The Untapped Potential of About Us Pages (And How to Write Your Own)

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Along withFAQand Contact pages, the About Us page is one of the first supporting pages you'll likely create for your website, regardless of the industry you're in.

They may go by different labels—“About”, “Story”, “Mission”—but these types of pages generally serve the same key purpose: to be the go-to page for a brand to say,“This is who we are.”

When a visitor wants to learn more about you or your business, it's the page they'll look for.

Unfortunately, About Us pages are too often treated as an obligation rather than the valuable opportunity they are to connect with your customers by selling your story, your vision, your mission, and what makes you, YOU.

What an About Us page is really for

The problem with many About Us pages is they’re an afterthought—a link buried in the footer of a website that leads to a few hastily written paragraphs about a company.

What an About Us page should be is a goal-oriented sales page, one that focuses on highlighting the biggest selling points of your story and brand, making a strong impression on curious customers.

If anyone wants to quickly understand your brand, your About Us page should be the single link you send them.

That's because your About Us page is the ideal place to accommodate a number of objectives:

  • Communicate the story of your business and why you started it.
  • Describe the customers or the cause that your business serves.
  • Explain your business model or how your products are made.
  • Put a face to your business, featuring the founders or the people on your team.
  • Incorporate persuasive content (e.g. an explainer video, data visualizations, links to blog posts) that might otherwise clutter your homepage.

In short, your About Us page is a home for your founding story, a place to show off your business wins, and a sales page that answers the most pressing question new customers have about your business outside why they should buy its products:

Why should they buy fromyou?

How to write an About Us page: A template

The best About Us pages accomplish their goals through telling a story about a brand.

Every story needs a protagonist, and so does every About Us page. In some cases, that might be you or your founding team. In others, you might treat your business as its own character with a distinct story.

无论哪种方式,故事都是关于代表change—starting in one place and ending up in another—which is something your About Us page should also do as visitors scroll through it.

You can craft a narrative for your About Us page by using the followingformula:

    1. Set the scene: Introduce the characters or setting, and establish the status quo or “the way things were” for you, your target customer, or your industry.
    2. Introduce the problem:Describe the problem that called you (the main character) to act.
    3. Rise to the challenge:Explain how you set out to find a solution (i.e. start your business) and the obstacles you faced along the way.
    4. Arrive at a solution:Share details of how your business is pursuing its purpose and the milestones you’ve hit.
    5. Envision what’s next:Paint a picture of the future for your company or state its mission and goals.

    这就是这样子,当你把它all together:

    About Us page story template

    [FOUNDERS] started [COMPANY] because [EXPLAIN PROBLEM IN YOUR INDUSTRY].

    That's why [DESCRIBE JOURNEY TO SOLUTION].

    Along the way, [SHARE MILESTONES AND WINS].

    We want to be [STATE YOUR MISSION GOING FORWARD].

    Keep in mind that writing your actual copy in the first person (e.g. I, We) will help build a more personal connection with your audience. Your About Us page is About YOU, so don't shy away from that.

    Hit these points and you should have the structure for a story (not necessarily thecopy you'll use) that you can incorporate into your About Us page narrative.

    However, a story is just the start. A good About Us page doesn’t just tell the story behind a company—it shows it.

    Here are some other components you might want to incorporate into your About Us page to not only flesh out your narrative, but to define your brand and communicate your company’s reason for being to customers.

    Elements you can include in your About Us page design

    Your business model

    For some companies, their business model is theirunique value propositionand can be a selling point that’s worth including on their About Us page.

    Some examples of this might include:

    • How you cut out the middleman and pass the savings onto customers.
    • Where you source the materials for your product (e.g. manufacturing in a specific country or by providing jobs to a certain community).
    • A breakdown of the portion of your revenue thatgoes to a charity.

    If transparency might strengthen your brand, your About Us page is a good opportunity to summarize your supply chain, how your business works, and relate that back to the mission that drives you.

    This is often accomplished with an illustration that presents your business model in an easy-to-digest manner, like this one used by Taaluma Totes that explains how they source materials for their products and how donations help support the country of origin.

    explaining supply chain on about page

    Source:Taaluma Totes

    媒体提到,奖状,获奖

    Reviews, press mentions, or user-generated content can be included on your About Us page to share how you’re impacting your customers or your industry.

    There are a variety of ways to integratesocial proofinto your About Us page, from embeddingInstagram galleriesof customer content to featuring the logos of publications that have covered you to highlighting a quote you lifted from a customer review.

    Press mentions, awards, and other wins are common examples of milestones that can be used to help tell the middle of your story.

    highlighting press on about page

    Source:Cotopaxi

    Concrete numbers

    Numbers give you credibility, especially if you’re illustrating a problem you’re trying to solve or the progress you’ve made as a business (e.g. number of items sold or years you’ve been in business).

    Consider the stats you can use to make a point about your company mission or quantify your impact as a business to include on your About Us page.

    Whether you’re explaining the industry problem that comes up early in your story or highlighting the milestones at your story’s climax, tying relevant figures into your narrative can help you communicate your message more effectively.

    illustrating mission with numbers on about page

    Source:Merit

    An introduction to your team

    Putting a face to your brand helps to humanize it, communicate your company culture, and shine a light on the people who power your business.

