How to Make Your About Us Page Stand Out

Of all the pages on a company’s website, the About Us page is typically the second most-visited page. The Home page is often the most-visited page. Many visitors will navigate to the About Us page right from the Home page. When a visitor moves from the Home page to the About Us page, that’s great news for your company. A visitor who clicks on the link to the About Us page is showing interest in your company, and you have an excellent chance of converting this person into a lead.

To maximize your chances of converting About Us page visitors into leads and customers, you want to make sure your About Us page stands out.

About Us Pages Are Often Overlooked

While the About Us page gets a lot of visitors, it is also the page most often overlooked by companies, mainly because they are hard to write. Companies, and the people that work for them, have a hard time bragging about themselves, which is what an About Us page seems to require.

Yet, your About Us page does not have to be difficult to write, salesy, or full of braggadocio. This article will show you how you can write an effective About Us page in a few simple steps.

The Core Component of a Great About Us Page

At its core, your About Us page should offer a one-paragraph explanation of what your company does and why it is unique. While this seems simple and self-evident, a surprising number of companies have done a terrible job of this on their About Us pages, including some very prominent and well-known brands.

In a 2008 study of About Us page usability, researchers at the Nielson Norman Group (NNG) found that 19% of users could not identify what an organization or company does from its About Us page. According to the researchers’ findings, the use of marketing lingo was more prevalent than a plain-language summary of the business.

Here are the best practices we use at TSL to create stand-out About Us pages for our clients. If you follow these simple guidelines, you can create an About Us page that gets noticed.

Focus on Your Audience’s Concerns

Focus on a ‘you and me’ approach. Our nature is to be concerned with our own problems first and foremost. A visitor to your site is trying to solve a problem. You can help by describing how you solve problems and what it is like to work with you.

Here are some tips to get you started:

Use your opening sentence to describe your audience’s challenges and goals. This will show visitors that you understand their problems, you care about their needs, and you have solutions to offer.

Present the facts. One reason About Us pages get neglected is that many people don’t like to brag. Your About Us page doesn’t have to boast; you can simply list facts, such as your professional awards or stellar client retention rates. It is hard to argue with facts.

Let Your Clients Speak for You

While companies find it difficult to articulate what makes them unique, clients know exactly why they value a company. Clients will often do an amazing job of describing a company’s value. Client testimonials also provide credibility.

Think about your own process when you are trying to track down a product or service, such as finding a restaurant in a new town or city. You may look at a restaurant’s website or menu, but you are most likely to choose a place to eat based on customer reviews.

Use Different Types of Media

Offer visitors information in several different formats. Include a short video introduction and photos of team-members, for example. Visual content helps to break up text and personalize your company.

Encourage Visitors to Flow Through Your Site

Whenever visitors show interest in your company by visiting your About Us page, you want to encourage them to stay, click more links, and read more information about your company. If you choose to include photos of team members on your About Us page, you can make it easy for visitors to flow through your site by including links to employee biographies, testimonials, and case studies.

Tell a Story

Stories help prospects connect with you on a human level. Even in B2B communications, trust and human connection are very important. Prospects want to know what it will be like to do business with your company. There is always some hesitation and nervousness surrounding new relationships, including business relationships. By showing your human side, you can help break down these natural barriers and increase the likelihood that a prospect will reach out to you.

You can tell your company story, how it was founded, and how it has grown into what it is today. Or, you can tell a customer story. Perhaps there was a time when your company went above and beyond to produce spectacular results for a client.

When readers can identify with you, they inch closer to trusting your brand. Stories are a great way to add a personal touch that helps potential clients connect with you.

Pay Attention to Usability

The NNG About Us study was focused on usability, an important, but often overlooked, aspect of website design. No matter how well-written the copy and how attractive the design, a webpage will fail to deliver the results you want (inquiries from prospects) if the page is hard to use.

A visitor who has come to your website’s About Us page is showing interest in your company. You want to make sure it is easy for your interested visitor to take the next step and contact your company.

Here are some best practices for you to follow for maximum usability of your About Us page:

Make sure your contact information is easy to find.
Explain what you do in clear and simple terms.
Avoid overly-salesy language and insider lingo.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes and write your copy from that perspective.

Present your information in an inverted pyramid:

Start with your ‘Hero Statement,’ a one-sentence tagline that expresses what you do or your company’s philosophy.
Next, provide a short summary. Ideally, one paragraph that describes, in simple terms, what your company does.
Following the summary, include a fact sheet section that lists accomplishments, awards, and professional associations.
Add rich media content, like videos, infographics, charts, and photos.
Encourage visitors to engage further by including links to employee bios, testimonials, and case studies.

If you follow the simple steps we have outlined above, you will be able to create an engaging and interesting About Us page that could lead to more contacts and sales leads from the visitors you already have coming to your site.