Your about page might be horrible – here’s some inspiration

When was the last time you read your own about page?

A frequent offense we witness with bloggers is an outdated, useless, lame or ugly “about” page. When people visit websites, a shortcut for their getting to know you is to click on your “about” button, so this is your opportunity to capture them. Your about page needs to be catchy and capture the essence of who you or your company is, it should contain some sort of contact information and it should be like a handshake at a party with a quick introduction as to who you are and what you do.

Below are screenshots of several websites’ about pages with tips on how you can take a hint from the below about pages.

Barfing & Yawning Simultaneously

Below is an about page that could be interchangeable with any Realtor on the planet- please for the love of kittens, don’t ever write an about page like this. Yeah, you care, yeah, you’re professional, but seriously, who ARE you? What do you specialize in? What are you like and why would I want to work with you?  Where is your call to action?  If your about page reads like this one below, don’t worry, we’ll feed you, baby bird- keep reading for some examples of good about pages.

Text as tasty as key lime Godiva truffles

Godiva key lime is my favorite truffle ever, so this is saying a lot. If you’re writing an about page for your business, make sure it reflects the spirit of your company culture- this may be more reverent than your personal blog and that’s okay. But if you’re blogging alone, we should be able to get a taste of your unique personality like we do in the next three examples:

Super sexy design

So we’re not graphic designers and it’s not realistic to expect the entire real estate industry to look like the examples below, but we can think about how these examples are structured and adopt the pieces that fit within our current or future blog themes. The good news is that if your spidey sense doesn’t include graphic designery, there is an entire industry of creatives waiting to help you. In the meantime, find some inspiration from outside our field by drooling over the four sites below:

So consider your blog’s about page- is it dry or is it juicy like Ken’s? Is it ugly text or is it sexy fonts like Daniel’s? Tonight’s homework is to check out your about page and ask if it really represents you and what you have to offer?

Originally published July 9, 2009.