How To Write Your Website About Page

When someone wants to find out more about your products and services, they often go to your About page. Much like the Home page, it’s been there since the dawn of the internet. And yet, so often, people don’t really put much effort into it. Or when they do, they can get it wrong.

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So how do you take advantage of your About page? How do you get people to connect with you and, ultimately, buy from you?

What NOT to do on your About page

Simple: make it all about you

We see this (or something along these lines) quite often:

“Hi, my name is Bob and I graduated from university in 1987 with a 2:1 in Engineering.” 

Yawn. Your reader’s gone.

Now, we do understand why a lot of people do this on their About page. After all, it says About ME! What else are you supposed to be talking about?! It’s only natural that you’ll want to talk about yourself, your experience, and what you do.

And of course, writing your About page in this is also very easy. Because you know yourself and your story very well. But (and we’re sorry to break this to you), your life story may not be a great way to connect with your readers.

So what do you do instead?

Flip this on its head and talk about how you can help your readers.

When you come to write your About page, instead of ‘About Me’ at the top of the page, write ‘About how I can help you’.  You should still call it ‘About Me’ (or ‘About’ or ‘About Us’), but when you’re writing copy for the page, thinking about how you can help your reader will reframe your mind and encourage you to write content from your audience’s perspective (rather than your own perspective).

What do you write at the start of your About page?

The start of a new piece of content is always the trickiest part, and if you write regularly, you may have your own ways to help you get into it.

But here’s what we do and advise our clients to do.

At the start of your About page, reaffirm to your readers that they’re in the right place.

So you could use questions like,

“Are you looking for X? Then you’re in the right place.”
Or:
“If you need X then you’re in the right place.”

Think about ways to make your audience feel secure in the knowledge that this website (and the content they’re reading) is for them.

The best way to do this is to empathise with your reader and with their potential problems or what they’re searching for. Give them the information straight away, rather than making them sift through the boring corporate story of how you started and how long you’ve been in business.

Don’t miss an opportunity to talk about what makes you unique.

For example, here’s what we say on our website:
“If you’re looking for a web designer who gets your business, who isn’t afraid to say what works and what doesn’t, then you’re in the right place.”

This statement doesn’t just tell someone who can relate to those words that we’re right for them. It also tells our readers that, depending on what they’re after, we may not be right for them. And while that may seem like a bad thing, it’s not. Because this actually stops people who don’t feel we’re the right fit for them from getting in touch with us. And this saves our time as well as theirs.

If you want to dig deeper into this topic, have a listen to this podcast episode: How To Attract Your Ideal Clients Through Your Website.

Remember, people click on your About page to decide whether they actually want to work with you. So use the opportunity to find your ideal clients and filter out anyone else.

What else should you include in the About page?

When landing on your About page, your prospective customers or clients want to know how you can help them.

There’s no better place to show your readers that you know and understand what problems they’re facing and that you can help them solve them.

So how do you know what problems your customers and clients are experiencing?

Just listen to them. Hear what they say. Pay attention.

Because often, talking about their struggles will be the very first thing they say to you in their email or when they call you up to make an enquiry.

So think about…

What are your prospective clients having a nightmare with?
What is it that they desperately want to change?

And make sure you talk about this on your about page.

How to structure your About page

You’ve got so much information to include. How do you make sure it all fits together without overwhelming your reader?
You could simply list the problems that your ideal clients are having in an FAQ-style section on your About page. Using bullet points helps you reduce the amount of text on the page, gives your reader some breathing space and helps people find digestible information to consume quickly and easily.

So, for example, on our About page, we explicitly acknowledge the problems our ideal clients are having, sympathise with them, and then tell them how we can help. And don’t forget to add a call to action directing people to your relevant products or services.

How to use your About page to build trust with your audience

We talked a lot about connecting with your audience. So what other elements can you include on your About page to build trust with your prospective customer and clients?

Testimonials

Testimonials, links to your previous work, and awards help you build trust and credibility with your audience.

Add testimonials from previous clients that show the kind of results that your clients got from working with you.

Portfolio

Add links to your portfolio to showcase your previous work. Don’t be tempted to put everything on there, but have something that gets people to explore other pages of your website.

Awards

Have you won any prestigious awards? We’re not huge fans of going on about the awards you won, but your about page is an opportunity to show them off! This is your chance to show them off. Don’t be like us – Jammy Digital won The Best Blogging Awards at Content Marketing Academy in 2018, and we didn’t add it to our website!

How to include some personality on your About page

So what about you then?

Yes, it’s important to focus on your audience first, but you still have to tell people about you. And when you do, you don’t want to lack personality!

Your About page is a great place to tell your readers who you are. So don’t be afraid to show some personality.

1. Include photos of you (and your team, if you have one).
   People buy from people and need to see your face. If you don’t have your face on your website, get your face on your website.
2. Talk about yourself.
   Your readers want to know who they’re dealing with – just make sure the information you share is quite succinct and doesn’t take over the whole page. Having too much information about yourself too soon may mean you lose an opportunity to connect with your readers, so cover all the rest first and then talk about yourself.

This is where nailing your tone of voice becomes really important, so head over to this post or this podcast episode to learn more about how you can add personality to your About page.

Would you like our help?

If you’re looking for some personalised, tailored feedback on your About page or your website, we’re still doing free website critiques over on our Facebook group. So make sure you join and put your name down for a critique.

We also help personal brand entrepreneurs build and grow successful business websites inside our signature membership community, Make Your Mark online. The doors are currently open, and you can join for as little as $39 a month or $390 a year if you join as an annual member. So come and check it out!