When you create a website, “About Us” pages are one of those must-haves that you cannot neglect. Every website has one, from big eCommerce brands to someone’s blog. It provides an opportunity for visitors to get to know your business. With a compelling “About Us” page, you can immediately establish connections with people who landed on your site. There is no hard structure to it, and it’s not always easy to know what to include in such a section. In this post, I’ll go into detail about what information you should consider including, the dos and don’ts, and how to set up an About section in WordPress.
Why do you need an About Us page?
So, people have landed on your site. They already saw the homepage where you introduce your blog, products, or services. Now they want to find more information about the person or people behind the products or services you offer. This is when they look for your “About Us” page – to know more about you! The page can go by different names – “About”, “Our story” – but their purpose is the same. To tell visitors who you are, and why they should choose your business!
When visitors first land on your site, you’re a stranger to them. Use this page to explain to them what it is that you do, and why you do it. They should be presented with clear information about you or your business.
Don’t think of this section as an obligation and only write a few paragraphs here and there. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to share your stories, values and build trust between you and your site visitors. When people know who you are, what you do, what you believe in, they are more likely to trust and do business with you.
What information should you include on your About Us page?
There are so many ways you can go about telling your company story. It’s tough to establish a one-size-fits-all structure for an About page. In general, try to think about what you want visitors to know about you, and what you think they want to know. In addition to that, your brand personality should speak loud and clear here. Let visitors know whom they are doing business with!
The following list is just a suggestion of the various information you could have on your “About Us” page, regardless of the purpose of your website. You don’t need to include all of it on your page. Choose the information that you think is suitable for your business.
Your story
Every business has a story to tell. We believe an “About” page should always include a piece of the story about you or your company. This is especially true for bloggers and smaller companies. People love brands with personalities nowadays. And stories are powerful mediums for you to connect with your audience. People tell stories. It’s what we do as humans!
How did you come up with the idea of this blog or this company? When did you decide to pursue this idea? How has it grown during all those times? Don’t be afraid to summarize and share such experiences in a piece of writing. Try to encapsulate your history and development in just a few paragraphs. You don’t have to be a book author to write one, and you certainly don’t need to make it lengthy.
You should definitely mention the “Aha!” moment that led to the creation of your blog, products, or services. In addition to that, you may want to include the important milestones that you or your company achieve over time. Milestones are your company’s history, so be proud of them! And who knows, you might inspire some visitors with your compelling story and history.
Your company mission
Your mission statement is an action-based statement that declares the purpose of your business and how you serve your customers. This sometimes includes a description of the company, what it does, and its objectives. A mission statement must answer the big three questions: the “what,” the “who,” and the “why,” of your company. Therefore, your mission statement is basically a condensed guideline by which your company operates.
Most mission statements are between one and three sentences. It should be easy to understand, and easy to remember. After the mission statement, it’s also good to explain how you go about achieving such a mission. How do your company operations fit in with your mission?
For instance, Google’s mission statement is: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. It is short and nicely summarizes what the people at Google do. Then they go on to talk about how they do it: by managing, innovating, and improving their search function.
Your team
Your people are what makes your company! Let’s face it, your company wouldn’t exist without the people behind it. Use this section to briefly introduce them to your visitors. You don’t have to introduce every single one of them. But it’s good to include some of the important people such as the founders and management team here.
In addition to that, you can also introduce some common qualities and values that your team members share. And if you can, do include photos of your team, and even photos of the individual team members. This helps to create a sense of “human” for your visitors. As humans, we tend to feel more connected to people when we see them. It’s also a good idea to create a dedicated page about your team and put a link in this section.
Introduce your values
Customers want to be treated like human beings. For that to happen, they need to feel that they’re communicating with human beings. Be sure to describe who you are as a person or as a team, and what your personal values are. What do you believe in? What’s your company culture like? What’s your contribution to the greater picture – meaning your community and the world around you?
Other things you may want to consider
Got some loyal customers who’ve been with you for quite a while? If the answer is “yes”, then you may want to show them off to your visitors. There must be a reason why these people continuously do business with you, right? Loyal customers can give great testimony to why other people should buy your products or services.
