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No more FAQs

Lisa Maria Martin gives some advice on What To Do With Those Dreaded FAQs:

These all underscore FAQs’ fatal flaw: they are content without context, delivered without regard for the larger experience of the website. You can hear the absurdity in the name itself: if users are asking the same questions so frequently, then there is an obvious gulf between their needs and the site content. (And if not, then we have a labeling problem.) Instead of sending users to a jumble of maybe-it’s-here-maybe-it’s-not questions, the answers to FAQs should be found naturally throughout a website. They are not separated, not isolated, not other. They are the content.

We’re definitely in agreement about that. A while I go I wrote this:

Most users don’t know what FAQ stands for, and besides, it’s bad practice to answer questions outside the context people want to ask them in. Figure out where in the process each question in your FAQ might come up, and provide the answer right there within the flow. Don’t expect people to click to a different page to find the information they need.

By the way, 24 ways is a collection of fantastic design and development articles and tutorials for advent. If it’s not part of your daily reading yet, make it so!