Accordions or Not?

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I have an FAQs section in an app I’m designing for Hep C patients. It’s full of Questions and Answers about the medication. What is everyone’s thoughts on accordions for FAQs - will users get annoyed at having to keep pressing them? What if I put an “expand all button”? Please discuss

I quite like accordions and an expand all ought to do the trick. That said, I don’t have any research to back that up – it’s just an opinion.

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hi @tim0
when I worked on an FAQ page project I found out that most of our users land on that page:

  • only when they have a problem by clicking the FAQ link on the home page (we renamed it SUPPORT and FAQ was a sub-category)
  • only by searching something using the global search and in case of zero results by clicking the link “go to the SUPPORT”

having this in mind we tried, as much as possible to redirect users to a specific point of the FAQ page with the related accordion open by default.
We noticed that, in most of the case, the users were leaving the FAQ page very soon because the information was fitting (or partially) their needs.

To answer your question:

  • according to my experience the accordion panels are a good UI pattern for the FAQ page
  • users are not willing to read the FAQ pages (indeed is a boring task)
  • if they’re redirected to a specific section (or accordion) they will grab the info and then leave the page
  • the expand all could be a secondary action, even if in my opinion is not adding value to the UX of the page/section. If in terms of development is cheap, you could provide this feature. If it is a KPI for u, then you could track the click-through rate

I hope it helps

I think Accordion is quite user friendly for FAQ. Allows an overview of many relevant questions. Sometimes people may not have any specific question in mind but want to know all that is there to know. I know I do. Usually, I look over the FAQs briefly even when I am decided on a product and not looking for a particular answer.

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HI, thanks everyone for weighing in! In the end I went for something a little simpler. the client supplied more content than I expected, and I felt that the answers to the FAQs were too lengthy to fit within an accordion (this is a native mobile app). I found that having to scroll back up to close the accordion to access the next one would be too fiddly. So, the alternative was a list of contents. The user can click the FAQ they want which will take them to a specific page with the answer. They can then swipe through each one at their own leisure. I haven’t tested this yet, but what do you think?

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I like it and I agree that scrolling back to close an accordion tab would’ve been too fiddly.

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@tim0

  • UX wise, I believe the pattern u designed works fine. Well done :slight_smile:
  • IA wise, I see an issue with the page title, if I am in a view called “FAQs” and I tap on an item of the list like “Who should not take EPCLUSA” I expect to land on a view with this title and not to receive the same title as before.

Do u know what I mean?

Hmm, that’s a good point Dopamino. I’m still waiting to get approval for testing. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

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