Creating a Quality About Us Page
If there is one page you will find on nearly every business website it is the “About Us” page. The simple answer is that consumers want to know who they are doing business with before making a purchase.
This can oftentimes be a difficult page for small business owners to write because it feels like bragging. However, it is important to convey that your business is good at what it does and that they should choose you over your competitors.
How to Start An About Us Page
To get started you will want to make a few bullet points that you can expand on when you are writing the page. A few of the items you will want to list are:
- How/why the company was started
- Experience that the owner has
- Time working in this industry
- Trade association memberships
- Benefits of working with your company
- Awards and milestones
Each of these items will help build a story about your business that can help the public understand who you are. While some larger businesses choose to simply brag on their about us page for smaller companies it’s all about the story.
People can relate and understand your story much easier than they can digest some bland corporate. One of the best ways to start the story is to explain why you decided to go in to the industry you are in. Was it a poor experience you had, you noticed a hole in the marketplace or you a just so passionate that you decided to start a business.
Next get in to things like the number of years you have been in the industry and how you got started. If it’s a short amount of time you can talk about how other experiences allow you to excel in this industry. Then talk about some of the associations or groups you are a member of. The BBB, Chamber of Commerce are also great additions.
What are some of the biggest benefits of choosing you over your competitors? Move past the typical “great service” type of remarks, what are the real benefits. If you can’t think of anything it may be time to evaluate your business and look for ways to improve.
Lastly talk about some of the awards or milestones your company has. For milestones it can be passing a certain number of items sold, customers helped or years in business.
This page is very important on your site and while it may not help you rank highly in the search engines it will help convert visitors you get to your site.
Improve the Page
Now that you have the text that explains your business you will need to spruce up the page a bit. The best way bar none is to have a high quality video about your business. While this won’t be an option for everyone it is highly recommended.
Getting a video produced can cost anywhere from $500 to thousands, however for a small business you should be in the $500-1000 range. Having a great video gives your business a much higher level of professionalism and also helps portray your personality.
Next having images of your and staff (if any) helps people know who they will be working with. Some companies choose to have bios about their staff, this can be a good idea if you expect to have low turn over.
Having images of your business receiving awards or donating money to charity is another great add on for the about us page. Also if you volunteer or do some form of community service adding photos of that can help.
Lastly we recommend having 1-2 testimonials on this page, just short 1-2 sentence ones work great. By showing how happy past customers were you help the visitor understand how they will feel after working with you.
Final Thoughts
Putting together this page shouldn’t be too hard as you already know your story and background. This is not a quick slap it together page, it’s important to give it adequate attention. If you need a few ideas take a look at some of your competitors and especially some of the leaders in your industry they may spark ideas you never would have thought of.
Lastly make sure to keep this page updated. You have no doubt seen the website with the about us page that hasn’t been updated in a decade. The staff’s clothes and hairstyles reflect this. At least once a year read through it and make any necessary updates.
With the information from this guide, you should now be well on your way to having a content-rich website that sells itself! Huzzah!