Writing an About Us page for a website that converts

by Gill Fernley | 6 min read

Many companies make the mistake of talking all about themselves on their About Us page. It’s an easy mistake to make given the title of the page, but it’s not about you. It’s about what benefits your business can bring to your customers.

So, if your About Us page shouldn’t just be a long history of the company, your staff and your experience, what should you do instead?

Create your best first impression!

Until they land on your website, it’s entirely possible that your prospects haven’t heard of you before, so there’s a lot of work to do with your website in general, and your About Us and Home pages, in particular, to take them from ‘never heard of you’ to know, like and trust.

Here’s a handy list if you’re struggling when writing About Us for a website:

1. Answer ‘WIIFM?’

You need to answer that age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”.

If ever there was a place for your value proposition, this is it. Your value proposition is your statement on why your visitor should buy your product or your service over any other, and choose your company over any other, too, and it’s vital that your About Us page answers that question.

Given how many websites there are on the internet right now, your prospect has a dizzying array of distraction at their fingertips, along with the knowledge that you’re not the only company on the internet that does what you do.

You’re basically qualifying your prospects with this page, and your Home page. Your potential customers are trying to find out if you are for them, i.e., can you really help, and will they get the results they need?

If you don’t answer those questions to your potential customer’s satisfaction, they’ll likely disappear onto the next website along, and you’ll have lost a lead.

2. Who are you?

While your entire About page shouldn’t be an essay on you and your company, you’ll still need to tell them something about you.

People buy from people after all.

Visitors are reading your About Us page to find out who runs the company and if they like you. They want a sense of who you are, and your personality, to find out if they will like working with you.

People also buy because of their emotional response to a brand, so make a connection, be you!

Even here, however, it’s still about your customers. Yes, you formed your company in 1947. What that means for your customers is that you have 70 years’ experience and the knowledge to provide the service they need and get the results they want. Otherwise, why should they care?

Frame your company story in terms that show what the advantage is to your clients.

3. A strong hook

Attention spans are very short these days, and you have seconds to grab someone, engage them, and keep them reading.

What’s special about your company that will make people want to read on? Start your page with that.

  • Is it a huge, ‘can’t argue with that’ benefit that they can’t get anywhere else?
  • Do you have massive numbers to show off – number of people you’ve helped, blogs you’ve written, sites you’ve built, traffic you’ve attracted?
  • Have you got celebrity endorsements or a huge award?
  • Do you have a strong stance that sets you apart, that’s different from what everyone else in your industry thinks?

Whatever it is, make it stand out at the top of the page to grab your audience.

4. Social proof

What can you provide to show that other clients have used your services, or bought your products, and loved the results?

  • Do you have industry awards you can show off?
  • Add some testimonials from satisfied customers. Even better if they are very specific about how you helped them and have statistics on the difference you made. ‘They increased our traffic by 200% in one week’ is far more convincing than ‘We got more traffic.’
  • Show off your own statistics if you have them. If you’re a sales guru and you’ve just hit over a million sales for a company in the space of 3 months, you can bet your potential clients want to know about it.
  • Do you have online reviews? If you do, get them on your site! “88% have been influenced by an online customer service review when making a buying decision.” – Zendesk.

The more actual facts and figures you can use to prove your value, the better, but again, don’t go overboard. Always keep in mind that this is about the customer when you write your website copy.

5. Use visuals

A wall of text is extremely off putting, and will more than likely cause your visitors to click away, but if you can add some of your statistics as an infographic, that’s much more likely to grab their attention.

Break up your text with enticing images and graphics that reflect your company personality and your brand, or try adding a couple of short videos to introduce yourself and how you can help.

Don’t forget – however much you dislike having your photograph taken – that people want to see you! They want real images of you and your team, not stock photos that might as well be cardboard cutouts.

6. Add a Call to Action (CTA)

You’ve caught their attention and managed to get them to read your About Us page, so the final thing you need to do is give them a Call to Action, or it’s all been for nothing.

What do you want them to do? Sign up for your newsletter? Look at your Services page? Ask for a quote?

Pick ONE. Only one. If you put all of your possible CTAs on your site, people will be overwhelmed and won’t know what to do. And people who can’t decide tend to do… well, nothing.

After all that work, you don’t want to send that juicy lead off to your competitors because you have too many CTAs.

Final checklist:

• Is there a strong hook to draw your prospect in to read on?

• Have you clearly described the benefits for your customer?

• Have you answered, ‘What’s in it for me?’

• Have you put across your personality and shown your likeability?

• Are you talking directly to your customer, using mostly ‘you’ and ‘your’, not ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘I’?

• Have you qualified your prospect and show that your company is for them?

• Have you provided social proof – testimonials, awards, or statistics?

• Is your content visual, and have you included staff photographs that are full of personality?

• Do you have a clear, strong, single Call to Action at least once on the page?

If you’ve been putting off writing your About Us page because of that whole “Oh, but I hate writing about myself, and I don’t know what to say” thing, the good news is that writing an About Us for a website isn’t like that at all.

Main image credit: Free Stock Photos
Image credits: SandCrestSEO, Steven Lilley, Stacie DaPonte
Gill Fernley

Gill Fernley

The director of her own copywriting firm, Gill writes B2B and B2C content for SMEs and digital marketing agencies. She has a background in performing arts and writes conversational, direct sales copy for businesses on a range of topics. She’s also a keen writer of chick lit.