What does your organisation do? How does your product or service help your customers? How do you present that information in plain English, or indeed, any language? This is an issue that many organisations seem to struggle with on their all-important ‘About Us’ page. Here’s how to write a solid ‘About Us’ page.
Have you ever visited a brand’s website and left none the wiser as to what they actually do? I was prompted to write this post by a tweet from a journalist friend of mine who wrote; “Most of the time, I’m just looking for a simple description. What I get is vague nonsense.”
If a journalist is researching your company – presumably with a view to write about you – then you really are in trouble if they can’t work out what you do. Cue potential missed opportunity. Not to mention the would-be customers who will be some way down their decision-making journey and checking out your page.
My background is in the business-to-business (B2B) tech space, so I have seen many a terrible ‘About Us’ page. The general problem is they’re all so vanilla:
“We are the market-leading provider of innovative solutions that create synergies for our customers and maximise the potential of their investment.”
And so on…
In short, if anyone is still unclear on what you do after the first paragraph, you are failing to communicate at a really critical moment in that customer or influencer’s experience with you. Worse still, it displays a culture of bad corporate copywriting that probably runs through your organisation, affecting your blog posts, press releases, marketing and website copy.
Information that a good ‘About Us’ page should contain
Overview
Firstly, summarise accurately what it is you offer and how you help your customers. Given many of your visitors will be skim reading from a mobile device, this ‘elevator pitch’ really needs to nail it. Seth Godin said famously that if you can’t explain your position in eight words you haven’t got a position. I’m not sure it needs to be that short but certainly brief and clear.
If you offer many things to many sectors then this needs to be broken down rather than attempting to catch all. It is incredibly powerful to support these words with a corporate video.
Your story
Do you have an interesting back history? Is there a founder story that you can bring to life on the page? What challenges did the founders face that drove them to create the product or service? How did they get it off the ground and who were their backers? If you’re a heritage brand, what are your key milestones? Do you have any nostalgia shots to make the page more interesting?
This is important as it shows the human side of what you do and your personality.
Your key people
The ‘About Us’ page is the perfect place to show your senior team. You can go into more depth on a ‘Meet the team’ page, but at least by showing the senior team you build that all-important face-to-face connection, which is essential in building trust and relationships.
Endorsements
Another key relationship builder is the customer endorsement. Every page should have some kind of proof-point, but the ‘About Us’ page is the perfect platform to tell visitors what your customers say about you. We have our client endorsements on our home page and dotted throughout the site where relevant.
Address, map and contact details
You’d be surprised how difficult it is sometimes to get a phone number, address or office map from some company websites. Or even their social media feeds.
The whole point of your business is that you want potential customers to get in touch. Make it easy for them.
What else would you recommend? Leave a comment below or connect with me on Twitter.
If you want to bring your corporate website copy to life, get in touch to see how we can help.