Why your website shouldn't have FAQs

Posted by Chris on 4th December 2019 (about a 1 minute read).

We’ve been looking at lots of website style guides for a current project. There is one recommendation from the UK Gov guide that I keep thinking about:

"Do not use FAQs on GOV.UK. If you write content by starting with user needs, you will not need to use FAQs."

So true…
They expand with more thinking:

"FAQs are discouraged because they:

duplicate other content on the site
are usually not frequently asked questions by the public, but important information dumped by the content editor
mean that content is not where people expect to find it; it needs to be in context"

Every new website has an expectation that there will be an FAQ section and that it will have lots of content. Most of the time this content is not actually made up of questions that people ask frequently; instead it is random stuff that the marketing team wants to communicate.

As a user, I know that I usually try to find an FAQ section as a last resort when I can’t find the information where I thought it would be.

Can you get rid of FAQs from your website?