Ecommerce retailers are learning the value of product Q&A engagement and content on their sites and Best Buy’s ecommerce team is ahead of the curve.   There  is a growing number of ecommerce merchants who are recognizing that product Q&A on their product pages is an essential part of the user experience for online shoppers, but most merchants are not effectively utilizing all of that valuable content that is being generated in the optimal way.

What’s the Norm with Product Q&A?

Ecommerce retailers who are putting Q&A content on their product pages, many times they have a static group of FAQs about the product.  Retailers who invest a bit more have a dynamic way to ask new questions and display the most commonly asked questions in a list below the form.   Those with larger communities even engage their customers to help answer questions related to products they’ve purchased in the past.

What you don’t see much of is the merchants understanding fully is that those question and answer pairs are many times valuable content marketing material, that are one of the most efficient ways of drawing more valuable customers to their store.   Best Buy is an example of an online retailer who has figured this out and has implemented product questions and answers in a way that not only increases conversions on their product pages but drives brand new customers to their online store in droves.

How is Best Buy Managing Product Q&A Content?

Best Buy recognizes that the most popular Q&A for each product is not only valuable in complementing the product pages, but each one of those product question and answer(s) combinations is a valuable piece of content in it’s own right and will satisfy the need of any potential customers that are asking similar questions on Google in the future.  What they’ve done is supported a landing page for each one of their product Q&A threads and Google recognizes that as a valuable long-tail search result and they drive traffic:

Customers are interested in the answer to their product questions before they are ready to purchase, so by dedicating a page for each product Q&A thread, Best Buy ensures that they will engage that customer with a page they’ll click through to and get the answer.  Then, on that landing page, Best Buy ensures that there is a call to action back to the product as seen here:

The intent of that visitor form search is high, they’re looking for a specific product that is solves a specific consideration and problem that they have, and they’re being serviced by content that provided the answers to a person with that same problem in the past.

The more quality the answers that you give in the Q&A engagement, the more likely Google is to feature that content even more prominently in the results.   See the below example where Google not only pulls up the result, but provides the content as a featured snippet and also shows the image of the product that can help satisfy the need.

These rich results can increase the click through to your content and help drive conversions.

Best Buy’s 3 Layers of Distributing Product Question & Answers

Best Buy has an approach that has 3 layers to making their Q&A content available to both users and search engines.

Layer 1 – Product Page Questions & Answers

This is where they engage users allowing them to ask their own questions and see the most popular questions about the product right on the product page.

You’ll notice they show how much Q&A engagement is available on hte page (similar to how Amazon manages that) and then leads users down to the Q&A content to fill in any information gaps related to the product.  You can see this example here, and then they give the option to “See All Questions” related to a product for customers who would like to see the full library of content.  This assists in both converting new customers as well as enhances the SEO of the product page.

Layer 2 – Product Questions & Answers List

This is where customers go if they’ve clicked on the “See All Questions” link, and shows a full list of all the question and answer threads that are available for that product.

You can see an example here, where you’ll notice that they have a clear call to action back to the product and a full list of valuable Q&A content related to that product.   This is valuable in attracting it’s own relevant search engine traffic and giving Google (and other crawlers) an easy way to get to the landing pages.

Layer 3 – Product Question & Answer Landing Page

This is where customers go if they click on the title of the question, and is a page dedicated to this specific product question and the answers that effectively address it.

You can see an example of this page here, and this page has the “QAPage” schema identifying the structured data within the page, so that rich results are supported on Google.  This is valuable in attracting traffic from Google, as customers asking similar product questions identify that the page is dedicated to providing a solution for that problem which increases click-through-rates to those pages and then leads the user to convert.

Best Buy has done a great job in displaying and distributing the content in a way that is easily accessible for both customers and Google to effectively find and lead them to a purchase of the related product.

How Valuable is This Approach to Product Q&A?

There are a couple little known secrets in managing product questions and answers in this manner, but they’re extremely valuable to the online retailers who have their product Q&A managed appropriately.  Answerbase has unique insights into this because we power this type of product Q&A engagement for ecommerce merchants.

Increased Average Lifetime Value of Customers

Answerbase sees that customers who manage the Q&A appropriately with these landing pages, the visitors that come into those Q&A landing pages through Google have an average lifetime value up to 2x higher than the other Google traffic that the online retailers are attracting to their store.   Why is that?  Because the intent of the visitors is high, they’re asking the same questions that other customers were asking when they were looking at a product on the retailers site and just a click away from adding it to their cart.

Year Over Year Organic Traffic Growth to Q&A Landing Pages

Answerbase has been able to see that the Q&A landing pages continue to grow search visitors year over year to that Q&A content as it continues to build.   See the chart below which only shows organic traffic that is going specifically to the Q&A content pages.

Anybody who is managing their product question and answer content appropriately should see clear and measurable results in organic traffic growth to their storefront.

Other Benefits You Should See from Product Q&A

The management of Q&A content to lead to results mentioned above is great for attracting new valuable customers to an online retailer, but there are other benefits that merchants should not settle for mediocre results because they also significantly impact the bottom line of their ecommerce presence.

Increased Conversions

If you have product Q&A implemented correctly on your product pages, you should be able to track the conversions that the Q&A engagement is assisting with and be very satisfied with the results.   Answerbase sees that up to 75% of questions that are asked and answered through the Answerbase platform convert to a sale, so that should provide a real and measurable lift to your conversions.

Reduced Support Costs

The creation of unique and valuable content isn’t only beneficial for SEO, but it also ensures that any customer in the future that asks on your product pages should immediately be shown a great answer if it’s a question that’s been asked before.  Answerbase sees that for mature knowledge bases of product Q&A content, up to 83% of the questions posed by visitors are answered automatically through existing content.

In Closing

Best Buy is a great example of product questions and answers done well.   At Answerbase, we’re passionate about this because we power this approach to product questions and answers for online retailers around the world to give those same results.  If you’re an online merchant who would like to see more examples of how product questions and answers can increase traffic and conversions on your site, you can schedule a demo with a Ecommerce Product Q&A specialist and we’ll talk through what product Q&A can do for you.