Every website has one – the About tab or About Us. What does yours say about you or your company? 
Who Are These Guys?
There is an interesting discussion going on in LinkedIn®.
An individual posed a question asking contributors what they wanted to see in an About or About Us page.
The succinct answer was “to humanize” the company. A frequent response was to put a face to the company – both literally and figuratively.
Make it Real
An About page with photos was important to many of the responders. Even more important was information about the people of the company – their beliefs, their background.
Here are the unscientific results.
- 63 percent want information about the people of the company
- 59 percent thought there should be photos (key executives, in larger companies)
- 33 percent wanted information about the expertise of the company’s people
- 11 percent mentioned the importance of contact information (and not just a generic email address)
Some other comments included that the About page should be brief, and not one where readers scroll continuously.
Others suggested links to other pages, like Executive bios and photos, so readers could decide how much (or how little) they wanted to read.
My Bottom Line
In essence, I have 5 elements I want answered from reading an About page.
- Who are you?
- Why should I care?
- What problem(s) are you going to solve for me?
- What makes your product/service different from any other?
- Prove it.
I think there are better ways to get to those answers than others. Putting a face to a company is certainly a good tactic.
One responder suggested featuring some of the front-line people – again, making it real.
What do you think? What do you look for when you click on an About page?
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This is Day 20 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge – blogging every day for 30 days. I hope you’ll stop by often and offer your suggestions for topics and offer your comments. You can add the RSS feed or sign up by email to receive new posts. Thanks for stopping by.
Yaro Starak of Become a Blogger fame suggests, and I paraphrase, telling your story on your about page… so you and I Cathy would tell the story of how/why, etc. we became writers… haven’t done that yet, but it’s an interesting thought.
.-= Anne Wayman´s last blog ..Friday Fun For Freelance Writers – August 20- 2010 =-.
I love Yaro’s pointers-found him thanks to you, Anne. 🙂
Mine is more the A to Z-being a licensed agent, insurance companies-even a dental hygienist.-not to mention writing. 🙂
Always looking for something new and writing about it 🙂
Thanks for stopping by, Anne.
I like the way you broke this down, Cathy. I think those 5 things are the things that matter in order to determine if there is an interest in digging deeper. Because of that, I agree I think it should be brief but really like the idea of links that allow the reader to take it a step further but leaves the choice up to them. Great guidelines!
.-= Jen Turi´s last blog ..How to Interview for Top Talent =-.
Thanks, Jen. I had not thought of links either.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for breaking down those results — it does help make it more real. You and I have similar philosophies; the human touch makes all the difference. I don’t like websites that try to keep a distance between the company and me. If I’m going to work with you, you shouldn’t build a wall between us!
Thanks, Ashley, for stopping by and sharing your view. I’m with you, I don’t get why some sites make it difficult to understand what they are all about.
My biggest peeve is going to a company site for a physical location (usually to add it to an article), and it’s a fill-out form or worse, a toll-free number. Why are they averse to putting their full address there? Never understood it.
Hi Lori-I agree that is sooo aggravating. Makes you wonder if there is something you need to know that is behind the lack of a physical address. You understand if it’s a freelancer, but a brick and mortar with no address?
Thanks for sharing one I hadn’t thought of, Lori.