Frequently Asked Questions on the homepage of your online consultation portal are the best way to provide quick and easy information for your community.

Here are our top 5 FAQ's recommendations for the homepage of your online consultation portal.

Remember, you can word these as you see necessary and these are provided only as a guide.

 City of Adelaide use FAQ's on their homepage to help their community get involved.[/caption]

1. Why should I get involved?

This might seem like an obvious thing to include, but that's the whole point of FAQ's, right?

When you include this in your FAQ section ensure you make your pitch for getting involved.

This is where you should outline your promise  and commitment to engagement and also include information about the advantages of taking part in your online engagement space.

2. How will my registration benefit me?

Use an FAQ to this effect to explain the difference between participating via a registered account versus simply exploring the site.

This information should include; the participants ability to receive updates and stay informed, become part of an online community and get involved in multiple projects and follow projects of their choosing with access to comment on all consultations.

You should also make mention that registration information helps your organisation to make proper decisions based on demographic data provided during registration, which means better targeted consultations and outcomes for the community.

3. How will my information be used?

This FAQ is a great one to include as it explicitly outlines and directs people to your privacy policy.

In this FAQ use language which is reassuring and explain to your community their feedback is used for decision making and will be kept confidential.

Use this FAQ to direct people to you privacy policy and make it clear who has access to participant data.

Remember you own the privacy policy for your online engagement portal.

If you are using our privacy policy template, make sure you adapt it to reflect the ways in which your organisation collects and uses data as well as outlining the regulations under which you are legislated to operate.

4. I'm having trouble logging in, what should I do?

This FAQ should address the steps you community should take if they are having trouble accessing your site.

Often this includes being unable to sign-up because their email address is already taken or they might have simply forgotten their password.

Use this FAQ to outline the steps to reset a password and direct appropriate queries for troubleshooting.

If you have a contact centre, which can help manage these queries, you should put this information in this section.

You should also be aware of how to re-send an activation email and add a participant manually to help is sticky situations.

5. What are the moderation rules for engaging on the site?

Moderation rules should be clearly accessible to your community so including an FAQ about where to find more information about moderation is useful.

While you community members will be required to agree to the moderation rules when they sign up, it's useful to have a FAQ reinforcing these rules.

You can direct participants to your sites moderation rules by linking them to the https://yoursite.com/moderation page on your site.

Always explain that these rules are designed to create a safe and constructive space for consultation and that they are administered by Bang the Table's moderators who provide an independent service.

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