What are Frequently Asked Questions?
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) help your prospects when they are teetering on the see-saw of maybe buying your course or looking for a slightly different course with something added or removed.
Some common questions that can help customers proceed to a final purchase could include:
- What level of skill should a student have?
- What apps or tools should a student have?
- How long will the purchased content be available for?
FAQs can help take a prospect that is almost a customer and help them finally buy that creative course by removing the fear or explaining that you deliver more to help them achieve their goals.
Where to place your FAQ
FAQs are usually placed in the lower half of the course sales information page.
This way you can start your sales page with critical content like:
- Cover & Title (The class hero image and big bold title)
- Course Summary (About your art class)
- Key Lessons & Modules (What are the specific lessons)
- Who Is This Course For (Possible creative student types)
Then anytime after those critical starter sections, you can add in the FAQ section.
You may want to insert it strategically so that sequentially from the top you have a cover picture, text, picture, text, picture, text (Frequently Asked Questions), picture, text, buy button.
And don’t forget to have another buy button near the bottom, but after the FAQ section – which primes the customer by answering questions so that they are ready to purchase. PS. Add a buy button at the top too, because some people know what they want, so just let them check out.
Use Real Questions
Don’t just have a FAQ section to check a course completion box or to be like other courses, but actually try to answer your student questions.
Start off by answering the basic sales questions about cost, content, access, and duration.
Then answer specific questions about your class content like tools required, skill level, specific topics.
Finally, if you have some space, you can add in extras like bonus material, student Q&A areas, and community portal access. Though in some cases, these are great topics for a bonus section outside of your FAQs.
Use Short Questions
Try to summarize your questions in about 5 to 10 words. You don’t have to be super explicit and verbose.
Many people will scan the questions, so you want to use a concise question with a few keywords that pop out when they are looking for certain concerns like how long will they have access to the course.
For example:
How long can I access the course videos, workbooks, and samples? (Less skimmable)
How long do I have access to the course? (Just right)
How long is access? (Maybe too short)
Highlight Keywords In Your Questions
To help customers that skim sales copy, you may want to highlight keywords within your questions.
For example:
- How much is this intro to 3D course?
- Are there any sample files included with models, textures, or animations?
- How long does it take to compale the entire course?
Hide Answers On FAQs
Answers should be short, or hidden by default. You don’t want big paragraphs of answers using up valuable sales page space.
A good approach is to hide all the answers, but put a link to open up the answer if they are interested in a specific question. When you tap the open icon, then the answer will be revealed for just that question.
This design is generally called an accordion pattern. This is because a user can open up one question at a time, and the other questions move as each question is opened and closed.
The icon that makes the question expand can be a +, >, ˅, or even a text link like “More”. We like the clean and language independence of a simple icon over a text button. A good FAQ design will also change the icon once the question is open and shown. The user can then click it again to collapse and hide the answer. This is useful if people are quickly opening and checking a few answers at the same time.
You can also change the font color and size of questions that have answers opened vs closed. See how in the example below the question with a hidden answer is in gray.
An example of a question with a closed / hidden answer:
An example of a question with an open / hidden answer:
How To Separate Your Questions?
You can use whitespace to separate each question. This is done by using multiple lines and adding about 10 to 20 pixels of padding at the bottom of each question. For short lists, this offers a minimalistic user interface without a lot of extra clutter
You can also have a very light gray or medium gray horizontal rule to separate each question. This is helpful if there are a large number of questions. It also helps to prompt the user to click the expand icon to reveal the answers.
How Long Do I Have Access
Customers want to know that if they go slow, that this course content will still be active. This is a fairly common and important question
Other students want to know that the lessons and resources are still going to be active 1 or more years into the future when they may need to know an exact skill and want to come back to this course resource.
Finally, some customers are looking for lifetime access, not necessarily because they will need the content in 10 years, but because it looks like a good value when choosing or comparing courses.
Is This Course For You
This critical question to customers should probably have its own dedicated section if you can. In some cases, if your course platform does not allow you to add custom sections, then this would be a good question to add to your FAQs.
Answering this question will further convince your prospects that this course is really for them. It will have answers like for amateur photographers, or for designers who are looking to go beyond the basics.
Please see the article Is this online course right for you that fully explains how to create a good answer that helps prospects feel assured that this course is exactly what they need.
What Is Your Cancellation Policy?
