formatting used to be a hyperlinked list of the questions at the top of the page followed by the questions/answers at the bottom -- this way visitors can either click the one question they need an answer to or just read down the page. Recently I've seen more FAQs that skip the list of questions and just dive straight to question/answer. The question/answer format is still the gold standard. The few sites I've seen that tried to move their FAQ away from questions and into just straight paragraphs didn't do it well. It's useful to your visitors if, at the bottom of the page, you include a blub telling them what to do next if their question still isn't answered -- visit your forum, link to the contact forum, provide a telephone or address for them to contact you, whatever works for your site. My biggest issue with FAQs are that sites either don't answer the most obvious questions in their FAQ and it's useless to me OR they try to answer every question under the sun and I can't find the one I actually need. The trick is to find the balance between too much/too little -- again, start by looking at your competitors' sites to get a general idea. Quote
pompey_john Posted September 22, 2005 Author Posted September 22, 2005 As something of a FAQ addict-- A good FAQ will fit in with the site. So if you have a serious, business-like site, the FAQ should also be serious and to the point. If you have a sarcastic or snarky site, your FAQ can reflect that sarcastic/snarky tone. No matter what the tone, the FAQ should always provide actual information for your visitors--questions (and answers!) they actually want. If you don't already know what your visitors would be looking for on this page, check out your competitors and use their pages as an initial guide. Eventually, you'll get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly from your visitors and will realize those questions need to go on your FAQ. The standard formatting used to be a hyperlinked list of the questions at the top of the page followed by the questions/answers at the bottom -- this way visitors can either click the one question they need an answer to or just read down the page. Recently I've seen more FAQs that skip the list of questions and just dive straight to question/answer. The question/answer format is still the gold standard. The few sites I've seen that tried to move their FAQ away from questions and into just straight paragraphs didn't do it well. It's useful to your visitors if, at the bottom of the page, you include a blub telling them what to do next if their question still isn't answered -- visit your forum, link to the contact forum, provide a telephone or address for them to contact you, whatever works for your site. My biggest issue with FAQs are that sites either don't answer the most obvious questions in their FAQ and it's useless to me OR they try to answer every question under the sun and I can't find the one I actually need. The trick is to find the balance between too much/too little -- again, start by looking at your competitors' sites to get a general idea. Aesome man thank you!!! Although I dont er...... really have any competitors for this site - check out opensourcemusic.info - I think the FAQ code is working now. I have seen that start with revision info and stuff like that - do you think I should include this? Quote
carbonize Posted October 4, 2005 Posted October 4, 2005 I wrote a FAQ for Lazarus which can be found at http://lazarus.carbonize.co.uk/faq.php I went for the method of putting the questions at the top of the page which link to the answers which are further down the page. Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted October 4, 2005 Posted October 4, 2005 I've used an expandable list from flooble for one. It works quite well and supports all browsers I tested in. http://www.flooble.com/scripts/expand.php Quote
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