New visitors to your site want to know straight away what your site has to offer them. A prominent link to an ‘About’ page says: “Want to know what this site is about? The answer is right here.”
Usability should be conversational. A new visitor asks, internally: “What is this site about?” Your About page provides a quick and obvious answer. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to turn first-time visitors into loyal readers.
Once you have an ‘About’ page, though, the question becomes: what on earth do I put here?
The current model is a hang-over from the days when blogs were nothing more than personal journals. ‘About’ inevitably meant a short bio of the author written in uneasy 3rd person. This was probably carried over from its nearest offline equivalent: the kind of short author bio you see on the glossy sleeves of book-covers.
There’s nothing wrong with using books as a model, but most ‘About’ pages miss the most important half of the equation. Every good book has a ‘blurb’ on the back or inside sleeve, hinting at the value inside. This is the thing readers are most interested in. The same applies for blogs and websites.
Think of your ‘About’ page like the selling text in a book. The selling text (blurb and author bio) is designed to persuade the reader of the book’s value and the author’s credentials. Your ‘About’ page should be no different.
Writing a good About page isn’t as hard as it sounds. Here’s a simple formula for you. There’s no need to include the questions: the sequence of answers should form the building blocks of a really solid ‘About’ page.
A note: personal bloggers don’t get out of this one. You still need a blurb, you can still explain what your site has to offer, who it’s written for and what the benefits are. You’re writing for an audience, just like anyone else.
The blurb should always come first
1. What does your site have to offer?
Do you keep readers up to date with the latest news in your niche? Do you publish tips and guides? How often? In other words: what kind of content do you produce?
2. Who is it written for?
If you can, describe what kinds of people your site should appeal to. Keep it broad enough that anyone interested in your topics would be included in at least one of the types of people you’ve listed.
3. What are the benefits?
This is where you describe the benefits of reading your content. You don’t just write about getting out of debt – you give readers helpful tips to overcome their own debt. You don’t just write about current events – you keep readers informed about what’s important.
Below it, the bio
Now potential readers have an idea of what you have to offer them, they might just be interested enough to find out whether you’re worth listening to or not.
Pick out a book from your bookshelf and find the author’s biography. A good bio will be written in order of interest to the reader. For example:
How many other books the author has written.
How many awards they’ve won (if any).
The titles of other books you may have heard of by that author.
How old the author is.
Their interests and hobbies.
Where they live, and with whom.
As someone trying to decide whether you should listen to what this author has to say, the above few lines are very useful. If they’ve written other books before, or won awards, you can deduce that they’re a writer worth taking seriously.
On the web, however, most author bios are written upside down. If they were a bio on the inside sleeve of a book, they’d probably look something like this:
Where they live, and with whom.
Their interests and hobbies.
How old the author is.
The titles of other books you may have heard of by that author.
How many awards they’ve won (if any).
How many other books the author has written.
Biographical information won’t be of interest to your readers until they’ve developed an attachment to the author. In the beginning, you simply want to know whether they know their stuff. I suspect the reason many bloggers and webmasters trip up on this point is that they feel uneasy selling themselves, or feel as if they’re boasting. Not so. You’re doing something very important: helping the reader to trust you.
The perfect bio
1. What qualifies you to write on the topics you cover?
If you have formal credentials, list them. If you’ve participated in your niche informally (as a hobby, for example) explain how you’ve engaged with it and for how long. If you have no qualifications other than your passion, explain that. If you’re a complete beginner then make it clear. Nothing qualifies you better to write for other beginners.
2. Do you have any other claims to fame?
If you’ve written for other blogs or websites, list them. Have you been published? Quoted? Received an award or a prize? Anything else that might persuade readers that you’re worth listening to goes here.
3. Who are you?
This is where you put the stuff that usually comes first: where you live, your interests, your story, etc. Most prospective readers won’t go through this. Instead, it’s mainly for the benefit of loyal readers who want to get to know you a little better.
At Skelliewag.org, my About page mentions that I’m a woman towards the bottom of the author bio section. First-time visitors often refer to me as ‘he’ – assuming that, in the absence of a distinctly feminine name, I’m male (most if not all popular bloggers in my niche are).
Loyal readers on the other hand almost always know I’m a woman and a few other things about me from my author bio. I suspect prospective readers take in only enough to work out what the site is about and how I’m qualified, while repeat visitors re-visit the About page to learn more about me, now that they have a reason to care.
The kind of ‘About’ page outlined above gives new visitors the information they want while also allowing established readers to get to know you better. That’s why I think it’s the perfect ‘About’ page.
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