It’s often seen as almost an afterthought, but your “About” page is there for a very good reason, and that reason isn’t about you!

It’s about your visitor.

Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and you’ve just met, exchanged names and perhaps your occupation or business name. You know, the classic, “Oh, hello. What do you do?” ice breaker.

Now, at a cocktail party, you really wouldn’t expect your new acquaintance to pull out a resumé from an inner jacket pocket and begin reading aloud from it, would you?

Yet far too many “about” pages look as though that’s precisely what’s happened.

Here’s my first tip, from a marketer’s perspective.

Since your website is clearly commercial, if your visitor has taken the trouble to find out more about you, it’s because they have some interest in knowing what it will be like to do business with you.

Which also means, if you take a moment more to reflect, that they want to satisfy themselves on matters such as:

> Can you solve MY problem?
> What makes you different from your competitors?

Notice that the issue of cost isn’t there. That’s because if the problem is urgent enough and they believe you can solve it, they’ll pay anything. (Well, within reason.)

The issue of where you went to college or how many years you’ve been doing whatever you do isn’t there, either.

They want to know more about YOU. Not your school reports, not your certificates or “badges of honour.”

Let’s contrast two “About” pages – both by life coaches.

I’m not going to tell you whose the first one is because, well, I’m going to tear it apart and that wouldn’t be fair.

Suffice to say that there is a picture of the coach there, not smiling and with arms folded across her chest. (Okay, it’s a woman.)

And here are the opening words of her about page:

It is my passion to facilitate positive change in others and I have spent my career doing just that.

I have over 20 years’ experience working with individuals, teams, groups and business organisations, through various roles including being a Manager, Consultant, Trainer, Counsellor and Coach.

Now, I have to ask you: Do you feel an emotional connection with this person? Do you feel you’ve just been greeted?

I could tell you that it’s my passion to play guitar and entertain people and I’ve done just that – as an amateur – for more than 30 years.

It’s true, but I imagine you’d react with a “so what?” and a shrug. Do you feel entertained by me from reading that? Can you feel my passion for making music?

Of course not!

Now compare that to Liz Goodchild’s about page. (Actually, she’s split hers into two pages – both are amazing).

Here’s a screenshot of the first one:

Everything about that makes you want to find out more. (Or leave immediately, which would clearly be fine with Liz!)

So, check it out, (but come back here and read the rest of this article):
https://www.lizgoodchild.co.uk/7-reasons-im-not-coach/

And look, please, at her photo. It’s bursting with personality, from the fashion sense to the pose and the laughter – you know a lot about this woman’s personality without reading a word.

When you read her “7 Reasons” – which are all broken down into little bite-sized, easy to read chunks of text – they’re disarmingly honest, humorous and sprinkled with expletives.

In one fell swoop, Liz lets you see right inside her head and her life, and if you don’t like a bit of swearing and some tough love, you’d better get outta here! Liz wants you to be a good match for her too, and she’s not messing around.

Now, go to the second page, which has the more genteel title, “My Story” and read, but be warned – she will move you to tears.

And if not tears, she will move you. The story is clearly real and raw – and of course, entirely hers.

It can’t be your story, so what can we learn from it?

By telling you what happened to her, she’s revealing what brought about the transformation that gave her the insights to become the woman she is today.

She tells you about her turning point – and the aftermath.

Your reader has no interest in you if you’re in the same boat as them. But they’d like to feel that you were once! They want to feel understood.

They want to feel.

Go and study Liz Goodchild’s about pages. Don’t copy her, for goodness’ sake, but you can emulate the elements of what she’s done.

Liz has clearly worked at least as hard on those about pages as she has on her main landing page. Maybe much harder. That’s how important your About page is.

Here are the minimum ingredients you should be including in your About page:

1. A good, preferably professional photo of yourself. In most cases, looking into the camera, (people like to make eye contact), but if you can pull of Liz’s trick of revealing a lot of character, go ahead.  Smiling helps – but don’t make it cheesy!

Think about what you’re going to wear – it says a LOT about you!

2. A summary of your story as it relates to your business and who you are. Reveal your uniqueness, not your credentials – unless they really, really matter to your ability to deliver.

I love video, as in making it, but I confess I’m not always a fan of watching it. And especially not on an About page.

Whilst it can seem tempting and almost obvious to greet someone by letting them see and hear you, videos eat up people’s time and most of us are busy.

If – and it’s a big if – you can keep it to around 45 seconds and if, in that time, you can express something that makes them want to read the rest of the page that they might not have done otherwise, then maybe, maybe it’s worth putting there.

Not only that, but the major browsers, (Chrome, Firefox and by now, probably the others), have changed their coding so that videos will no longer autoplay on web pages.

So your visitor would have to deliberately click to view your greeting.

The exception, I would say, would be if you have something visual to show them, (if you’re an interior designer, perhaps), but even then, that seems to me that it would belong on your landing page, not the About page.

In a nutshell, for About pages, my advice is to steer clear of videos.

If you’d like some help getting your About page in better shape, my team and I are here to help. Just drop me an email: trevor@trevoremdon.com with the subject line “About Page Help” and we can hook up online where I’ll do a full appraisal of your About Page for free.