The About Page’s Mission
The About page is the section of a website where people go to find out about the website they’re on.
Readers will visit this section for many reasons and with various questions they want answered, but your objective is the same: to inform them why they are on the site or why they should be on the site.
Who Reads About Pages?
It’s helpful to define the audience you’re writing your About page for. I can name three types of About page readers.
Group 1: First Time Visitors
This group may have been referred to your site by a friend, or may have stumbled upon one of your web pages through a search engine result or social media service. They liked what they saw and they want to decide if they should keep coming back.
Your About page, then, is an opportunity to convert a visitor to a user.
Group 2: Regular Users
Your consistent readers or registered web app users want to know more about the site that they often use. The About page becomes a means to give them reasons to keep coming back and a way to develop a greater appreciation of your site.
Group 3: People Who Want to Work with You
This group can be advertisers, content contributors, site owners in your niche, job seekers, and researchers putting together a feature about you in their blog post, interview, or school paper.
This group is interested in two things: facts and your history.
For example, advertisers might want to know if your site covers the demographic they’re targeting. Content contributors will be interested in finding out about what your site publishes to determine if the content they wish to contribute will fit with your audience.
All three groups have one thing in common: they’re evaluating the website through the About page to decide if they’re in the right place.
With these audiences in mind, here are some helpful guidelines for writing a great About page.
Provide the Basics at the Top as an Overview
Your About page should answer the Five Ws + H:
Who are you?
What do you do?
When did you start doing what you’re doing?
Where are you?
Why are you different from your competitors?
How are you accomplishing what you claim to do?
