Is your About Us page an afterthought?
That’s perfectly natural, of course. Whenever you built your site, you spent most of your time creating your landing page, product page, blog, and pretty much anything else to engage your visitor.
Then maybe someone said, “Oh! And we need an About Us page in case anyone actually happens to care about who we are.” And because of its natural deprioritization, the About Us page is often thrown together as a couple of paragraphs and bios that check off a box for the site being completed.
Of course, many people who visit your site won’t click on your About Us page, which further affirms the sense of its deprioritization in your site navigation. But for those who do click on “About Us,” the page becomes vitally important. So we have to ask ourselves why people click on this page.
Why people click on “About Us”
When a customer clicks on “About Us,” it’s likely they are asking one of two questions: “Why should I care about this company?” and “Why should I trust this company?”
For the care question, a visitor may simply be intrigued by the product and like it enough to consider buying into the brand.
The trust question is especially important. Trust can be a crucial part of the buying experience, particularly when the spend is large. If you can nail this page, you can take a casual customer and turn them into a loyal follower, which is big for your revenue and your brand.
So here are 5 must-haves for your About Us page:
1. A purpose that connects with the customer’s need
Being that you’re a business, you exist to solve a problem. If people need exercise, you open a gym, and if people have foot fungus, you cure it. People want to know that you’re in business to make their world better.
Generally toward the beginning of an About Us section, you describe when and why you went into business. Here, call attention to the major problem you set out to solve, the reason you went into business in the first place.
Your purpose should identify with the customer’s greatest need for your product or service. Making that connection is the most powerful way to make the customer care about your business and feel like they can trust you.
2. An explanation that what you do is better than what they do
It’s not likely that your business is one of a kind. Even if you sell peanut butter pickles (an obvious craving choice for pregnant moms), you’ll still need to convince visitors why no snack satisfies cravings like yours.
It is likely that your business is similar to others, but is just different enough to be interesting. When it comes to fighting foot fungus, you’re not the only game in town. No one will read another boring story about how some company’s product cures foot fungus.
But people will listen to why the offering is different; that it’s environmentally friendly, that it’s the fastest working, or that it’s the toughest stuff on the market.
A good About Us page unabashedly claims why your business is better. Naturally, a customer will care about your business if you offer something they can’t get anywhere else.
3. A personal touch that makes you seem less like a business
People like doing business with other people. When we first interact with a business, it’s often purely transactional. We tend to perceive that this entity is just out to capture our dime.
Yet once we can associate a brand with a face, our perception quickly changes. We see that it’s not simply a nondescript machine collecting our cash, but a company with well-meaning people behind it who should be paid for their helpful service.
When writing about the people who created and run your company, include human elements that visitors can relate to. This is a great time to be open about why you yourself needed the product, how family values have been passed down through generations with your business, or how you involve yourself in the betterment of the community.
With a personal touch, a visitor can trust that you’re not an evil money maker and your business (and its people) is out to help them.
4. A consistent message that ties in to the rest of your site
The About Us page is also a place to reiterate your value prop at a deeper level. Visitors may already know what you’re about from using your product or service, spending time on your landing page, or getting your messages in advertisements.
Now is the time to ingrain that message by backing up why you believe so passionately in it.
As you tell your story, weave in the features and benefits of your offering and reveal why they matter to you. Messaging that’s consistent across your site enables your content to resonate more powerfully and stick with your visitor.
5. A narrative that the visitor buys into
Of all the ways you could present your message, nothing beats a story. But there is a time and a place for it. It’s probably not on your homepage or landing page, where you’re really just greeting the visitor and offering passages into other rooms of the house.
But with an About Us page, they’ve “walked around” a little, grown comfortable, and want to know more about you. So you tell your story.
Here, the visitor actually wants to hear your story; they want to connect with it. An About Us page can be fairly bland, but it pays to put some work into it and create a compelling narrative. This is your shot at solidifying someone’s status as “loyal follower.”
Wrapping it up
If you’re creating an About Us page, implementing these “must-haves” will take your page from an afterthought to one of the most compelling pages on your site.
If you already have an About Us page, revise it using the filter of “must-haves,” and your page is sure to resonate more with visitors.
Need help telling your story? Let’s talk.
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