Your About Us Page is Not Just a Placeholder

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I’ve read the “About Us” pages for a lot of companies, both professionally and as a curious consumer. Some of them piqued my interest, others made me laugh, but the vast majority put me to sleep. Why would a company blow a great opportunity to close a deal?

I mean that seriously. Anyone who is looking at a company's "About Us" page has more than a casual interest in the firm. One of the items I read while researching this article said that customers who read a company's "About Us" page have a slightly higher conversion rate than those who don't. It's almost like those "About Us" readers are saying, "okay, here's one last shot to convince me to buy from you."

But if you're going to convince them, you'd better make it good. I'm not talking about a hard sell, though. Save that for your product pages, if you must. An "About Us" page is not about selling, per se. It's about communication. Granted, it's a sort of one-sided communication, since you can't really have a dialog with your customers on your "About Us" page. But you can imagine your customers' end of the conversation and answer the kinds of questions they're likely to ask.

As with any form of communication, it's not just about the content. Certainly, the actual content is important, but how it's presented plays an important role. If you're a member of any social network, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every member profile is a personal version of an "About Us" page. Plenty of people are into the same things and are trying to tell the world the same kind of information, but different personalities convey it differently.

I hope I don't have to tell anyone that companies have personalities too. If they didn't, why do the "PC and Apple" commercials appeal to so many people? They clearly illustrate how many of us think the two companies would act if they were people: the somewhat stodgy and business-like Microsoft versus the laid-back but competent Apple. (No doubt a version of the commercials created by Microsoft would be very different; after all, there are tons of parodies of the commercials on YouTube!).

Next: What Should Your About Us Page Do? >>
 

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Comments On: Your About Us Page is Not Just a Placeholder

· I hope you found this article useful -- and I hope I'll see some more interesting...    · About us, contact us, Privacy policy and TOS are a very important (if not strategic)...    · Thanks for your comment. You make a great point; anyone submitting their site to a...    · Thanks for sharing these valuable points. So many times when "we" build our websites...    · Thanks for your comment! Yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make.    · I've overlooked this opportunity, kudos for the article.    · I'm implementing your tips on my site nearbythis.com. Thanks Terr1.    · Thanks! I'm glad you found my article helpful.   >>> Post your comment now!