If your business has been given an award, be proud of it! In fact, show it to your visitors. Awards from credited sources show your credibility to the world. And credibility is what invites people to trust you. Make sure not to go overboard with it, and don’t boast too much about your achievements. Just a few lines of text, photos, or icons may do the job.
Some small businesses also introduce their work process on their About page. Although you should have separate pages which explain how you work – for small businesses, this is okay as well. If you want to include your work process in the about section, be sure not to explain everything there. Just give a brief explanation and pair the copy with photos and graphics to make your content more appealing.
What you should and shouldn’t do on your About Us page
The Do’s
1: Show off your brand’s personality, whether it’s through communication style (your copywriting style, tone of voice), or visual elements such as colors, logos, imagery.
2: Make a brilliant and engaging design for your page! Invite visitors to click on your content by giving it a nice look. Make sure to distribute your content nicely so it’s easier for visitors to read and navigate. Don’t scare them away with blocks after blocks of text. Leave some white spaces in your design so visitors are not flooded with information. White spaces also allow your text and images to shine.
3: Do use compelling photography and illustrations that demonstrate your brand’s personality. Imagery is a crucial factor for any brand. You can really connect with your visitors by selecting images that speak to them.
4: Including videos here could be a great idea. Especially if you have videos that you think will be interesting for your visitors, or you just want to show off other cool sides of your company! Just don’t go overboard and include something like your year-end party recap.
5: Create subpages for different content and link them to your About Us page. This will help keep your page cleaner. Let’s say you support a charity fund with your business. That’s an incredibly good thing and you should let the world know on your About page. Instead of giving a long explanation of what you do with the charity fund in this section, you can briefly mention it and link to a subpage where people can find more information.
6: Your copywriting and content should be on point here. Don’t write lengthy text, and also don’t make it too short to the point that people think you don’t care enough. Next to that, your text should be compelling, clear, and easy to understand.
If you want to read more about what you should add to your About Us page, check out our blog post on 10 must-have elements for your company’s about page.
The Don’ts
1: Don’t push sales here! This depends on the business and industry that you operate in. But in most cases, don’t try too hard to sell to your visitors. Visitors probably saw all the information about your product on the homepage already. This section is about you connecting with your visitors!
2: Don’t boast too much about your business to visitors! They probably already know you’re good at something when they get to your site. Be authentic and be truthful in what you communicate.
3: Don’t put too much information in this section. It’s easy to write too much, especially about something you’re passionate about. Keep your information concise, straight to the point.
How to create an About Us page in WordPress
You can easily create an “About Us” page with WordPress. Some WordPress themes have a built-in special template for the page. But if your theme doesn’t have that, then you can manually create one yourself. If you don’t have any experience with publishing pages yet, our blog post on how to publish your first page or post can help you get started. But we’ll also explain how you can add a page in WordPress here.
You must think of the content and page design before you actually create this page! Make sure you know what content you want to add and how you want to distribute your content. This is a crucial step, as you will be creating multiple blocks to display contents.
In your navigation bar in WordPress, go to “Pages” and click on “Add new”. This will create a new page for you to edit.
With WordPress’s block editor – also known as the Gutenberg editor, you have a variety of highly customizable content blocks to work with. To add a new block, click on the + sign in your editor, or on your left sidebar.
Use these blocks to add images/content and change the look of the page. You have blocks where you can have an image next to text, or the cover block is also a great way to add a big image with text on it. Next to that, there is the “pattern” menu which gives you even more design options to choose.
Don’t forget about your right sidebar, as it gives options to further customize text/images. Let’s say you want an image to display in an oval shape instead of a square. Then look to your right sidebar, click on the “block” menu. You should see an option called “style” where you can customize the shape of your image.
Do play around with the tools, explore your options. It is your site after all! And you can always check the preview to see if things work and look the way you want to.
You can name your page “About”, “About Us”, or “our story”, depending on your brand image. The permalink/URL should be the same as the page title. When you finish adding content, click on “Publish” to save your page. Be sure to set your visibility to “Public” in the right sidebar.
