Every website should have an ‘about us’ page.
Don’t think of it as an obligation. It’s your chance to tell your brand story; and making people believe in your story is the first stage in converting visitors into customers.
If you’re short of time, our 6 steps to writing an effective ‘about us’ page are:
- Understand your user journeys
- Review your existing ‘about us’ page
- Review competitor ‘about us’ pages
- Run a values and purpose workshop
- Create practical output material
- Get advice on truly living company values
You can spend all the time and money you want on writing the other areas of your website, but your ‘about us’ page will almost always be your second most visited page, after your homepage.
‘About’ or ‘About us’ or ‘About [insert company name]’ is what it should say on your website navigation, too. That’s because ‘about’ is what your visitors are looking for when they land on your website. They want to understand who you are, what you do, and whether your brand personality, offering, and values match theirs, so they can decide if you’re the sort of brand they want to buy from or do business with.
- Step 1 to writing an effective about us page: Understand your user journeys
Log into your web analytics platform and note down the answers to these questions:
- What does a typical user journey look like on your website?
- Which pages have the longest dwell time?
- Where do people go after they’ve been on your ‘about us’ page?
Answering these basic questions will give you an idea of the hierarchy of your web pages, so you can focus your time, energy, resources and budget in the right places.
- Step 2 to writing an effective about us page: Review your existing ‘about us’ page
Re-read your ‘about us’ page and note down what impression you get from it. Ask yourself what story it tells, what’s powerful, what’s missing, how would people describe your business to someone who’s never heard of it, just by what they find on the ‘about us’ page? Then ask friends, family, and colleagues to do the same. Here are some initial questions you could email out to get feedback on your ‘about us’ page:
- In one sentence, describe what my business does
- What are my business’s values?
- What stands out as exciting or different about my business?
- What else would you need or want to know before getting in touch?
- Step 3 to writing an effective about us page: Review competitor ‘about us’ pages
Take what you’ve learnt from web analytics and the insights from friends, family, colleagues and yourself, and do the same exercise for your three closest competitors. Using only the competitor’s ‘about us’ page, ask yourself, and others:
- In one sentence, describe what this business does
- What are their values?
- What stands out as exciting or different?
- Why would you get in touch with this business instead of mine?
- Step 4 to writing an effective about us page: Workshop your values, purpose and mission
Get your key decision makers into a room and ask some ‘why?’ and ‘what?’ questions, like: ‘Why are we in business?’/’Why do we exist?’/’What are we great at?’/’What do people say about us?’/’What do we want people to say about us?’.
It can be difficult to keep these kinds of conversations on track without an experienced, preferably independent moderator – especially as your brand story can be subjective and close to people’s hearts. Everyone will have an opinion, and they won’t all align. These workshops are eye-opening, fun, and sometimes a bit heated!
The Contented Agency runs brand storytelling workshops – get in touch to find out more.
- Step 5 to writing an effective about us page: Be specific, clear and practical with the outputs
The decision maker workshop will give you food for thought, but it’s important to do two clear things afterwards:
- Get other colleagues involved in the discussion, not just the output
- Make sure the output is specific, clear, practical and actionable
To achieve the first of these – get other colleagues involved in the discussion, not just the output – you need to look at how big your business is and therefore how far and wide you need to cast your net for opinion and feedback – it’s easy to be overwhelmed with information. But if nothing concrete comes from the sessions, you’re back to square one. Once you’ve decided who to involve, it’s good to run a session, or several sessions to gather opinion on what came from the decision maker workshop.
And for the second of these – make sure the output is specific, clear, practical and actionable – The Contented Agency recommends creating the following content, as a starting point:
- An elevator pitch – describing your business in 30 seconds or less
- A purpose (vision/mission) and values document – a document that employees can use every day, not just something they file away
- A new ‘about us’ page for your website
- External-facing sales and pitching collateral – videos, decks, interactive PDFs etc. A master deck with ‘buffet’ slides (that you can mix and match depending on the client or pitch) is a great place for your brand’s messages and purpose to live, and an easy way for employees to create consistent, tailored presentations more quickly.
- Step 6: Get advice on how to encourage employees to live the company values
It is very easy to have values on your website and in email signatures, but much harder for teams to live them. Have a look at Culture15’s article for HR Magazine for a completely fresh perspective on what culture is and how it can (and should) be tangible and actionable, not the ‘soft’ or immeasurable part of the business that you might think it is.
If you’re thinking it’s time to sort out your brand story so you can easily, confidently and compellingly tell it on your website, social channels, sales collateral and in pitches, get in touch to find out more about our content production services and brand storytelling workshops.
