Your about me page shouldn’t be about you

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

The about me page is one of the most read pages and biggest missed opportunities.

When writing your about page, it pays to think of how your story can be helpful to your audience. Instead of telling your back story, use the page as an opportunity to communicate how you can help them.

As a creative entrepreneur, it’s tempting to write your about me page about yourself, your qualifications, and your back story. As a result, visitors come to your website and have no idea who you are, and then they leave without any clue how you can help them.

For years my about me page was a laundry list of my achievements. I was writing about myself, not my audience. It made me sound great and it impressed all my friends, but it didn’t help visitors to my website understand how I could help them. Then I realised what was happening, made some simple changes and my conversions improved.

What can you change to make your about me page more effective?

If readers are coming to your website, reading your about page and then leaving, there is no doubt that you are losing potential customers and sales.

If you write an about me page that is all about your personal back story and your achievements, you miss a valuable opportunity to convert a reader into a customer. The reader will leave your website without knowing how you can help them or why they should work with you.

This step-by-step method will help you re-write your about me page so that it positions you as the guide, not the hero, and help convert visitors into customers.

1. Include pictures of yourself so people know who they’re talking to. This is an important part of your brand positioning so try to keep these images in alignment with all the other images on your website. Avoid the stuffy corporate headshot at all costs.
2. Identify one customer avatar and write like you’re speaking directly to them. Write like you speak, don’t write in third person or make it sound formal and fancy. Be conversational because all the other copy on your website can be more typical of sales copy, but the about copy needs to be friendly. The reader needs to feel like they’re getting to know you, not being impressed by what someone else is saying about you.
3. Tell people straight up, who is this website for? Let them know they’re in the right place and what this website is all about. You don’t want to waste people’s time if the solutions you have to offer are not for them, but alternatively, you want to warmly welcome in the people who are in the right place. Think of your website as your home. Be friendly and inviting to your guests.
4. Once your reader knows this is for them, let them know what you stand for. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This is the perfect place to share your passion, vision, and mission.
5. Position yourself as the guide and demonstrate empathy and authority. Tell your backstory from a position of being in their shoes and then overcoming the problem they now face. Keep your story relevant to them and share your aha moments.
6. Let people know how you can help them. Be specific about the results you help people achieve. You can add links here to your products and services if relevant, or else you can link to your top performing blog posts. Don’t make them search through the content on your website looking for things, link them straight to your best stuff and give them a quick win right away.
7. Demonstrate how you’ve provided solutions for others. This is a great place to use testimonials if you work one-on-one with clients. You might link out to a folio, or show some work, or a case study. You could also put a select client list here, if you’ve worked with well-known companies.
8. Help people understand the benefits of working with you, not the features of your products. 100 MB of storage is a feature. 1000 songs in your pocket is a benefit. Try to list tangible benefits so that visitors to your website can visualise the results you can give them.
9. Add a call to action at the end. This is a very important part of an about page and is often missing from most websites. If you don’t have a mailing list yet, ask them to follow you on Instagram, or read a blog post, or join your Facebook group. If you do have a mailing list or a super freebie, sign ’em up!

How great would it be to know that when a visitor to your website reads your about page they automatically click the buy button or sign up to your mailing list because they know exactly how you can help them.

Rewrite your about me page using these nine easy steps, or else you can book a one-hour consultation, and we can write it together.