Don’t Forget the About Page

By Brad Stitgen

While your homepage may be getting all the glory it’s easy to forget about your often equally important about page. This is especially true for small businesses that don’t have a history of years of extensive advertising and promotion to get the word out about themselves.

For Fortune 100 companies such as McDonald’s, Apple, and Disney I would suspect that having an about page is more or less simply a formality. Most people already know the basic story behind these companies. It would be unlikely that any knowledge gleaned from reading the about page would help a potential customer decide whether or not to do business with one of these corporations.

For many small businesses, quite the opposite is true. Potential customers often want to get to know the businesses that they patronize. Describing a good backstory, revealing tidbits about your expertise, or simply describing the passion you have about your business and your customers are great content for an about page.

It’s information like this that enables you to better connect with your customers. By giving your business a personal connection to your customers you are thus in a better position to compete with larger well-known competitors. In the past, before the appearance of the web, getting this type of information out was not easy or cheap. Businesses needed to rely on traditional advertising and promotion. With the birth of the web, this has all changed. These days, having not only a website is expected for most all businesses… having a well written and presented about page should be considered mandatory!

So while much time and effort will likely be spent on creating the perfect home page it’s important to not forget the about page. It’s often a common must-see destination for potential customers and a great opportunity for you to get across what makes your business special and unique.