FAQs are an old feature of the web, that have somehow outlasted most of their peers. Whilst we have (mostly) done away with animated GIFs, embedded MIDIs and scrolling text, the FAQ section is still appearing on sites 26 years after they were first introduced.

Whilst age alone is not a reason to stop using something, there are many reasons that implementing FAQs on your site is detrimental to the user experience.

Frequently asked? Really?

Do you have an FAQ section on your site? If so, have a look at what is listed there right now.

Are these really the most frequently asked questions from your users? How did you collect them? How many times do your users ask a question before you classify it as ‘frequently asked’?

In our experience, FAQs are actually not Frequently Asked Questions. Instead, FAQs are used for a number of different purposes. Often sites use FAQs as somewhere to put the questions they want their users to ask. Other times it is a place for information architects to put any content that didn’t fit anywhere else on the site. Neither benefits users.

If the content is something that you want users to see, don’t wait for them to go looking for it. It is a big risk to put any important information under an FAQ label, as many user will never look there, preferring instead to look under more descriptive labels.

If the content you are placing within FAQ is content that didn’t have a home elsewhere, perhaps you need to question its place on the website at all. All site content should be developed around the goal of answering users questions before they knew they had something to ask. If any content does not fit into this process, then what purpose is it serving. Anything important enough to put on the site should be important enough to have its own place on the site.

Why do I have to ask you?

So perhaps the content in your FAQ is actually a list of frequent questions from your customers. The next question you have to ask yourself is: why are they asking?

Imagine you run a corner store. If every second customer asked you where the butter was, would you not move the butter to somewhere easier to find?

Or if you ran a cafe and customers frequently asked whether you had soy milk. Would you add soy milk to your menu?

Websites are not different. If you really are receiving frequent questions from your users, something is wrong. When designing a site structure and content, the focus should be on answering users’ questions before they knew they had something to ask. Imagine, for every user who bothered to look up your contact details and get in touch to ask something, many more would have taken the easier route of just going to your competitor.

FAQ. The internet equivalent of a lean-to

During user testing, we recieve constant feedback from users about their thoughts on FAQ. Many refuse to use them, citing past experiences of seeing a page of unrelated, unuseful information. Others prefer to follow more descriptive links and labels, thinking that the site design should put them on the right path. Some users, and a larger group than you may expect, simpy have no idea what FAQs are; it’s not uncommon to hear users say “Facks? What’s that?”.

Regardless of whether they are used or not, FAQs always have the look of tacked on content. Something that wasn’t part of the original design. User either choose to avoid them, sticking instead to the more polished original structure, or venture in and find themselves stepping on a rusty nail or falling through a broken floorboard.

So rather than seeing FAQs as somewhere to put questions and answer, try viewing your entire site as frequently answering questions.

Thanks to everybody who came last night to our World Usability Day event. We had a lot of fun and hope you did too.

Some discussions were held around what trends we will be seeing in the coming year. Most of these seem to be technology driven, and many will present interesting usability challenges as designers face the task of building new experience types around these new possibilities.

Some of the key topics discussed focused around:

• Mobile web – How to face the challenge of disparate handset specs, smaller screen and distracted users? When is a pared down mobile version of the site the better choice, or can new high resolution handset allow users to easily use standard sites?
• Location awareness – This is a feature we expect to see a lot more of in the next twelve months, and how designers approach its implementation will be very interesting

There seemed to be a few points of disagreement amongst the audience, so as promised we’ve opened up this page to continue the discussion. Feel free to put your usability predictions in the comments area below. What trends in research and design do you think we will see emerging over the coming months?

Thursday November 12th is the fifth annual World Usability Day. The day’s focus is “to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use”. It is a day for usability practitioners to discuss and promote the work we do in making it simpler for users and customers to achieve their goals.

Each year, World Usability Day focuses on a specific topic. In 2009, the theme for the day is Designing for a Sustainable World. This can include design processes that improve the environmental, social, economical and technological aspects of the design and product lifecycle.

To help celebrate World Usability Day, UsabilityOne will be throwing a free BBQ on the Thursday afternoon. We are welcoming anybody with an interest in usability and sustainability to come down to our offices and enjoy a drink with others in the industry.

The event will be at:

Map

Things kick off at 4:00 PM, with a short presentation at 5:30.

Feel free to drop in at any time during the afternoon, but please email us to if you plan on attending as spaces (and sausages) are limited.

It’s also not too late to enter our Simple Change Big Impact competition. We will be giving away a copy of either Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think or Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day to the best entry. So head over and tell us the simplest change you made that had the biggest impact. The winner will be announced at the BBQ

See you there