    Even if you only highlight the founders, your About Us page can be a chance tobuild your personal brandand share how your story and experience makes you and your company a good fit to serve your market.

    putting spotlight on team on about page

    Source:Death Wish Coffee

    A video or gallery of photos

    If you can, you should mix up the media on your About Us page to add variety and break up the text in your page design.

    At the very least, you can include high quality behind-the-scenes photos that pull back the curtain and give visitors a glimpse into your business. Or, if you’ve invested in a video that helps visitors get to know you, your story, or your products, your About Us page is a good home for it as well.

    Links and calls to action

    Your About Us page can also be used to funnel visitors to other parts of your website or online presence, whether it’s a blog post or social profile.

    Be sure to incorporate any relevant links into your copy and think about how you can continue the visitor’s journey by encouraging them to:

    • Follow your social accounts
    • Opt into your email list
    • Check out your products
    • Apply for a job at your company
    • Read your blog

    social profiles on about page

    Source:MVMT

    5 excellent About Us page examples to inspire you

    Your About Us page is going to be aboutyou, but that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow some ideas from others, especially when it comes to structure and design.

    The following are examples of different ways you can tackle your About Us page design. I’ve included screenshots of the pages in their entirety so you can see the full layout of information and imagery in order to plan your own page.

    A letter to customers from Wrightwood

    To start with, let’s look atWrightwood’s About Us page: a simple, text-centric approach to telling their story. Conveyed in the form of a letter to customers, it uses formatting and font sizes strategically to create variety with text instead of relying on other media types.

    What it does best, however, is state its place in the furniture industry against bigger competitors and tell a story about small business experience and passion going up against the status quo that was built by bigger chains.

    Plus, it ends off with a thank you from the founders to customers who choose to shop with them.

    letter to customers on about page

    [Check it out]

    A founding team story from MVMT

    TheMVMT story, on the other hand, makes use of sections to tell different parts of it.

    It centers on the company’s two co-founders who dropped out of college and includes photos of them to put a face to their names, before getting into their product promise and finally their company philosophy.

    But what’s worth noting about the page design here is that you can break it down into three sections that you can also use to organize your own About Us page:

    1. Who you are
    2. What you sell
    3. Why you do it

    found story on about page

    Personal branding like Marie Forleo

    Marie Forleo structures her About page like a long-form letter to the reader. It tells her story in the format of a condensed autobiography before refocusing on the reader with a section aptly titled, “Which brings me to you”.

    For entrepreneurs who have a personal brand that goes with their business, this style of an About Us page might be better. You can treat your business as one important chapter in a much larger series of stories, starting at the beginning and ending where your ideal reader is introduced as a character.

    personal story on about page

    [Check it out]

    Starting with “why” like Cotopaxi

    本质啊f a brand can be found in the feelings and meaning its name evokes. So another good place to start your story is with why your business bears a certain name.

    Cotopaxi takes this approach by explaining the personal relevance the brand name has for its founders before continuing to tell the rest of their story through the actions they’ve taken in building the business and pursuing their cause.

    [Check it out]

    Tell your story through pictures like WP Standard

    WP Standard’s About Us page is almost like a lookbook with a minimal amount of copy or details about its origin. Instead the story is told through a video, imagery, and sparse copy that summons the idea of resilience, exploration, and embracing the essential.

    In a way, their About Us page is more of an “about the customer” page that casts shoppers as the exploring protagonist in their video before bringing it back to their promise as a company.

    It’s a departure from the copy-driven pages we covered above, but it works in the favour of WP Standard as a brand of few words, or for brands that want to say a lot by saying very little.

    [Check it out]

    Your story gets better over time

    When you’re starting out, it might seem likes there’s not an awful lot to say on your About Us page.

    But if you have a point of view and know why you’re doing what you do in service of your customers, you have enough to start with. You can expand upon what milestones you’ve crossed as you grow, improving your About Us page over time.

    And for those who are already well into their own story, it might be worth taking a look at your analytics to see if new visitors are regularly stopping by your About Us page.

    Maybe it’s time to take another pass at it and start treating your About Us page like the valuable online asset it’s meant to be for your business.

    常见问题写一个us page

    How do I write an about page?

    Treat your about page as an introduction to your customers. Share who you are, why you started the brand, your vision and mission and how you plan to grow your brand. Consider this as your store's resume that you need to keep updated at all times. The more you share about yourself, the closer your customers will feel to your brand.

    How can I write about myself?

    We know how tough it is when it comes to writing about yourelf. So we suggest you start with a set of points that you'd like your customers to know about you. Then create simple questions around them like you're interviewing yourself, and start jotting down your answers. You could also consider getting an about us page written by a copywriter. But remember not to lose your personality there.

    How do I create an about us page on Shopify?

    Log in to your Shopify admin dashboard and click on 'online store' from the left hand side menu. Click on 'add page', create your content there and name your name as 'about'. Save the page and then add it to your menu.

    Do you need an about us page?

    Image stumbling upon a new brand on social media. You really like their products but know nothing about them. Would you blindly buy from the brand or would you dig in a little to find out more about who they are and where they are from? In most cases, you would try and find an about us page. So we think having an about us page is actually good!
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