EAT Pages: What Are The Key Things To Include In Your ‘About’ Page?

You probably didn’t look forward to setting up an ‘About’ page when you built your website.

It’s hardly the most exciting part of the process. You want to see products go live, orders being places and visitors signing up for newsletters. You don’t want to fill out those pages that populate the footer of your page. After all, does anyone even read those?

Well, they do, and even if they didn’t, an ‘About’ page is still an important part of your site’s architecture. In this post, we’ll look at some key things to include on your About page.

What is an ‘About’ page for?

Whether you’re an eCommerce store, a non-profit, or an innovative tech startup, an ‘About’ page can be the difference between people understanding your business properly and not.

‘About’ pages suffer because most web designers and businesses see them as an afterthought. They’re one of many links buried at the bottom of a website. It’s more of a formality than a piece of content people will actively search out or put effort into.

This leads to most pages featuring a few hastily written paragraphs that never get updated.

However, a good ‘About’ page can be one of the best sales pages on your website, winning over customers and telling the story of your brand.

We’ll cover many of these in the next section, but you should look at an ‘About’ page as a way for your website to:

• Communicate the story of your business
• Detail your goals and services
• Put a face to your company name
• Answer simple questions a first-time visitor might have

In short, you’re trying to explain to someone why they should buy from you or work with you.

Key elements of an ‘About’ page

Let’s take a look at a few key elements you must include in your ‘About’ page, including examples of businesses that implement them particularly well.

Your story

In an age of brands and online personalities, the story of your business has never been so important.

No longer restricted to the humble garage-office beginnings of massive corporations, every business needs to have a story that makes them equally relatable and inspiring to their audience. More important than what that story actually entails is how you tell it. Your ‘About’ page can be a vessel for some very creative storytelling, using striking visuals and artistic license to give your business a prestigious place in its industry.

Take Vet Comp & Pen as an example. They help veterans secure the medical benefits they’re entitled to after their time in the armed forces. A noble cause, backed up by the charitable background of its owners. Still, the digestible timeline they use on their ‘About’ page is a great way of laying out the steps of that story and telling visitors they can 1) trust their experience and 2) see how they can help them with their concerns.

This timeline method is used across many different industries. Make your story as easy as possible to digest, and you’ll have people up to date in no time.

Your business model

Their business model is obvious for some companies, even to people who have just been exposed to their brand for the first time.

For others, it’s a unique value proposition that helps set them apart from their competitors. This is part of why customers and clients will go to an ‘About’ page to see what sets one business and its ethos apart from another.

For example, you might use your ‘About’ page to cover how you:

• Use only locally sourced materials
• Operate in a way that cuts out the middleman
• Donate a section of your income to charity or local causes
• Operate behind the scenes and look to improve the employee’s experience

Content can back these points up significantly, such as a behind-the-scenes video showing how you pack orders or process customer inquiries.

An ‘About’ page is also a great way to offer insight into how your services work. Take Airbnb as an example. This travel company rose to international prominence through a simple service that allows customers to rent out other people’s homes. Their ‘How Airbnb Works’ page within the ‘About’ section reflects that, showing the booking and listing process as a simple step-by-step visual checklist.

Your team

Our previous point touched upon the importance of using your ‘About’ page to offer a glimpse behind the scenes and show off your workforce. By profiling your team members, you create an instant connection between the consumer and your employees by taking that a step further.

Your employees are your business, so it only makes sense to include them in an ‘About’ page. You can keep things simple and show a picture, their name, and job title, or you can get a bit more creative, using visuals and video content to show off their individual personalities.

Texas-based digital marketing agency Redonk is one of many companies in the sector that do this particularly well. Not only do does each team member have a professional headshot and some short-but-sweet, personality-building copy, but by hovering over their picture, you unlock a secret ‘funny’ picture, yet another way of growing the personality and flavor of your brand.

If you’re working with clients, this is a great way to break the ice without even picking up the phone.

Media coverage

If someone has been praising you, don’t be afraid to shout about it!

While many businesses prefer to have a separate page on their website for the awards and press coverage they’ve received over the years, it can help to make a note of some of the biggest and most prestigious ones on your About page.

After all, recognition for your good work isn’t just a great way of getting customers on board with your business; it’s part of your brand’s unique story.

A great ‘media coverage’ section doesn’t just show how you’ve been able to get your name out there but that you’re open to more media opportunities down the road.

Don’t forget

Before you head off to update your ‘About’ page, ensure you don’t forget these key points.

Visuals are important

Visuals are an increasingly important part of digital content. One of the primary principles of creating compelling web content is the importance of images, video, and even gifs.

When developing your ‘About’ page, consider how you can tell stories and display achievements through visuals, rather than forcing your visitors to reach a huge block of text. The truth is, they’re probably not going to read it.

Don’t conflate ‘About’ pages with ‘Contact’ pages.

While ‘Contact Us’ and Q&A pages often fall into the same bracket as an ‘About’ page and usually make their home in the same website footer, there is a distinct difference between those pages and what you’re trying to achieve through a robust ‘About’ page.

Contact Us pages are much simpler in design. If you land on one, you want to see email addresses, phone numbers, and office locations. You don’t want to see a block of text that makes it hard to extract information. Think about what your audience needs at that moment. You can be a bit more flowery in the presentation of your ‘About’ pages, so don’t merge the two.

The beauty of a great ‘About’ page is that as long as you’re informative, creative, and a little bit braggadocious, you can do just about anything with it.

These key elements are a great starting point but by no means a precise framework to follow 100%. Find your own way to tell your brand’s story, and don’t forget to keep updating it as your business evolves.