Of all the pages of your website, the About page is maybe the most underappreciated and overlooked, at least from a design perspective, which is a crying shame. It serves a highly meaningful purpose and can be used to greatly increase both your online credibility and site conversions. It’s, therefore, a page that requires a great deal of thought to successfully design.
Think of your About page as the most important trust signal on your site. Trust signals are usually page elements like logos, testimonials, bios, badges and seals that tell customers that your site is reputable enough to do business with. In the same way, a well-designed About page can serve as a mighty trust builder that can put site visitors’ doubts to rest and move them down the conversion funnel.
Before you think about rushing through the next About page you design, read the following strategies and approaches on how to design a perfect About page.
What Should Go on Your About Page
Let’s briefly talk about what an About page is supposed to be. It is essentially a short bio about you, your company or business, organization or publication that’s behind the site you operate. It answers the question, who runs this site and what is its mission statement or purpose?
If you’re a business, your about page may feature a detailed breakdown of the bios of everyone on your staff or team, too. If you’re a publication, then it might feature bios for various editors and reporters. Organizations may choose to provide greater details in the info they share, such as where their funding comes from and who they work with.
In short, the About page humanizes your site and your brand by explaining that there are real, live people behind the site that your visitors are navigating and enjoying! For this reason, it’s vitally important that your About page establishes trust and credibility right off the bat.
Let’s look at the specific elements of different About pages, so you can build your own thorough page.
01. Brand Storytelling
As a business, publication or organization, your site represents your brand. Each brand has a story behind it. Apple’s was to simplify computing for everyone; Google’s was to make information readily available to anyone. Your About page is the perfect location for your brand story, as it tells people about your values and what you stand for.
Image From Moz
Take, for example, Moz, the marketing-software company from Seattle. Its About page is a chronicle of the most important events in the company’s existence, going back to its inception in 2004 all the way to the present day.
Image From Moz
What makes this page such a beauty and highly effective, though, is that its “about” section is spread into several, different subpages, each with their own links. For example, the About page features a link to the company’s motto/values of “TAGFEE,” all the people who work for Moz, a special job-openings section, and a contact subpage. This makes the entire page very detailed and lets people know a lot about what’s behind this brand, thus reducing many apprehensions about doing business with them.
02. Psychological Principles at Work
The explanation of the company’s values on its “TAGFEE” subpage is a great example of giving personality to your brand, which Inc. includes as one of the five pillars of creating strong About page.
The use of images of smiling Moz employees on the “Team” subpage is also intelligent, as studies have found higher conversion rates when people’s faces have been used on a page. In fact, this Visual Website Optimizer analysis found that human faces create an emotional connection with site visitors and, therefore, greater trust.
Again, when your visitors find your brand more credible, they’re more likely to do business with you!
Using this page as a big trust signal is definitely smart and highly advisable for greater conversions, but your About page can still be used for additional benefits.
03. Perfect Web Form Placement for Lead Capturing
Besides building trust with your visitors, this page can also be used to get more signups and contact info for your business. All you have to do is put a web form on your About page, and you can get a generous number of signups!
Think about it: This page builds credibility for your brand while, at the same time, lowering any distrust from potential customers. Naturally, putting a lead-capture form on the About page is a very shrewd and recommended tactic. Plus, this is also one of the most high-traffic pages on your entire site. Failing to add a form on this page is like you leaking conversions at an alarming rate!
Image From Social Triggers
One authority figure is already trying this experiment and with great success. Social Triggers’ Derek Halpern has a prominent and short form at the top-right of his About page. All it asks is for visitors’ names and email addresses. Note also how the placement of the form is in-line with best practices derived from eye-tracking studies like the F-shaped pattern. The form sits right where users would naturally come to a stop when they scan the first line of content on the page.
Thanks to the presence of this form on the page, Derek’s able to get conversions and contact info that he ordinarily wouldn’t, making this tactic very sound.
So far, we’ve looked at some pretty standard strategy that’s highly useful, but now we’re going to switch to something a bit more outside-the-box.
04. Incorporating Video
Much of the web features written content. Nonetheless, predictions have it that this will all change pretty soon, no matter how hard that is to believe. According to the Washington Post, by 2020, 80% of the globe’s entire web consumption will be through video. In the U.S. alone, this figure is even more outrageous, as the number jumps to 85%.
This makes sense when you think about. The building blocks for this catalyst are already in place. Look at hugely popular video sites like YouTube and Hulu—on which many people spend many hours per week and month. It’s not a stretch that video content is going to dominate the web and apparently really soon.
Some sites and brands are already trying to get ahead of this trend by integrating video in their About pages. This is a newer trend that isn’t being used that widely yet on About pages, but this will change with the increasing prevalence of video.
