Catching a site visitor’s attention the minute they click on your website is crucial for increased site engagement. After all, if a visitor is not impressed from the start, you cannot expect them to want to continue reading your killer content, subscribe to your newsletter, or purchase your products.
However, do you realize that your WordPress website’s most visited page is typically the About Us page?
It makes sense if you think about it. People viewing your website, whether they wish to read your blog, sign up for your services, or purchase your products, want to know about the person or company they are engaging with. And, what better way to that than to frequent the About Us page?
A quality About Us page is simple, candid, and minimal when it comes to the information it shares. And, as a website owner, it is your responsibility to make sure your About Us page is not the last page your site visitors see before bouncing.
That’s why today we are going to look at some of the most effective ways to build your WordPress website’s About Us page. This way, you can build credibility (Google loves About Us pages), start creating a larger blog following, building a bigger email list, and raking in more annual profit. Moreover, you will garner more interest and expand your target audience base, all by sharing a little bit of information about yourself.
Why Have a Dedicated About Us Page on Your WordPress Website?
Before diving into the how behind building an effective About Us page, let’s first look at the why behind having a page dedicated solely to sharing information about you or the company you run.
- Provider of Basic Information. First and foremost, your website’s About Us page has to provide site visitors tangible information about, well, yourself and your team. This includes things like your name, your company’s name, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. Tell your site visitors exactly who you are from the get-go so you can start building a personal relationship with them.
- It’s Professional. Transparency in all matters is something that your site visitors, whether they intend to become loyal readers or actual customers, want to see. Creating a professional, truthful, and helpful About Us page will ensure people that you are real and you mean business.
- Personalization is the Key. In addition to learning the basic facts behind you and your company, a well-constructed About Us page puts a face to the name(s). This humanization of your brand will make visitors feel more comfortable that you are not a shady website looking to rip them off.
- It Piques Interest. If a site visitor lands on your website and is not sure whether to continue exploring what you have to offer, a good About Us page will boost their initial interest and convince them to continue seeing what you have to offer by way of killer content, products, or services.
How to Build an Effective About Us Page for Your WordPress Website That Will Make You More Successful
When site visitors come to your website’s About Us page, they are looking for information. They do not want to hear your entire life story, do not want you to drone on and on about yourself, and do not want to feel like they have wasted their time viewing your page. Instead, they are seeking a clear explanation of who you are, what you do, and what you can offer them.
Let’s see how you can accomplish this using with the following tips for building an effective About Us page:
1. Show Your Visitors What You Can Offer Them
Sure, an About Us page is inherently a page dedicated to who you are as a blogger, business owner, creative, or educator. However, this is just the surface of what a true About Us page is all about. In fact, the main focus of your website’s About Us page should actually be on what you can offer anyone that views it.
For example, if you run a blog and are looking to boost readership, build a bigger email list, and become more authoritative in your niche, explain to visitors how reading your blog on a regular basis will benefit them. Or, if you are an online retail company seeking more customers and higher annual profits, use your About Us page to explain why your company, products, and services are worthwhile in terms of time and money.
Notice how Copyblogger starts off by explaining what their followers receive in exchange for reading their content.
In the end, the overall goal of your About Us page is to engage site visitors to not only finish reading your About Us page, but continue exploring the rest of your website as well.
2. Share Your Mission, Vision, and Values
People want to feel comfortable with spending their precious time on a website, and even more secure with spending their money at online shops. After all, there are plenty of scam websites out there that take advantage of innocent customers. And unfortunately, websites like those have the tendency to instill distrust in the same site visitors that are coming to your website.
National Geographic tugs at the heartstrings of animal lovers in an attempt to convince visitors to stay connected.
Use your website’s About Us page to share your mission, visions, and values. This can be how you are personally as a blogger in this large internet world. Or, it can be the things that your company and employees stand for.
In the end, clearly indicating what you stand for as a blogger or company is going to give your site visitors something substantial to compare against their own missions, visions, and values in life. When a site visitor feels you are in line with how they live their life, they will note you as a good match; one that they want to begin building a relationship with.
3. Include Information About Your Team
Another excellent element to add to your website’s About Us page is a section about your team. If you work with professionals that help make your company or blog what it is today, give credit where credit is due. Not only will this give readers the perception that you are proud of who you work with, it will continue to personalize your brand as something backed by real people with real skills. This will, in turn, create a personal attachment to your website, and hopefully your brand.
See how Studio Alto personalizes their About Us page with team member information.
Remember, it is more cost-effective to bring back repeat customers than it is to hunt down new ones. Grab visitors’ attention from the start and instill life into your website by adding names, headshots, positions, achievements, and successes of your team members.
4. Optimize Your Page
On a more technical note, you should always aim to optimize your website’s About Us page, just as you would any blog post or product page. You want your website to be found by your target audience. And, if they so happen to cross your About Us page first, you had better make sure it has keywords that relate to what your website is actually about. If you don’t, and a site visitor realizes this once on your About Us page, you can bet they will leave.
Keywords and plenty of internal links are what convince ProBlogger visitors to engage with more content.
Another great strategy is to internally link to other pages of your website on your About Us page to boost site engagement. Make it easy for site visitors to check out more of what you have to offer by directly linking them to posts that will truly benefit them.
5. Add Social Proof
It is not enough to state outwardly that you are amazing and that people should trust you, read your blog, subscribe to your newsletter, or buy your products. After all, if this worked, everyone would be doing it without utilizing any of the helpful tips we are sharing with you today about creating awesome About Us pages.
What you have to do instead is add social proof to your About Us page to cement your authority (and awesomeness) in your industry. But how do you do this? Well, it just so happens there are plenty of ways to include social proof into your About Us page:
- Positive customer testimonials
- Case studies
- Social share counters
- Social media mentions
- Number of downloads, users, or subscribers
- Experts or celebrities that back your brand
- Official certifications
Tumblr makes great use of their statistics as social proof on their About Us page.
In the end, it all comes down to convincing site visitors that you are worth their time and money.
6. Include a Call to Action
Depending on what your overall website goals are, you might want to consider adding some sort of call to action (CTA) to your About Us page. Serving as a way to increase conversions, subscriptions, or generally any type of action (e.g. “Buy Now”, “Sign Me Up”, “Get Started Here”, etc.), a good call to action can influence site visitors to travel further down your sales funnel, contact you directly, further explore your blog content, and so much more.
Brian Dean of Backlinko not only adds an appropriate CTA to his About Us Page – note his use of social proof as well.
Add a CTA to your About Us page and get your site visitors on board with what you want them to do. Altogether, leading them in the right direction is helpful for boosting conversions and helps solidify them as loyal viewers of your website.
Final Thoughts
In the end, your About Us page should be short and easy to read with snippets about who you are, what your brand is all about, and why you are the right fit for those who click on your website. Your overall goal should be to inspire visitors to want to know more, see more, and do more with you.
Clearly communicating with people who know nothing about you and your brand by using a dedicated About Us page is one of the greatest techniques for building a relationship with those in your target audience. So, follow these tips for building an effective About Us page and watch as your traffic increases, email lists builds, and revenue increases in a very short time.
Have you used any of the above tips for building an effective About Us page for your website? Have I left off anything you think would be helpful for making your About Us page even better? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!
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