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Making Your ‘About Us’ Page Effective!

by | Oct 13, 2011 | Website Content

The second most important page on a website after its homepage is its “About Us” page.

The “About Us” page is a business’s chance to stake its claim as a viable player. To accomplish that successfully, the business needs a powerful and succinct ‘elevator pitch’ and supporting key messages. An enormous marketing opportunity is lost when those key elements are missing from the “About Us” page—which is a logical destination for many who have become intrigued by a provider’s product or service offerings.

  1. A 35-word elevator pitch that tells visitors what type of business you are, what you offer, who you are targeting, what makes you special, and what value you provide
  2. Your most differentiating key message about your unique experience, skills, product or service, customer base, etc.
  3. Your second most differentiating key message about your unique experience, skills, product or service, customer base, approach or technique, etc.
  4. A brief company description explaining who you are, where you’re based, how long you’ve been in business, what your philosophy or business promise is, what the highlights of your experience have been, etc. Imagine that your homepage and “About Us” page are the only two pages that your visitor will see.

How to Check the Effectiveness of Your “About Us” Page

Draft print and lay it next to printouts of your competitors’ “About Us” pages. Compare each one as though you were a potential customer. Prepare a spreadsheet and display the different competitors’ copy, column by column.

  1. What is your main and secondary claim of differentiation? Whatever the company is hanging its hat on is its main differentiator. Call that row “Primary Differentiator” on your spreadsheet plus as many secondary claims or messages you can identify.
  2. Who is the target buyer or ‘persona’? Are they small business owners, large organisations, marketing, financial or IT managers? Call that row “Target Buyer” on your spreadsheet.
  3. What value/benefit is the competitor promising? It could be clearly defined or be poorly written as an inherent benefit that you must try and decipher?

Now that you have a nicely laid-out spreadsheet that compares the content of your “About Us” page with that of your competitors’, conduct an apples-to-apples comparison. By the end, you can determine just how well your page stacks up.