Once you’re done creating your page, you need to add it to your navigation menu so visitors can find it. From your navigation menu in WordPress, go to “Appearance” > “Menus”
To display the About page in your menu navigation, select the “About Us” option in the list of pages. After that, click “Add to Menu” and choose the desired position in the menu. Many brands place their About section in the top navigation or footer menu. Then, click on “Save Menu” and you’re done. You’ve just created your About page and added it to your menu!
How To Write An About Us Page For a Business
Crafting an engaging “About Us” page for your business is crucial in conveying your brand’s essence and building a meaningful connection with your audience. Here’s a concise guide to help you navigate the process:
The Art of Authentic Storytelling
Your About Us page is more than just a summary; it’s a canvas where your brand’s story comes to life. We specialize in transforming your business journey into a captivating narrative that resonates with your readers.
Unveil Your Purpose
Discover the power of articulating your business’s core values and mission. Our expertise lies in distilling complex ideologies into succinct statements that forge an emotional bond with your visitors.
Show, Don’t Just Tell
We understand that actions speak louder than words. Leverage our skills to showcase tangible examples of how your business has made an impact. Our knack for weaving accomplishments into your story will leave an indelible impression.
Humanize Your Brand
The heart of every business is the people behind it. Let us help you spotlight the faces and personalities driving your company’s success. By humanizing your brand, we ensure your audience feels like a part of your journey.
The Persuasion Play
We are adept at crafting persuasive content that not only informs but also influences. Allow us to subtly guide your readers towards a deeper engagement with your brand, converting curiosity into commitment.
Great examples of About Us pages
As I have mentioned above, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to making an About page. In these examples, you can see how distinct brands introduce themselves. They might share some similar content, design structure, but overall, they all have their unique ways of showing who they are as a brand.
Headspace
Headspace is an English-American company specializing in meditation. It has online courses that teach people how to take care of and improve their mental health through meditation. Right at the top of the page, you can see the company’s mission statement. All the big 3 questions “who”, “what” and “why” are nicely answered, giving visitors a good overview of what the company does! After that, the page focuses on introducing the people behind the brands such as founders and teachers. This makes a lot of sense because the company’s values focus on “humans” and the happiness of their users.
In addition to this, the design of the page is simple but stunning. The smiling character in the featured image not only encapsulates what the brand is about – relaxation and happiness, but also represents other characters that you might see in Headspace’s courses
HubSpot
Hubspot is a leading CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service software company. The company is known for its top-notch marketing automation tools. Hence, HubSpot’s About Us page is incredibly responsive and nicely structured. At the first glance, you can see that it takes the same approach as Headspace in introducing the company: with a clear, bold mission statement that stands out.
After this, the focus is placed on telling the story and history of the company. From how and when the company was established, to the important milestones that the company has achieved. This shows that the people at HubSpot take pride in their history!
Minaal
Unlike Headspace and HubSpot – both of which have created a name for themselves in their respective fields, Minaal is a much smaller business. The company starts out as a local business in New Zealand making bags and accessories for those who like to travel the distance. You can really get the local business “vibe” on the About page, especially in the copywriting style.
Even though it’s a local business, the people behind Minaal still manage to create a compelling About section. Many of the necessary information such as the company’s founding story, values, product development is presented in the form of image blocks. Visitors can click on each block to further read the content. This helps to create a visually appealing page and reduce text density, which many people will appreciate!
Final thoughts
At the end of the day, your About page should express to visitors who you are. It should be easy to read, with snippets of what your brand is about, what you believe in, and why you are a good fit for those who visit your website. Being clear in your communication is a great way to build relationships.
For some, “About Us” may not be the most exciting page to build. However, it is such an important website element that you must pay attention to. Don’t underestimate the effect this page can have on your site visitors and sales in the long run. People don’t buy from you if they don’t know and trust you. So, use the About section as an opportunity to build trust and draw visitors in. Inspire and build relationships with them through your compelling storytelling, personality and clear communication!
Now that you’ve created your About Us page, keep the momentum going and work on the rest of your website! Create those other essential pages and start writing (your first) posts. And when you’re not sure when to choose a page or post, check out our blog on how to use WordPress pages and posts.
