Apart from the home or landing page, your business’ about page is arguably the most powerful and influential of all pages upon your site. This frequently-trafficked area holds a crucial key to the success of your business online.
Yet so often when visiting a promising site you will be ultimately underwhelmed by the information provided. Companies seem uninformed about the truly transformative power an about page can have upon growing their business and building a successful, long lasting brand.
If your own site features a cookie-cutter three sentence summary of your company, be prepared to encounter some disruptive yet ultimately beneficial ideas for your own business in this article. Hopefully the strategies and styles presented help you grow and succeed in building a solid business base.
What are your goals?
There are three primary reasons every business must have a killer about page:
- To demonstrate authority
- To build rapport
- To generate more leads or business for your company
Before considering how to craft your about you page, you have consider its intended goal. There are dozens of successful strategies one may employ when working to create a spectacular, lead generating about page.
But these are not all created equal.
You must understand the purpose and consequences of your actions in order to succeed. Ecommerce clients, for example, often seek to increase trust and cultivate higher conversion rates by connecting with visitors on a more intimate and personal level.
For client-based service businesses their about page is ultimately geared towards lead generation or emails opt ins to allow for potential sales later in the buying cycle. Ask yourself what is the call to action or positive result you wish to generate from every potential visit to your site.
Additionally, an about page may be used to strategically eliminate visitors who may be unsuitable to becoming customers. For those offering premium services or selling high-end products, it may be beneficial to distance yourself from customers unable to afford your services. By showing exactly whom you do and do not wish to deal with you eliminate the possibility of customer service nightmares and allow more time to allocate working with and selling to potentially profitable purchasers. This is the 80-20 Pareto principle at work.
Demonstrate Authority
When writing your about page you need to consider the authoritative consequences of your words. A primary purpose of crafting an about page is to showcase yourself and your stellar company as thought and action leaders in your industry. This success and self-positioning must be reflected in your tone and form as well as content.
Here are a few recommendations for how to demonstrate authority on your about page:
1. Showcase past customer testimonials: Nothing puts consumers more at ease than seeing past successes. By knowing other clients have been happy enough to leave glowing reviews of your product or services people understand the satisfaction your company values. The testimonials alleviate the stress and fear people inherently have when purchasing online and will work to boost conversion rates across your site.
2. Share your story: People love an engaging story and will gain confidence and trust through seeing the legacy of your business. Battle tested businesses have a history of success. Unlike the ecommerce merchant who popped up overnight or the less than trustworthy internet marketer, your company has an established history of delivering to customers. This, like the testimonials, demonstrates the satisfaction clients can expect with your brand.
3. Tone: You are the industry leader. You are confident and successful at helping clients achieve amazing results in their business. Once having walked the walk it is important to talk some of the talk. Do not overemphasize successes or results but rather strive for a balance of humble hero and confident entrepreneur to show substance and demonstrate ability to produce.
Build Rapport
Rapport, or the connectedness of bonding, is a powerful force in business. Too often we forget that human beings wish to relate and therefore deal with others in their daily lives. By humanizing your business and positioning yourselves on the same level or just slightly above your customers you can gain an emotional edge.
Here are a few ideas on how to build rapport on your about page:
1. Share your mission: People rally and support others with similar ideologies. If your company stands for something you must showcase that and inspire others to stand with you. All great brands have competition, but building support with those who follow your business’ goals and passions helps you build a loyal customer base. This is the ideal situation for any business or brand and will help with long term longevity and brand reputation.
2. Show the people behind the mission: One powerful strategy to cultivate customers is to show the humanity of your company. Highlighting the entire team and sharing their stories can help create a bond with the company based around its amazing employees. This is especially powerful with pictures. We human beings are highly visual creatures and are drawn to images. Studies have found enormous conversions rates bumps and subsequent trust by simply including pictures of other people. Whether you choose to show individual shots of your team or schedule a large team photo these will benefit in building bonds with the customers.
3. Personality: Personality is another slippery slope when it comes to building a successful, business generating about page. Here you must consider the exact outcomes you wish to accomplish. For some businesses looking to build a brand and a more emotional connection with customers, especially in ecommerce and physical goods, this can be amazing. Well placed quips or funny little jokes share a bit of personality with the audience. However, I recommend testing this, as it can quickly backfire if unsuccessful or even push away prospective clients.
Generate Leads
Trying to sell on an about page is often a fatal mistake and can destroy trust and relationships built with prospective clients. Instead I recommend strategies to soft-sell with optional engagement.
Here are a couple recommendations on how to generate leads on your about pages:
1. Opt In Form: While product promotion is often unsuccessful on about pages you can connect with clients through email. After reading your story many visitors will feel at ease enough to enter your email opt in. Nurture these prospects into warm leads as they enter your funnel and in the end this can be a powerful process of finalizing sales.
2. Phone Numbers: By placing pertinent contact information for your company you capitalize on individuals interested in reaching out for a consult. In the area of service or software businesses even one new prospect can be potentially lucrative.
Conclusion
Hopefully this insight into the strategic acquisition of additional leads and building better conversion rates for your business has forced you to consider your About page in a new light. This prime piece of real estate can become a potent lead generation machine for your business and allow you to grow.
In my own work with clients I have seen conversions rate increases as much as 89% overnight(though this is highly atypical). In spite of this overly successful result you can still certainly expect to see elevated growth in your business and additional prospects entering your funnel by employing several of the strategies above. Not only will these techniques allow your business to become more profitable but they will also enable you to better connect with and your prospects into happy, paying customers for higher lifetime values.
About the Author:
Matt Ward is an online entrepreneur and branding consultant who works with clients to create better, more profitable bonds with their customers by building a powerful brand they love, trust, and feel impassioned about. Connect with him on his blog or Twitter @MattBnB.
Matt also hosts a podcast focused on helping bootstrapped entrepreneurs in which he interviews successful, self-funded startup founders. They share their motivational stories, secrets of success and strategies for growth. Check out Wishpond’s own resident entrepreneur, Jordan Gutierrez, in his podcast:
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