The Most Effective 'About Us' Pages Are About the Customer or Client
If your business isn’t huge — with multiple divisions, for example — there’s no reason for your main “About Us” page to be any more than 20% about your company.
Did I catch you off guard with that statement?
Aren’t “About Us” pages naturally about your history, mission, core values, leadership team, and/or company culture?
Yes, but…
If you run or lead marketing for a small or midsized business — where you tend to have a decent amount of competition — you need to use every website page visit as an opportunity to stand out by answering the age-old question, “What’s in it for me (ie, your target audience)?” In turn, you should be strategic about the percent of page content that’s about your ideal customer or client — and where/how often you can turn back to them — on your About page.
I practiced what I preach in my recent rebrand
Prior to a rebrand I just completed, my About page was ~40% about my business and ~60% about my target audience. I had already reduced the part about me from 75%+ compared with the original version of this page.
Here’s a screenshot of my current About page. The part highlighted is the part that’s actually about me and my experience:
Other examples of heavily customer/client focused About pages from firms I’ve worked with
Our client Headsets.com (B2B), which has long been known for customer love across its website and other marketing channels, uses an intro letter from the founder and CEO at the top of the page to pivot — mid-letter — to how it provides excellent, unmatched service to its business customers.
AppliancePartsPros.com (B2C), where I had one of my last in-house marketing roles, uses the story of the gaps in the marketplace that its founder filled by creating the business as a means to quickly jump to the ways in which it has helped its 3 million homeowner customers to fix their broken appliances quickly and inexpensively.
AbilityFirst (nonprofit), where I worked for a few months before landing my job at AppliancePartsPros.com, uses a more classic structure on its About page that contains plenty of “we”s and “our”s. However, dig deeper and you’ll see that it’s all about recognizing and empowering its target audience of people with disabilities and their families.
This subset is just firms in my orbit. I’d be willing to bet that well over half of small and midsized firms in your orbit — especially B2Bs — are similarly weighting their About page content heavily toward who they help and how they help them, rather than about us and what we offer.
Take this opportunity to review your About page
Yes, today, or at least, this week. Put it on your calendar so you don’t forget.
Review what’s on this page and ask yourself:
While keeping the same or a similar word count, am I maximizing the focus on who I serve and why/how as much as I can?
Is there anything about my business or team that I could remove, or demonstrate in a more concise way such as through video and/or infographics, in the interest of my audience’s valuable time?
Can I add a natural next-step call to action (if there isn’t one currently)? Or if your About page has an existing call to action: Is the call to action that’s there the best one I should be using in alignment with my current goals?
Answer these questions for your business and edit your About page content accordingly to balance telling your story and sharing your expertise with maximizing your website conversions and revenue.
When it comes to #3 above on your About page and all other pages with calls to action…
The fun part for business leaders and marketers is adding a compelling call to action on your pages.
The not-so-fun — some of our clients call it downright frustrating — part is ensuring accurate tracking of conversions from these calls to action.
That’s where we come in. Go here to learn about our custom website conversion tracking service for marketing agencies and other businesses.
