How Ask & Answer compares to traditional forums

Forums have been the standard for asking and answering questions online for years, but Ask & Answer gives your organization more ways to interact with customers who have questions.

Location and accessibility

While forums tend to live in a separate section on your site, you can deploy Ask & Answer within your purchase funnel, where shoppers have questions. Or add it to the support or check-out areas – wherever your customers need help.

Purpose

While forums allow visitors to pontificate on any subject, Ask & Answer content stays focused on the topic at hand, due to careful moderation.

Usability and convenience

Forums generally require a multi-page process to post or view a question or answer. Ask & Answer requires a dynamic, one-click pop-in expansion via JavaScript.

Ask & Answer helps drive conversion

Forums are great for open-ended conversation, such as gathering a plethora of opinions, such as “Coke versus Pepsi?” However, Ask & Answer, when deployed on your product pages, actually aids in converting shoppers to buyers by answering those commonly-asked questions in the middle of the purchase path.

Moderation

Forums are generally only moderated for appropriateness, to keep the “trolls” away. However, Ask & Answer undergoes a more rigorous, three-tier moderation process, ensuring that questions and answers stay on-topic, and never erode the value of your brand.

• More Ask & Answer benefits:

• Ask & Answer user-generated content drives new natural search traffic
• Seamless product page integration brings a consistent look and feel to the Ask & Answer solution, so it looks like it has always ”lived“ on your site
• Clients can quickly identify and answer open questions through the Bazaarvoice Workbench