Your website should always have a goal. Whether that goal is getting email subscribers, event sign-ups, or making a sale, you should always be thinking about ways to get users to achieve this goal. One of the easiest ways to inspire trust with your visitors and potential customers is with your About Us page.
This page is often overlooked by site owners, but research has shown that people who view your about page might spend almost 25% more than those who don’t visit. They are also five times more likely to make a purchase. If this outrageous metric doesn’t have you running to optimize your about us page, at Siege Media we found 50 about us page examples that can help inspire you to make the change. We also created an infographic that outlines the science behind the perfect page.
The five key parts to remember are:
A Clear Value Proposition
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, your value proposition is what makes your company unique and better than the competition. Think of it as your one-sentence “elevator pitch”.
According to studies, you’ll always want to keep your value proposition and/or most important information above the fold. The user spends 80% of his/her time there, so make it count while you have their attention.
Looking at it even further, you want to be sure to address it in the eyes of the customer. Speak to them and frame the benefits in their eyes. Unbounce, does a great job at this. Their value proposition states “Unbounce empowers you to create better marketing experiences.”
Tell a Great Story
Try to evoke an emotional response from your reader with a story. When you do this, it increases a customer’s intent to buy by almost 3 times. Brain scans show that humans are hardwired to react using emotion over information when evaluating a brand.
So how can you tell a great story? A timeline is a great way to help visualize the growth of your company and show dated reference points. Another incredibly effective way is through video. A whopping 70% of millennials are likely to watch a video about a company when shopping. This is a great way to leverage that intent to buy and give the user a little push in the right direction.
Another point in the infographic speaks about the importance of including testimonials or reviews on your About page. This is something you can easily add to a company video, displaying credibility, building trust and even increasing sales.
Build Trust Through Photos
If your about page doesn’t have any photos, the first thing you should do is add some. Aside from being emotional people, studies have shown that we are also very visual people. Customers spend 10% more time looking at pictures than they do reading text. But, if you are thinking of just slapping on some stock photos – don’t.
Showing stock photos on your about page is one of the worst things you can do. Not only does it give the feeling of it being fake, but with no face to a company, users won’t want to buy. Studies have shown that showing photos of the founders or team members can inspire trust and increase conversions by 45%. Take some candid shots and show people smiling. If you are using your about page to get new applicants, show off your office life. Give potential employees a sense of what it is like to work at your company.
Establish Credibility
If you have positive reviews, list them on your about us page. 72% of people say they trust a business more if it has a positive review. You can also show any awards or accolades that you may have won.
If you are a design agency or web developer, is also essential to practice what you preach on your website. If you boast that you can deliver a “cutting edge” design to your customers, but your own page looks like it is from the 90s, then there is a clear disconnect in what you think “cutting edge” should be. This will severely hurt your chances of gaining a customer.
Clear Call-to-Action
Going back to the what I said in the beginning, if you have a site, you should have a goal. If you are leading the customer or visitor on a journey, you have to have them take an action at the end. A simple button or contact form on an about us page works wonders. This has been shown to increase conversions by 300%!
You also want to be sure the customer knows how and where to contact you. More than 50% of people surveyed think that having “thorough contact information” is the most important element missing from company websites. There’s no need to hide from your customers.
Some companies that depend on leads for their business put their phone number right in the header, sidebar, or footer and it follows you down the page. It works just as well at the end or beginning of an about us page. Remember, it should be crystal clear to the user what they should do next. When in doubt, have a colleague run through the process and make sure he/she picks up on the signals on what he/she should do next.
See the full infographic below:
