One of the most important pages, surprisingly many websites lack an About page. You must have seen an “About Us” in the case of companies and organisations and “About Me” in case of single individuals, freelancers and consultants on many websites. When people are really interested in working with you, after your homepage, this is the most visited page on your website because it tells your prospective business partners who you are, what you stand for and why they should do business with you.
That is why it is one of the most important pages on your website. An About page is not just about putting up your profile, philosophies and policies, it is a lot more. It has to instill confidence in the people looking at it.
Different people have different opinions on how to create a great About page; it depends on whether you are doing business as a single person, as a team or as multi-employee business. It also depends on how you want to portray yourself and what your target audience expects of you. Nonetheless, there are some fundamental ingredients that should be present in every About page. These are listed below:
Mention your name on your About page
This is quite obvious but many people don’t mention their names on their About page. Just imagine, if that page is about you, how can it be complete without your name? A name helps your prospective customers and clients immediately relate to you and developed an affinity. Along with your name, you should also mention from where you operate your business and in what regions of the world you can offer it.
Your About page is about what you can offer
Remember that people don’t want to read your About page to see how you normally feed your cat; they want to know what value you can deliver and what you think of your business. It should list, in case you do business as an individual, all the skills that you have, what sort of work you have successfully done up till now and what value you bring to the table when people decide to work with you.
Describe your methodology
This is a good way of showing how you approach every new project. It is always reassuring to know that you follow a set procedure despite thinking out of the box. For instance, if you are a web developer then you can explain how you first perform consultations, then prepare wireframes, then create the prototype, then do the testing, etc.
Weave an interesting story and use a conversational style
Boring, drab corporate talk isn’t helping you much if it makes your visitors sleepy and drowsy. Use conversational style as if you’re directly talking to a person. Remember that the purpose of your About page is not to highlight how many difficult words you can use and how many jargons you can throw around; it is about how well you can engage your readers and provide them the information they are looking for in an interesting manner.
Refrain from going on and on
Some writers have this tendency to go on and on and cover everything under the sun on a single page. Normally people don’t prefer to read beyond 300-400 words unless they are looking for something really critical. Create a concise About page, taking as much information as possible, but leaving out secondary information that can be communicated later on.
Let people know how you look like
Putting the photograph of yours puts people at ease. Putting a video is also a great way of dismantling the wall of distance between you and your prospective customers and clients. But don’t just put the video without text because there are many people who would just like to go through the text. If you’re talking about different team members of your company you can put their individual photographs.
So these are a few ways you can create a great About page. Use the comments section to express your own views on this.
