One of the things that really sets your business apart is who you are and WHY you do what you do. People don’t want to work with you if they can’t understand who you are. It’s the reason why the About Us page is the 2nd most visited page on every B2B site – 52% of people visit that page when they first visit your site. It’s also some of the most important content on your site, and something we all need to do a better job of sharing on our websites.
So why do so many businesses have such boring About Us pages? Why does it always seem like an afterthought?
One of the biggest pieces of pushback I hear all the time from small business owners is that they don’t want anyone to know they’re small. They’re always trying to seem big, and one of the ways they often do that is to impersonalize the business. So they create a very generic About Us page with a few bios. But what we see working is to do the exact opposite of that. Share your story. Talk about your why.
We call it putting a face on your business. As small business owners, it’s the easiest way to create differentiation with your large competitors. It works even better if you can infuse that with your WHY at the same time. The next logical step is to share all of that on your website so that prospects can learn more about your story.
What should your About Us page have on it?
When I first meet a new person at a networking event or on LinkedIn, they’re always going to ask a few key questions:
- Who are you?
- Why do I care?
- Is there some way to leverage our businesses together?
In the same way, when prospects visit your website, they’re heading over to your About Us page to find out who you are and if they can trust you. They want to know your story and understand your WHY. They’re trying to figure out if you’re a good fit for them. So you want your About Us page to answer those same questions.
And the majority of About Us pages do a bad job of answering those questions. They’re very cookie cutter and generic. If you really want to set yourself apart from the competition and catch a prospect’s attention, your About Us page needs to answer those questions and not just introduce people.
On the boomtime site, we start out on this page by sharing a bit about our origin story before we even introduce anyone. People don’t want to just see faces. They want to know about the story behind those faces. We start off telling that story and piquing the interest of our visitor. Then we share the individual stories of our team.
Mistakes to Avoid
- Don’t be boring
Go look at the About Us Page on your website right now. 99.9% of the time, what you’ll see is just a list of bios for the team. Your About Us page is your opportunity to share your story, WHY you do what you do, and what really sets you apart. It’s the page your prospects visit to learn your story and start to understand who you are and whether or not they want to work with you. So don’t just introduce the team. Use this page to tell your story, both of who you are and WHY you do what you do. And do it in a way that helps to convey your passion for what you do and really catches your visitor’s attention. - Don’t make people search for it
The biggest mistake with many websites is that we make people search in order to find the About Us page, even though no one is going to want to work with your company without understanding who is behind it. On your home page, right after your WHY and WHAT, have a nice, obvious button for About Us. Put it in your menu. Link to it from other pages when it makes sense. Really incorporate it into the customer journey on your website. - Your page title should NEVER be “About Us”
When you have a cookie-cutter website with all the same titles, that becomes white noise to the user and they can ignore those paths. So don’t use About Us as the title. Pick something more unique.On the boomtime site, we call this page, “Who We Are” because that incorporates so much more than just the names and bios of our team. It’s a page that shares our origins and why we’re passionate about what we do before you even see anyone’s face or read anyone’s bio. Make your page title interesting and more relevant to who you are and what you do. It’s an easy way to break through the white noise and catch people’s attention.
The page title could also be keywords someone might use to reach out to find you. It could also be the name of the CEO or face of the business. If you have a partnership with multiple people who are very active in the market, your About Us page should be a set of pages, one for each person, to optimize search results for each of those names. In many B2B businesses, a lot of the organic referrals coming in are tied to a specific person, so you want to show up in the search results when prospects search for their name.
- Don’t make it a dead end
Most of the time, when you visit an About Us page and get to the bottom of that page it doesn’t take you anywhere. It’s a dead end. You want to control your visitor’s journey and take people to the next step in telling your story. Don’t leave it up to them to figure it out. Is there a natural journey that you’re taking your site visitors on that turns them into a prospect? Put a strong call to action at the bottom of the page that directs your prospect to the next logical step in their journey to learning more about you and your business.
Your About Us page is a valuable tool in telling your story, further qualifying your prospects, and capturing leads. Make sure your page is doing that.
Learn more by listening to our B2B Word of Mouth Marketing podcast episode 23 – Taking Advantage of Low Hanging Fruit and 24-What is Your Why?
All the best,
Bill Bice
CEO
