Who’s Your “About Us” Page Actually About?

It’s not about you (Sorry!). As rich and detailed as your company history may be, not even the “About Us” page has room for the heart-pounding, three-volume-sized narrative it deserves.

But wait! Don’t toss the scrolls in the fire just yet. Take another look. Are there any brilliant nuggets of user value hidden in the history? If so, let’s bring those to surface.

The “About Us” page on your small business website is a high-traffic zone, likely one of the most-visited pages on the entire site. So we have to craft the content to accommodate those who drive the traffic: your users.

Yes, your “About Us” page is actually about your users. It should provide them with the information they need to understand what you do and what you can do for them.

So skip the grand introduction. A dynamic “About Us” page is “simple, straightforward, and it communicates just a few key things,” says Copyblogger.com contributor Sonia Simone.

Your “About Us” page should contain the following things:

Evidence of legitimacy

Let’s see a picture of your employees (or just you, if your employees aren’t comfortable with the publicity).

Include some key testimonials that demonstrate your product or service in action.  Include links to the testimonial bearers’ sites.

Users want to feel confident that they are dealing with a living, breathing, scam-free company, and these tips will help.

A conversational tone

Present your “About Us” page copy in the first person or first person plural (“I” or “we”), to convey an authentic, personable company “voice”.

It’s a useful exercise in getting right down to what matters. “We make your party rental experience stress-free,” not “Big Circus Party Rentals provides its clients with several exceptional services that reduce the time and energy needed to host a party or event.”

The plain old truth

The web is like a virtual phone book. Users might hop over to your site just for contact information, and when they do, they don’t want the frills. You can’t jazz up a phone number. Apply the same logic to your “About Us” page.

Say what you do. Say what you can do for the user.  For instance, I’m not about to tell users that I’m a “spell-binding wizard of words,” when I’m actually a “copywriter”. Though I may not rule out being a wizard one day, it’s not going to make my “About” page cut.

Conclusion

Show users who you are and what you can do for them on your small business website’s “About Us” page. Engage users with a genuine voice that resonates with your company values. While not usually the user’s first impression of a company, the “About Us” page can be a powerful trigger for what comes next: total confusion or total confidence.

Let’s aim for total confidence in your product or service. Take a look at your “About Us” page today to gauge whether it’s delivering the right information to your users.  If you have any questions about your “About Us”, drop a line below!

References
Simone, Sonia. “Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page?” Copyblogger.com: http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-write-an-about-page/