Spare a thought for the people who take the time to read ‘About Us’ pages.

They click on the page title hoping to find out something interesting about a company, but tend to be greeted with some wishy-washy text the site owner thought made them sound ‘professional’

Find out how to improve your ‘About Us’ page and make it strike a chord with your online visitors.

• Get personal

Too many corporate websites make the mistake of being impersonal online. An ‘About Us’ page that says “we do this, we do that etc” doesn’t tell your visitors anything about you or the main people behind the company.

For example, why not write about why you started the business, how your services benefit your clients, and a bit about the backgrounds of your key team members, or yourself?

• Link to other pages on your site

‘About Us’ pages are often just blocks of text with no links to anywhere else on the website. People might not want to read the entire page.

With this in mind, it’s a good idea to drop in a couple of relevant links to other pages on your site that may be of interest, such as your services or client testimonials.

• Keep it short and simple

I’ve read ‘About Us’ pages in the past that have had more words than the rest of the website pages put together.

You don’t need to share your entire life story on the page. Try to think about the key points you’d want to read if you were a potential customer.

As a general guide, I would say a maximum of around 250 words is enough.

• Add some images

We all know people judge others based purely on appearance. However, being a completely faceless company online can come across as being impersonal or having something to hide.

Putting photos of yourself and/or staff on your ‘About Us’ page is a good idea, as well as a couple of pictures of the inside and outside of your offices (if applicable).

• Include a call to action

What do you want people to do if they’ve read to the bottom of your ‘About Us’ page? This is another opportunity to direct them to another page on your website or ask them to email or call you for more information.

Try to guide people to what you’d like them to do. If you don’t have a call to action they may end up leaving your site or visiting a page that’s yet another one between them and your sales/product pages.

Take a look at your ‘About Us’ page now to see if it can be improved on by using one or all of the steps above.

Image Credit: AMANITO

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 10:57 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.