It's Time to Beef Up Your 'About' Page Here are five easy tips to improve one of your site's most visited sections.
By Eric Siu
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Your "About" page is likely one of the most visited pieces of content on your website. And yet I'm willing to bet that instead of crafting this important page with the care it deserves, plenty of you reading this article simply coughed up a few generic, corporate-speak paragraphs -- simply because the space on your website had to be filled.
Don't feel bad -- plenty of companies out there are plagued by dull, dry "About" pages that do nothing to engage readers and enhance their company's image. So check out the tips below to beef up your "About" page into something that gets results.
Be consistent with your site's personality. Say you've got fun product page copy and blog posts that are written in a deliberately informal, engaging tone. So why is your "About" page a bland, third-person description that feels like it was auto-generated by a corporate buzzword tool?
Related: How to Keep Customers Focused on Your Website
No matter what personality you've cultivated for your website and your business at large, your "About" page needs to be consistent with these themes in order to maximize flow between pages and prevent cognitive dissonance. "About" pages don't have to be formal (as seen in the LessFilms example to the right). If you've been going for a fun, conversational style on the rest of your site, be sure this carries through to your corporate description as well.
Include pictures and videos. People click on "About" pages because they want to know more about the leaders of the companies they work with -- just like they did 50 years ago when they had personal relationships with their barbers, tailors and grocers. They're desperately seeking a reason to work with you over your competitor, and you've got to give it to them on your "About" page.
One easy way to do this is to include pictures and videos. Have your portrait taken by a professional or work with a videographer to show who you are and what you bring to the table. Just remember to respect your viewer's attention span. A six-minute video that goes in depth on your background and qualifications as a company leader isn't going to be any more effective than lengthy paragraphs of text describing the same thing.
Don't make it all about you. Certainly, your "About" page should be used to showcase your positive attributes and those of other members of your company's leadership team. But keep in mind that your customers didn't come to your "About" page to read your resume.
Related: How to Make Your Website More Click-Worthy
What they really want to know is what you have to offer them. They want to know how you'll solve their problems and how you'll do that better than the other companies they're thinking about working with. Address this basic need by turning the bulk of your "About" page's content into customer-centric paragraphs that take biographical information and frame it in a way that provides clear and obvious benefits to your readers.
Craft content based on your page's goals. One mistake that many business owners make with their "About" pages is to see their only purpose as being informational. And while that's certainly an important consideration, it shouldn't be the only goal of these powerful pages.
As with any other page on your site, your "About" page should have a goal -- and it should have content that encourages this particular action. Want people to come back and read your site again and again? If so, it's important that you make your page enjoyable enough to read that visitors are compelled to check out other content on your site. You can also use your "About" page to encourage sales, opt-ins or any other desired actions by including clear calls-to-action throughout your page and at the end of your content.
Think like a storyteller. Good storytellers have the amazing ability to captivate an audience from beginning to end. Your "About" page needs to do the same thing!
Once you've updated your content, give it a critical eye and ask yourself, "What reason do my visitors have to read through this entire page?" If there's nothing compelling to keep them engaged from start to finish, revisit your content from the perspective of a storyteller. Using popular fables and tales as models for your content, identify weak points in your company's "story" and rewrite your "About" page to create a clearly flowing and appealing narrative.
When it comes down to it, there's simply no excuse for a boring "About" page. Use the tips above to revamp this important page and enjoy the powerful business benefits that follow.
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