3 Huge Reasons Not To Overlook Your "About" Page

As a copywriter, I see it all the time: a beautiful, well-crafted, visually impressive website. Professional photos. Easy to navigate. Trustpilot stars or Amazon reviews — sometimes both. Testimonials from past clients. And, yes, this is all great and really important, but do you know what’s missing? The heart of the organisation’s online presence. The one big thing every website needs in order to build brand rapport with its users. 

An About page.

Now, I’m not going to claim that your About page is as critical as your homepage in that 0.05 second (yes, that’s 5 milliseconds) window that you have to catch the attention of a casual visitor before they decide to navigate away. Your homepage is your front door: it’s where new arrivals size you up and choose whether or not they want to step over the threshold. But think of the About page, in this analogy, as the family room of your brand’s house. Sure, you could have stark, white walls, no furniture, and no decoration save a professional headshot tacked to the door, but does that encourage your guests to stay? Or does it possibly make them wonder if there’s something you don’t want them to know?

I’m not going to overlabour this analogy - to be fair, it’s getting pretty tortured already. But I do want to ask you to take a step back and think about your own About page. Did you just copy/paste a few lines from your LinkedIn profile and pop them up alongside a couple of pictures of you looking erudite? Maybe you’ve got a company motto and a few key dates from your organisational history beside smiling pictures of your executive officers? Or is your About page — whisper it — completely missing from your website?

​If the answer to any of the above is yes, don’t worry -- you’re not alone. Like, really not alone -- I see this a lot. But if you want your company’s online presence to shine, then a well-crafted About page is an absolute necessity. Here’s why.

1. People want to do business with people

It’s easy to forget in a click-and-collect world, but the massive shift to online retail hasn’t changed this very fundamental fact: a decision to purchase is not just about the what, it’s also about the who. 16% of respondents to one 2015 study said that the About page is the first place they go after clicking on a homepage, and an impressive 86% of consumers surveyed by Stackla reported that they look for authenticity in the brands that they choose to support. An About page that clearly presents the human face on the other side of your web presence is a critical starting point for establishing your brand’s authentic persona, your ethos, your mission. Okay, here comes another analogy, but bear with me: if you walked into a store and the server wouldn’t interact with you beyond reciting the product names, their prices, the opening times and the date the company was founded — would you go back again? Your About page is the conversation you open up with your customer: it says, Hi there. Come in. This is who we are and what we do, and this is why we think we’re a brand you’ll like.

2. Building rapport builds trust

All of this is part of establishing trust with your customer by building rapport. Chances are, you’ve been thinking of your About page as a place to tell your customers all about you, but that’s not how rapport is built. Your website is likely where your customer meets your brand for the first time — would you use an in-person introduction as an opportunity to talk exclusively about yourself? Of course not. Sure, your About page is where the customer gets to know you, but you don’t want the process to be all about you. It’s about your customer first and foremost, and how you are uniquely positioned to help them get what they need. Once you look at it in terms of how your About page can service your customers’ needs, that resume cut-and-paste doesn’t look quite so effective…

​3. It's your USP

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: your story is your brand and your brand is your story. Unless you’re Michaelangelo, the chances aren’t high that you’re selling something that nobody else can sell, and there’s always someone who’ll sell it more cheaply, so you need to be clear with your customers on why you’re the brand they need. We are a storytelling species -- it’s in our DNA -- and everyone’s story is different. Your story is what sets your brand apart. Remember: people want to do business with people, and they want the brands they support to be aligned with their sense of self. They can’t do that if they don’t know who you are. 

“Think about it,” says Aziz Hamidov, Content Manager for Webzool, “would you rather buy sneakers from Nike or the exact copy from some Chinese based company? We know the answer. You would pay three times more for the brand product, and a brand is a story.”

Not every brand is Nike, and that’s a good thing. That’s a great thing. So, you create custom-made sneakers from a small family-run workshop in your home town — that’s fantastic, and that’s exactly why your customers are going to want to support your business. Tell them that story. Let them know how you got started, what drives your company, how you see your brand contributing to the kind of future your customers want to see. Tell them how you select your materials, where your inspiration comes from. Imbue your brand with a feeling, an emotion, a sense of the person or people behind it — and your customers will know why they want to buy from you.

As a copywriter, I’m always on the lookout for areas where my clients could benefit from a new direction, but customers notice this stuff too. They just don’t always notice that they notice. So they’re intrigued by your home page, they like your product, but they navigate away without buying and, if you ask them, they might not even be able to tell you why. Don’t let that happen to you. That same 2015 study into web usability found that the About page was the second most important “must have” content asset for establishing a website’s credibility, after “thorough contact information” — because people want to do business with people. 

​So if your About page could use a revamp, get in touch and let’s see how we can get it working to tell your story in a way that’s going to resonate with your customers. Because they need your brand in their lives — they just need you to let them know why.

Let's Turbocharge Your About Page

References
Hamidov, Aziz: "7 Reasons About Us Page for your Website is Essential." www.webzool.io. 2019. ​https://www.webzool.io/7-reasons-about-us-page-website-essential