This is an important question that should be included whether you support refunds or do not.
Since your course is primarily online, you should be aware that some people could buy the course, and binge to consume all the required modules in just a few hours.
If your course supports student stats, you could put in a clause that says students can get a partial or full refund if they purchased the course but didn’t access any of the materials. This is especially useful if students encounter technical issues with their device, media player, or internet.
If you are looking for a generic no/sometimes answer you can use something like:
Because the course is online and available instantly after purchase, we do not offer refunds …
Viewing Your Art Class On A Phone Or Tablet
This is a really important question for some customers. They may want to be able to watch the course in a variety of places like the kitchen, bed, workbench, or even on public transportation on the way to work.
You should know if your learning management system (Thinkific, LearnDash, etc) supports mobile and tablet viewing modes. If it does, you should definitely promote those options, as they will be important to some of your prospects and can be a major buying factor.
The same principle applies to mobile phone support. You may want to explicitly call out support for Android and Apple platforms.
Optimize Your FAQ Questions
If you start to notice 2 or 3 variations of similar questions, you may want to combine them into one overarching question.
Examples of similar questions:
- Are any workbooks are included with the course?
- What bonus content is available with the course?
- How long will I have access to the course materials?
Optimized to:
- What extra content like guides are included with the course?
Notice that you can answer secondary level questions like the length of access for materials inside of the primary question which materials come with the course.
What often happens is that over time, you get questions or you see other course questions and you add them into your FAQ. But this will eventually create a large and complicated FAQ section. Therefore, combining common questions makes sense, so that you can address a broad range of true questions that are important to your buyers.
Group Your FAQs
After you have optimized your questions to major topics, you should consider grouping your remaining similar questions together. For example, group all the billing questions together.
You can display visual “sub-groups” with labels like “Billing Questions”. Even without subgroups, you can simply put related questions together.
For example: These two, similar but distinct questions that should be near each other
- Which Adobe PhotoShop version will I learn?
- Do I need the Adobe Creative Cloud in order to take the class?
Order Of Your Frequently Asked Questions
Once you document your questions, you should think about the order.
If you have more than 10 FAQs, consider putting the most important ones on top. This way users can scan the FAQs and see the most important questions.
Over time you should update your FAQs to answer the most popular questions right away before your customers lose interest or click away.
Too Many Questions
It is not recommended to show 15 or more questions to buyers. If you do have many questions, you can use a More button to show an additional set of questions for those users looking for secondary level questions.
Most users will probably skim the FAQs and may view (open and unhide) a few questions that are helpful for their consideration.
Over time, you should further optimize and simplify your sales page by removing questions that don’t actually help new customers.
Avoid Sending Customers Away From The Sales Page
While a website service FAQ can take a user to more detailed pages, it is best if a course sales page, tries to answer the question as best as possible while keeping the user on the page so they can eventually scroll down and buy.
If you really need to provide more info, you could do it by launching a new tab or pop up with additional information. This way the user will not lose their current path as they gather more information prior to making a purchase.
Other Course Questions
Consider what a prospective student who is interested but still has a few questions would do?
Do you offer a path forward where prospects can ask you a question that is blocking them from purchasing your course?
Perhaps you can have a final question or link that says “Have another question?” that allows a prospect to fill out a quick online form or email you with a question. You may want to even offer a live chat of sorts during certain hours of the day.
After you answer the question you could even include a coupon to sweeten the deal and secure the sale.
FAQs Also Help With Search Engines
FAQs not only help customers, but they also help search engines find your course sales page. This is because all the juicy and specific questions and answers will help prospects find your course.
So you may want to use this to your advantage by including content with keywords that are part of common search queries.
For example:
- Do I need a microphone to take this course?
- Will I really learn how to sing broadway musicals?
- What student ages are ideal for this course?
In this example, the search terms sing broadway musicals should produce pages such as this course information page which includes a question and an answer that targets broadway musicals. For extra benefit, you can use the verb “sing” in the question and “singing” in the answer.
You may even be able to make each question in your FAQ a header tag, instead of just regular text.
Creating FAQs For Course : Summary
You should definitely include an FAQ section on your course sales page if you are teaching art courses.
They help sell more courses by removing doubts and increasing the desire for your course.
While FAQs are an important sales tool, you should constrain yourself to include not only the important questions but the correct number of questions.
Go rock your class sales!
