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About this lesson
Learn the uses of an about page or company profile page for a website and how the page content best informs visitors about the business.
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Quick reference
Topic
Learn the uses of an about page or company profile page for a website and how the page content best informs visitors about the business.
When to use
When creating or revising content for an about page on a website.
Instructions
Purpose
Typical purposes of an about page on a business site:
- Answer questions about the business for visitors
- New visitors determine if they are in the right place
- Repeat visitors may be evaluating more deeply
- Regular users may be ready to make a purchase
- History, changes, personality and facts are shared
Content
- Different approaches are suitable for the about page, or company profile page, depending on style of site and brand voice of the business
- Journalistic, inverted triangle/who what where when how style is shown in the GoSkills website about page
- Conversational, personal, social style is shown in the pentozen.com/begin page example
- Creative, design-driven, abstract may be used in certain industries like advertising or the arts; an example: www.mekanism.com/about
- Business writing application for about pages always focuses on readers of the page somehow
- The writing should cover what the business does to serve the audience, how it delivers that, what value, differentiation, validation, and facts
- 00:05 Let's dig into the About page or Company Profile age
- 00:10 for a web site and how the content best informs visitors to the site about the business.
- 00:18 When creating or revising content for and about page on the website it's important to realize that this page
- 00:25 is your chance to connect
- 00:27 with a potential customer
- 00:29 on what is a more personal level
- 00:32 than perhaps any other page on your site.
- 00:36 You can answer questions about your business
- 00:40 for visitors especially when they're new visitors; this is important.
- 00:45 New visitors will use your about page to determine if they are in the right place for them and their needs.
- 00:53 Repeat visitors to your site may have come back to evaluate a little bit more deeply and they'll go to the about page for that.
- 01:02 Regular users of your site may now be ready to make a purchase so they visit your profile
- 01:10 to find out what they need to know before doing that.
- 01:15 And the history and changes of your business, the personality of you and your site, and important facts about your business are often
- 01:26 shared on your about page and savvy website shoppers and visitors know this.
- 01:34 The content of an about page can contain a lot of facts but also a lot of personality
- 01:42 That's why we need to remember that
- 01:44 different approaches to this page,
- 01:47 depending on the style of the site and the brand voice of the business are suitable for different companies.
- 01:56 there is a more journalistic or inverted triangle type approach that is very common and
- 02:02 that example is shown here on the GoSkills about page.
- 02:08 That is the typical who what where when and how approach, and we see some samples in this writing.
- 02:17 For example Who does GoSkills help? GoSkills helps you and in the first sentence GoSkills helps
- 02:24 anyone. And what can they help you do? Well they help you learn and so on...
- 02:31 But other about pages might
- 02:34 appear more conversational
- 02:35 a little more personal, or little more social that is apparent in my about page, if you wanted to visit over at pentozen.com and that page is titled
- 02:46 begin. You can learn a little bit more about me and my business there.
- 02:54 Some about pages in certain industries
- 02:57 might vary all the way to a little more extreme on the creative side, or they might have less copy and be more design-driven. In some
- 03:06 fields they might even seem abstract compared to
- 03:11 some business profile pages. Here is an example of one at mekanism.com
- 03:19 Take a peek it's fun and you'll get an example of an about page that doesn't confine to some of the more standard approaches.
- 03:28 But a business writing application for an about page always focuses ideally on readers of the
- 03:35 page first. It seems like an about page is about you but it's really more about them.
- 03:43 What the business does should be covered
- 03:45 but it's what the business does to serve the audience.
- 03:48 How the business delivers to the reader and what value it brings.
- 03:53 Cover some differentiation what makes you different and validate.
- 03:58 But all of these things should be contained in facts.
- 04:02 So and about page we see is a very important element of a website and you want to approach the writing of yours according to
- 04:11 the style and brand voice of your business and also of your site, keep it consistent with what
- 04:23 you're offering; and remember its focused on the readers and it's about them more than about you.
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