Building An “About Us” Page That Reels Readers In – Tips and Examples

On the web you can’t communicate with customers and partners face to face. However you still can influence them with your website design and content. The home page of your website is like a new suit that attracts attention. It generates a client’s interest in your business, but for them to make a decision on whether or not to deal with your company, they need to know more about you.

That’s what the About Us page is for, to give them detailed and engaging information about yourself.
Question is: is your About Us page good enough to engage people?

Recommended Reading: 7 Types of "Coming Soon" Page Design (With Examples)

The Necessity Of The About Us Page

The About Page is a powerful tool to reach your target audience. Site owners should go ahead and use it like the many companies that do to communicate with their visitors. It’s not a secret that a lot of designers prefer creating home pages of websites, while neglecting minor pages. The problem is, the About Us page is not a minor page.

Most of the efforts in a web design is aimed at dealing with clients to make a profit. But how will you make visitors trust you if your About Us page looks weird? Remember that potential customers would like to know as much as possible about you and your business.
Nobody wants to trust their money with unprofessional and unknown organizations. Having a good About Us Page is a crucial component of success.

Who Reads Your About Us Page?

It’s not an idle curiosity, there are several types of readers who will want to find out more from your About Us page:

Potential clients and partners

Whether you work on B2B or B2C markets, you need to get new customers from time to time. For those who wonder who is behind the website, your About Us page is the first source of information.

Job seekers

If you care about getting good, professional staff you need to give them proper information online. Most likely before sending you a job application, a lot of professionals would like to check you out. If you don’t want to lose out on creative designers, marketers and developers, don’t resort to blah-ing on your About Us Page.
Instead, show off the photos of your office, your corporate perks and hangouts and other stuff like that.

Investors and donors

Would you like somebody to come and give you their money? If you’re looking for investments you should be ready to fight for them. In this competition a well thoughtout About Us page will give you a lot of additional points.

Your competitors

A little bit of spying is ok on every online and offline market; it’s called intelligence gathering. To stay up to date you need to know what your competitors have just done and what they are working on. It’s a competition.
In this play your About Us page is your business card that makes competitors know your worth and respect you more.

Ideas for an Effective About Us Page

Forget about wordy stories. People are not interested in reading huge chunks of text. Viewers may look through your history, but more likely they won’t stick around for long. Time is of the essence. Give a clear explanation of what you do.
A lot of business websites fail to describe their goods and services, leaving visitors trying to understand what the website was created for.
Give people a reason to work with you preferably a cool reason. Do you have testimonials from previous customers or partners? Use them! They will add more value to your business info. Other aspects include:

1. Mission and vision

A lot of people will be eager to work with you only if your values coincide with those of their own. Showing your corporate mission and vision means you state your priorities clear. It helps you make the perfect business match early on in the game.

2. Staff Personalization

If you create a portfolio where you are the only star you need to identify yourself. It will reduce the distance between you and potential clients. In the case where there is a team of professionals behind the site, go ahead and put up personal facts; that would suit the About Us page just fine.
Group photos, personal portraits, interesting facts, positions – all these things will help you build trust in business relationships.

3. Photos and Images

Use photos and images to make your About Us page fun. Original graphics and professional photos attract more attention as opposed to a plain text. On this page you shouldn’t use pictures of bad quality or abuse stock photos. People will notice that the photos are not yours and you’ll look bad. The photos overuse can harm your design and your reputation.

Read Also: Large Background Images In Web Design: Tips And Examples

4. Use Keywords

Choose 1-2 words or phrases and optimize the page for them. It will be easy to do because when you’re talking about something you’ll naturally name it several times (but don’t overdo it).

5. Internal links

After the previous Google Penguin update website owners started taking a lot of care of their link profiles. Blind link-building doesn’t work anymore. When writing about yourself or your business, link to your Contacts page, Portfolio page, social media accounts, etc.
Don’t paste these links just because somebody says you have to. Make them look natural and user-friendly.

Showcase

Now let’s see how great your business can look on the Web. A lot of websites have already built adorable About Us pages, which showcases not just their vision but also their personality. Pick one that resonates with your own and adopt their practices with ease.
Google

MailChimp

Behance

Yellow Leaf

Less Films

Eight Hour Day

Duoh

Pulp Fingers

Doberman

Joe Payton

Mostly Serious

Pursuit

Moz

Letters

Emma

Reflection

You have probably noticed that all the shown About Us pages look different. There are no strict rules for their creation, but you can always look at your competitors’ designs to decide on which elements you should be paying attention to.
Hopefully this post will give you a better vision of your future About us design. Cheers and good luck!