The average “about” page on most local business websites is boring. The content found on these pages is often limited to bragging, self-promo and mentions of awards no one but the owner is interested in. You can do better.
If you’re running or managing a local business you should consider what information is available to potential customers about the people involved in the day-to-day operations. 🤔
Assuming you are some kind of business owner-manager – meaning you interact with customers – are you using your website to come across as trustworthy, reliable, knowledgeable, useful and (shock!) entertaining? 👋👏👍🤝
Or are you basically coming off as a boring bastard? 🙈🙉
I’ve met people who were really quite gregarious and interesting in person, but the online version of their self was anything but! Hopefully, you’re not subjecting readers to the usual cliches found on the typical small business website. 🙄🥱
“But I Don’t Know What to Say” 🤷♀️
Aim to tell the story of your business, or the circumstances that led to you starting up the company. Tell that story about that one time that terrible thing happened to you and you decided you could do it better and started up your own venture as a result.
There’s normally some reason besides wanting to make money and I’ll bet you’ve had that conversation with someone at some point. And now it’s time to articulate this for the website. ⚓🎯
Make your words so compelling that anyone reading will be impressed and persuaded by you and your mission. Give people the chance to get to know, like and trust you… unless there’s something you’re hiding? ⚠️👀
Trust Signals Are Vitally Important
Showing your face is a trust-building signal and really non-negotiable. I often had prospects of my own arguing, giving silly reasons not to put their photo on their website. 🫣
In these situations I either got to the bottom of the real reason and helped them overcome whatever they felt the issue was or I just walked away and decided not to waste time with someone who isn’t enthusiastic enough to get fully behind their business. 😑
Who Are You, What Do You Love and What Annoys You?
Let’s pretend you’re a local service business. Imagine you’re having a website built, and that you want to create good written content to tell customers about you and the business.
No need to get too personal. No need to tell everyone about the dispute you got into with the guy in the supermarket or your eye-watering rectal health condition. 🍑🪠😷🤨
But you could throw your would-be customers a bone by giving them some good reasons to want to give someone like you their money. 🪙💳👍🫶
If, for example, you’re a local service business, here are some talking points:
- Are you a family-run business?
- How long you have been established
- What you enjoy most about your work
- Bad industry working practices you encounter by competitors (don’t actually name them!)
Using this information you can be:
- Autobiographical
- Anecdotal
- Observational
- Mildly annoyed (we all love to hate pressure sellers, shysters, scammers and cowboys)
About Page Case Study: Local Area Service Business
I worked with a local business – a domestic damp proofer – to develop several website About pages. We wanted these pages to appeal to people in two areas of the East Midlands within 12 miles of Ilkeston; West Nottingham and East Derby.
Every sentence and paragraph was heavily researched and went through many revisions. It was a collaborative process which involved asking the client questions, taking notes and teasing out interesting details. ✍️⌨️🖥️
It turned into something that gave a lot of insight into the person behind the business. 👤💫
Who Answers the Phone?
When business prospects call up or emails your business, who answers? Is it a receptionist? 🗣️
What about when people visit your store, shop, showroom? Are you the one who gives your time to the people who are, in the early stages at least, vetting you? 🤔
There’s a good case to be made in putting business staff names and faces on the website, and particularly on the About page. This creates a sense of continuity and consistency. 🙋✅
Don’t worry about competitors snooping on you either. There’s nothing they can do that will hurt you based on what’s on your website, and the whole “I play my cards close to my chest” thing is what people do when they operate from a position of fear.
“We’re Just Browsing… for Now…”
Don’t you hate pushy salespeople? As soon as they clock you, they’re all over you, or at least loitering in your general vicinity. It’s off-putting to you as a customer. 🤑🚩🛑
Using your website About page, you can tap more into the mentality of the casual observer who is “just looking” for the time being (we can call this the “top of the marketing funnel”) and not wanting to get into sales-related interactions with you.
They could actually be in the process of weighing you up against a competitor. 📋🧐🔬⚖️
Through well-written “About” pages, you should create opportunities for would-be customers to:
- Know you
- Like you
- Trust you
As you write your page, consider if and how you are positively building:
- Visibility
- Familiarity
- Reputation
Summary: Put Your Best Foot Forward
Well-written content delights readers. A selection of decent About pages gives potential customers any number of topics to mention or comment upon when they get in touch. 😊🙏
If writing is genuinely difficult for you, hire someone local to help you. Get them to get the right information out of you, and then work on refining this. 📝
This is all comes down to good communication. Every boring bastard bugger has a website these days but few of them are putting in the effort where it matters. 🤦♂️
As mentioned earlier, don’t worry about rival businesses stealing the About Me text (or whatever you write about) off of your website. 🕵️🔍
They’ll never be you and this is your strength… unless you really are useless, in which case, please sod off.
More on Building Small Business Visibility, Familiarity and Reputation
✅ 10 Website Trust Signals You Can’t Afford to Ignore
🏁 Small Businesses Finally Start Marketing… and All It Took Was a Global Pandemic
📘 “Youtility” by Jay Baer (Book Review)
Thank you for this article. I agree that “The average “about” page on most local businesses websites is boring”, you got here great ideas how to improve it and I hope people will update there about page soon 🙂