Image From National Geographic
On National Geographic’s About page, the video is used as an explainer video of sorts, in that it tells visitors about National Geographic’s purpose and mission by highlighting its exploration around the world.
Using video is also smart from the perspective of the user experience. Single Grain reported that up to 60% of visitors will choose to watch a video over text. Video is more engaging than written content since there’s the interactivity element to it, plus the fact that watching something is more enjoyable and easier than reading, as human beings are visual creatures.
If you want to be ahead of the curve, then use a video on your About page.
05. Using Testimonials
As mentioned earlier on, testimonials are one of the most influential trust signals on the Internet and in marketing. They put your visitors’ doubts about you to rest and persuade them to do business with you. Testimonials are, therefore, elements that you want to showcase all over your site, as this Entrepreneur article endorses. Noupe even recommends showcasing your testimonials beyond just your About page.
For our purposes in this article, we’ll just stick to using testimonials on the About page, though, because that’s where they can do a lot of good and are right at home.
The whole point of this page is to build trust and credibility with your visitors and leads to persuade them to convert, whether that’s just a mini conversion or an actual purchase. So what better page element to use than testimonials? Testimonials are regarded as one of the most important trust signals that you can use on your site, according to WordStream.
It’s not difficult to understand why. Testimonials are endorsements by other people and even authority figures for your brand. These evangelist marketers tell other people how good your product or service is, which is so much more powerful than you saying it about your own brand. After all, when other people say good things about your brand, it’s a form of social proof, which itself is so persuasive in marketing.
Image From FortyOne Twenty
A great example of a testimonial on an About page comes from FortyOne Twenty Inc. Note the large, glowing testimonial in the middle of the page by Jek’ob Washington and others when you click on the slideshow arrow.
06. The Importance of the About Page
Simply put, the About page is extremely vital because it’s one of the most highly visited pages on your whole site. With this amount of traffic, you can’t afford anything to be amiss, especially when the stakes are so high. People want to find out about your brand, company or organization, and this page is their information gateway.
Understand that this page is your opportunity to build massive trust with your leads, so design by including:
Brand stories
Pictures of your employees
Personality
Web forms
Videos
Testimonials
When you do this, conversion rates tend to shoot up, and your site will have a better UX overall, to boot!
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About Marc Schenker
Marc is a copywriter who, fittingly enough, runs Marc Schenker Copywriter An expert in business and marketing, he'd love for you to contact him today!
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That again was no use: he but got another smile and a friendly look of the sort he no longer wanted. I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn, and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall." We have this great advantage in dealing with Plato—that his philosophical writings have come down to us entire, while the thinkers who preceded him are known only through fragments and second-hand reports. Nor is the difference merely accidental. Plato was the creator of speculative literature, properly so called: he was the first and also the greatest artist that ever clothed abstract thought in language of appropriate majesty and splendour; and it is probably to their beauty of form that we owe the preservation of his writings. Rather unfortunately, however, along with the genuine works of the master, a certain number of pieces have been handed down to us under his name, of which some are almost universally admitted to be spurious, while the authenticity of others is a question on which the best scholars are still divided. In the absence of any very cogent external evidence, an immense amount of industry and learning has been expended on this subject, and the arguments employed on both sides sometimes make us doubt whether the reasoning powers of philologists are better developed than, according to Plato, were those of mathematicians in his time. The176 two extreme positions are occupied by Grote, who accepts the whole Alexandrian canon, and Krohn, who admits nothing but the Republic;115 while much more serious critics, such as Schaarschmidt, reject along with a mass of worthless compositions several Dialogues almost equal in interest and importance to those whose authenticity has never been doubted. The great historian of Greece seems to have been rather undiscriminating both in his scepticism and in his belief; and the exclusive importance which he attributed to contemporary testimony, or to what passed for such with him, may have unduly biassed his judgment in both directions. As it happens, the authority of the canon is much weaker than Grote imagined; but even granting his extreme contention, our view of Plato’s philosophy would not be seriously affected by it, for the pieces which are rejected by all other critics have no speculative importance whatever. The case would be far different were we to agree with those who impugn the genuineness of the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Philêbus, and the Laws; for these compositions mark a new departure in Platonism amounting to a complete transformation of its fundamental principles, which indeed is one of the reasons why their authenticity has been denied. Apart, however, from the numerous evidences of Platonic authorship furnished by the Dialogues themselves, as well as by the indirect references to them in Aristotle’s writings, it seems utterly incredible that a thinker scarcely, if at all, inferior to the master himself—as the supposed imitator must assuredly have been—should have consented to let his reasonings pass