FAQ section design: which questions, what order, accordion or open text
An FAQ is useful when it answers the questions that really stop people from buying, booking or getting in touch. It's useless when it's a second sales page in question form. Choose the questions from what customers actually ask, put the most common first, answer in a sentence or two, and keep it easy to scan.
Where the questions should come from
Good FAQ section design starts before any layout: the best FAQ is written from evidence, the emails, calls and messages you already get. Go through a month of them and list the questions that came up more than once. Add the ones your front-of-house staff answer every day. Those are your FAQ. Questions you wish people asked (“Why is our service so different?”) are marketing, and readers can tell.
| Earns a place | Doesn't |
|---|---|
| Can I cancel or move my booking, and until when? | Why should I choose you? |
| Is there parking or step-free access? | What makes our approach unique? |
| Do you cater for allergies? | Are you the right partner for my business? |
| How long does delivery take, and what does it cost? | How do we guarantee quality? |
| Do I need to bring anything? | What do our customers say about us? |
Ordering and grouping
- Most common first. The question half your visitors have goes at the top, not the one you like best.
- Group when there are more than about eight. Headings such as Booking, Payment, On the day and Afterwards let people jump to their topic.
- Keep questions in the visitor's words. “Can I bring my dog?” rather than “Pet policy”.
- Answer first, then explain. Start with yes, no or the number, then add the condition: “Yes, up to 24 hours before, from the link in your confirmation email.”
- Link onward. If an answer needs more than a short paragraph, summarise it and link to the full page, such as the delivery or refund policy.
Accordion or open text?
This is the main FAQ accordion design decision, and both choices are reasonable. An accordion shows the questions as a list and hides the answers until clicked. Open text shows everything at once.
- Use an accordion when
- There are many questions (roughly eight or more), answers are a few sentences each, and visitors are likely to want only one or two of them.
- Use open text when
- There are only a handful of questions, answers are a line or two, or the content matters for everyone, such as safety information. Open text is also easier to skim and to find with the browser's search.
If you choose an accordion, build it on the native HTML details and summary elements. They open and close with no JavaScript, work with the keyboard and screen readers out of the box, and recent versions of some browsers even open a closed item when find-in-page matches text inside it. Style the marker clearly (a plus that becomes a minus, or a chevron that rotates), make the whole question row the click target at least 44px tall, and leave a clear gap between items.
Design details that help
- Questions as the strongest text. Set them in a heavier weight than answers; answers can be a muted colour as long as they still pass 4.5:1 contrast.
- A reading width. Even in a wide layout, cap answers at around 65 characters per line.
- No “Expand all” clutter for short lists. It's useful only for long, grouped FAQs.
- Keep the heading structure. The section title is an
h2; if groups exist, they'reh3. The questions themselves sit insummary, which shouldn't hold a heading element unless you've tested how it reads. - Place it where doubts arise. A short FAQ near the booking or pricing section answers questions at the moment they come up; a full FAQ page can hold the rest.
FAQ markup and search
FAQ structured data used to earn expandable results in Google for many sites. In 2023 Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites, and its documentation updates log records that the FAQ rich result stopped appearing in Google Search from 7 May 2026, so the markup no longer changes how the result looks for anyone. Write the FAQ for visitors; its value in search now comes from answering the questions people type.
FAQs in Anticode
FAQ is one of Anticode's must-have sections, and it can also be a separate FAQ page on a multi-page site. Because pages from the design engine ship with no scripts at all, its accordion is built on native details and summary, with a plus and minus marker and full-width question rows, so it works without JavaScript and with a keyboard. The questions and answers come from your brief: list the ones customers really ask, and edit the wording in place in the visual editor afterwards.
Questions people ask
How many questions should an FAQ have?
As many as customers actually ask often. Five to ten covers most small businesses; beyond about eight, group them under headings.
Are accordions bad for accessibility?
Not when they're built on native details and summary elements or follow the established disclosure pattern. Problems come from custom accordions that don't work with a keyboard or don't announce their state.
Should the FAQ be a separate page?
If there are more than about ten questions, yes, with a short version near the decision points on the homepage or booking page.