Every business with a website fields the same five phone calls, over and over: do you do this, how much does it cost, are you open Saturdays, do you serve my area. The real answer to what to put in a website FAQ isn't a generic list you found online — it's the questions already ringing your phone, answered clearly enough that the next caller doesn't need to. Pull them from your call log or your inbox, write one honest answer per question, and stop guessing what people want to know.
Most FAQ pages get written from a marketing brainstorm, not from real customers, so they answer questions nobody asked while skipping the ones that keep the phone ringing. Before you write a word, pull from three sources you already have: your call log, your email inbox, and whatever notes your front desk or answering service keeps. Look for the sentence that starts with "I was just wondering" or "quick question." That's your FAQ, already written by the people who'll read it.
A weak FAQ answer restates the question and points somewhere else. A good one gives the actual number, the actual policy, the actual yes or no, right there. If someone asks whether estimates cost anything, the answer is "No — estimates are free and take about 15 minutes," not "Contact us to learn more about our estimate process." A vague answer generates a phone call anyway, which defeats the reason for having a FAQ in the first place. Write each answer as if it's the only thing the visitor will ever read from you.
Keep answers short — two or three sentences is usually enough. If an answer needs a paragraph and a half, it's probably two questions wearing one.
Plenty of FAQ pages pad themselves with filler like "What makes you different?" or "Why choose us?" because those questions feel important to the business, not because a customer ever typed them. Deciding what to put in a website FAQ is really a subtraction exercise: cut anything that answers a question no one is actually asking, and keep only what shows up in real calls and emails. A short FAQ built from ten real questions beats a long one built from twenty guesses — visitors skim, they don't study.
Once your FAQ is written in plain, specific language, it can do double duty. Most website chatbots work by matching a visitor's question against a knowledge base, and a well-written FAQ is already in exactly that shape — question, direct answer. Hand that same page or file to a chatbot's setup and it can answer variations of those same questions on its own, at 2 a.m., without anyone rewriting a thing. If you're weighing whether that's worth setting up, chatbot vs. live chat for a small business and what a website chatbot actually costs are worth a read. Keelflo builds a website chatbot that starts from exactly this kind of FAQ, so the writing you do once keeps answering questions after hours.
Enough to cover what you actually get asked, and not one more. Most small business FAQs land between 8 and 15 questions. If you're re-reading one and thinking "does anyone really ask this," cut it.
Somewhere a first-time visitor finds it in one click — the main navigation or the footer — plus a link from your contact page, since that's where hesitant visitors go looking for reassurance before they call.
Whenever your call log tells you to. Skim your calls or inbox once a quarter; if the same new question shows up three or more times, add it and drop one that's stopped coming up.
Not entirely. A FAQ handles it when a visitor is willing to read; a chatbot handles it when they'd rather just ask and get one answer instead of scanning a page. The two work best built from the same content instead of written separately.
Write it yourself if you can — you know the real answers better than anyone. The work that takes time is gathering the actual questions from calls and email and turning them into short, direct answers, not the writing itself.