current under a false name, and that, too, the name of one whose teaching he in some respects controverted; while there is a further difficulty in assuming that his existence could pass unnoticed at a period marked by intense literary and philosophical activity. Readers who177 wish for fuller information on the subject will find in Zeller’s pages a careful and lucid digest of the whole controversy leading to a moderately conservative conclusion. Others will doubtless be content to accept Prof. Jowett’s verdict, that ‘on the whole not a sixteenth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy.’116 To which we may add that the Platonic dialogues, whether the work of one or more hands, and however widely differing among themselves, together represent a single phase of thought, and are appropriately studied as a connected series. Before entering on our task, one more difficulty remains to be noticed. Plato, although the greatest master of prose composition that ever lived, and for his time a remarkably voluminous author, cherished a strong dislike for books, and even affected to regret that the art of writing had ever been invented. A man, he said, might amuse himself by putting down his ideas on paper, and might even find written178 memoranda useful for private reference, but the only instruction worth speaking of was conveyed by oral communication, which made it possible for objections unforeseen by the teacher to be freely urged and answered.117 Such had been the method of Socrates, and such was doubtless the practice of Plato himself whenever it was possible for him to set forth his philosophy by word of mouth. It has been supposed, for this reason, that the great writer did not take his own books in earnest, and wished them to be regarded as no more than the elegant recreations of a leisure hour, while his deeper and more serious thoughts were reserved for lectures and conversations, of which, beyond a few allusions in Aristotle, every record has perished. That such, however, was not the case, may be easily shown. In the first place it is evident, from the extreme pains taken by Plato to throw his philosophical expositions into conversational form, that he did not despair of providing a literary substitute for spoken dialogue. Secondly, it is a strong confirmation of this theory that Aristotle, a personal friend and pupil of Plato during many years, should so frequently refer to the Dialogues as authoritative evidences of his master’s opinions on the most important topics. And, lastly, if it can be shown that the documents in question do actually embody a comprehensive and connected view of life and of the world, we shall feel satisfied that the oral teaching of Plato, had it been preserved, would not modify in any material degree the impression conveyed by his written compositions. breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five The bargaining was interminable, something in this manner:— Then follows a long discussion in Hindi with the bystanders, who always escort a foreigner in a mob, ending in the question— There was a bright I. D. blanket spread on the ground a little way back from the fire, and she threw herself down upon it. All that was picturesque in his memories of history flashed back to Cairness, as he took his place beside Landor on the log and looked at her. Boadicea might have sat so in the depths of the Icenean forests, in the light of the torches of the Druids. So the Babylonian queen might have rested in the midst of her victorious armies, or she of Palmyra, after the lion hunt in the deserts of Syria. Her eyes, red lighted beneath the shadowing lashes, met his. Then she glanced away into the blackness of the pine forest, and calling her dog to lie down beside her, stroked its silky red head. The retreat was made, and the men found themselves again in the morning on the bleak, black heath of Drummossie, hungry and worn out, yet in expectation of a battle. There was yet time to do the only wise thing—retreat into the mountains, and depend upon a guerilla warfare, in which they would have the decided advantage. Lord George Murray now earnestly proposed this, but in vain. Sir Thomas Sheridan and other officers from France grew outrageous at that proposal, contending that they could easily beat the English, as they had done at Prestonpans and Falkirk—forgetting that the Highlanders then were full of vigour and spirit. Unfortunately, Charles listened to this foolish reasoning, and the fatal die was cast. "They said they were going for our breakfast," said Harry. "And I hope it's true, for I'm hungrier'n a rip-saw. But I could put off breakfast for awhile, if they'd only bring us our guns. I hope they'll be nice Springfield rifles that'll kill a man at a mile." "Dod durn it," blubbered Pete, "I ain't cryin' bekase Pm skeered. I'm cryin' bekase I'm afeared you'll lose me. I know durned well you'll lose me yit, with all this foolin' around." He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods. "Yes, De Boteler," continued the lady, "I will write to him, and try to soothe his humour. You think it a humiliation—I would humble myself to the meanest serf that tills your land, could I learn the fate of my child. The abbot may have power to draw from this monk what he would conceal from us; I will at least make the experiment." The lady then, though much against De Boteler's wish, penned an epistle to the abbot, in which concession and apologies were made, and a strong invitation conveyed, that he would honour Sudley castle by his presence. The parchment was then folded, and dispatched to the abbot. "A very pretty method, truly! You know not the miners and forgers of Dean Forest!—why I would stake a noble to a silver-penny, that if you had discovered he was hidden there, and legally demanded him, he would be popped down in a bucket, to the bottom of some mine, where, even the art of Master Calverley could not have dragged him to the light of day until the Forest was clear of the pack:—but, however, to speak to the point," perceiving that the steward's patience was well nigh exhausted—"I saw Stephen Holgrave yesterday, in the Forest." HoME欧美一级 片a高清
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Image From Moz
Image From Moz
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