An FAQ about FAQs: are they a good thing to have on your website or not?
I used to think not. After all, shouldn’t you be covering anything you might put there in other places?
Also, I’d been rather disappointed by FAQs out in the real world when I had a real and urgent question. After being led on and then let down too many times, I’d end up thinking that these companies didn’t have a clue what was on my mind.
But I’ve changed my tune after putting together a list of FAQs with Simon Drayson and Darren Leach (you might remember them as my lovely clients of the Alternative guide to the RIBA Plan of Work). They were keen to have an FAQ section, and I was ready to be converted.
So we put together a bunch of questions like:
- How much do you charge? (short answer: we can’t tell you without first finding out about your project)
- How much will my project cost? (short answer: it’s difficult to say until we know more)
- How long will my project take? (short answer: it’s almost impossible to answer)
Well, it’s looking like we didn’t have many quick or concrete answers, and indeed we didn’t.
But we hope our longer answers go some way to explaining fully, respectfully and helpfully why that is. You’ll see them towards the bottom of this page.
Or perhaps it’s like when someone says ‘Good question’. It leaves the questioner feeling clever and the answerer feeling like they’ve got out of having to give a straight answer.