This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.
Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-write-an-about-us-page
When creating a website, the About Us page is one of the first supporting pages you’ll likely design, regardless of the industry you’re in.
They may go by different labels—“About,” “Story,” “Mission”—but these types of pages generally serve the same key purpose: to be the go-to page for a brand to say, “This is who we are.”
When a visitor wants to learn more about you or your business, the About page is the page they’ll look for.
Unfortunately, About Us pages are often treated as an obligation rather than an opportunity to build trust, tell your story, and share what makes you, you.
Share your story ✍️
- How About Us pages work
- How to write an About Us page
- About Us page templates
- About Us page examples
- Building trust with your About Us page
- About Us page FAQ
How About Us pages work
The problem with most About Us pages is that they’re an afterthought—a link buried at the bottom of the page that leads to a few hastily written paragraphs about a company.
What an About Us page should be is a goal-oriented sales page, one that focuses on highlighting the biggest selling points of your story and brand, making a strong first impression on curious customers
In Shopify’s customer trust research, we found that shoppers navigate to an About Us page to learn more about the brand and the people behind the products. Your About Page should address those two curiosities shoppers have to help with decision making.
Shoppers are also interested in a company’s mission. They’ll use the About Us page to determine if they share core values with the business and to decide if they want to shop with the business or not.
In contrast to a landing page, your About Us page is the ideal place to accommodate a number of objectives:
- Communicate the story of your business and why you started it.
- Describe the customers or the cause that your business serves.
- Explain your business model or how your products are made.
- Put a face to your business, featuring the founders or the people on your team.
- Incorporate persuasive content (e.g., an explainer video, data visualizations, links to blog posts) that might otherwise clutter your homepage.
In short, your About Us page is a home for your founding story, a place to show off your business wins, and a sales page that answers the most pressing question new customers have about your business outside why they should buy its products:
Why should they buy from you?
How to write an About Us page
The best About Us pages accomplish their goals through telling a story about a brand.
Every story needs a protagonist, and so does every About Us page.
In some cases, that might be you or your founding team. In others, you might treat your business as its own character with a distinct story.
Either way, stories are all about representing change—starting in one place and ending up in another—which is something your About Us page should also do as visitors scroll through it.
You can craft a narrative for your About Us page by using the following formula:
- Set the scene. Introduce the characters or setting, and establish the status quo or “the way things were” for you, your target customer, or your industry.
- Introduce the problem. Describe the problem that called you (the main character) to act.
- Rise to the challenge. Explain how you set out to find a solution (i.e., start your business) and the obstacles you faced along the way.
- Arrive at a solution. Share details of how your business is pursuing its purpose and the milestones you’ve hit.
- Envision what’s next. Paint a picture of the future for your company or state its mission and goals.
Here are some other components you might want to incorporate into your About Us page, not only to flesh out your narrative but to define your brand and communicate your company’s reason for being to customers.
Your business model
For some companies, their business model is their unique value proposition and can be a selling point that’s worth including on their About Us page.
Some examples of this might include:
- How you cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to customers.
- Where you source the materials for your product (e.g., manufacturing in a specific country or by providing jobs to a certain community).
- A breakdown of the portion of your revenue that goes to a charity.
If transparency might strengthen your brand, your About Us page is a good opportunity to summarize your supply chain, how your business works, and relate that back to the mission that drives you.
This is often accomplished with an illustration or infographic that presents your business model in an easy-to-digest manner, like this one used by Taaluma Totes that explains how they source materials for their products and how donations help support the country of origin.
Photo courtesy of: Taaluma Totes
Press mentions, testimonials, awards
Reviews, press mentions, or user-generated content can be included on your About Us page to share how you’re impacting your customers or your industry.
There are a variety of ways to integrate social proof into your About Us page, from embedding Instagram galleries of customer content to featuring the logos of publications that have covered you, to highlighting a quote you lifted from a customer review.
Press mentions, awards, and other wins are common examples of milestones that can be used to help tell the middle of your story.
Photo courtesy of: Cotopaxi
Concrete numbers
Numbers give you credibility, especially if you’re illustrating a problem you’re trying to solve or the progress you’ve made as a business (e.g., number of items sold or years you’ve been in business).
Consider the stats you can use on your About Us page to make a point about your company mission or to quantify your impact as a business.
Whether you’re explaining the industry problem that comes up early in your story or highlighting the milestones at your story’s climax, tying eye-catching figures into your narrative can help you communicate your message more effectively.
Photo courtesy of: Merit
An introduction to your team
Putting a face to your brand helps to humanize it, communicate your company culture, and shine a light on the people who power your business.
Even if you only highlight the founders, your About Us page can be a chance to build your personal brand and share how your story and experience makes you and your company a good fit to serve your market.
Photo courtesy of: Death Wish Coffee
A video or gallery of photos
If you can, you should mix up the media on your About Us page to add variety and break up the text in your page design.
At the very least, you can include high-quality behind-the-scenes photos that pull back the curtain and give visitors a glimpse into your business. Or, if you’ve invested in content marketing assets like videos or case studies, your About Us page is a good home for it as well.
Social media links and calls to action
Your About Us page can also be used to funnel visitors to other web pages or online presence, whether it’s a blog post or social profile.
Be sure to incorporate any relevant CTA links into your copy and think about how you can continue the visitor’s journey by encouraging them to:
- Follow your social accounts
- Opt into your email list
- Check out your products
- Apply for a job at your company
- Read your blog
Photo courtesy of: MVMT
About Us page templates
Keep in mind that writing your actual copy in the first person (e.g., I, We) will help build a more personal connection with your target audience. Your About Us page is about you, so don’t shy away from that.
Hit the following points and you should have the structure for a story (not necessarily the copy you’ll use) that you can incorporate into your About Us page narrative.
[FOUNDERS] started [COMPANY] because [EXPLAIN PROBLEM IN YOUR INDUSTRY].
That’s why [DESCRIBE JOURNEY TO SOLUTION].
Along the way, [SHARE MILESTONES AND WINS].
We want to be [STATE YOUR MISSION GOING FORWARD].
Some other inspiring templates to check out are:
- Ecommerce About Us page examples and templates by Oberlo
- About Us page templates by CoSchedule
- Ecommerce About Us templates by PageFly
However, a story is just the start. A good About Us page doesn’t just tell the story behind a company—it shows it.
Many ecommerce website builders will include an About Us page in your starter template. For example, Shopify’s Parallax theme provides an About Us page template you can copy and paste your story into.
If you’re genuinely stuck on an About page, you may be tempted to use a paid or free About page generator. The problem is, no generator can create the story behind your business. About Us pages are unique to your business and should be written with consideration in mind.
Another option is to use the About Us page templates above. If you’re strapped for time or just can’t find the words, hire a copywriter. They’ll be able to interview you and your team members, and write a beautiful About Us page for your business you can use to connect with potential customers.
About Us page examples
Your About Us page is going to be about you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow some ideas from others, especially when it comes to structure and design.
The following are examples of different ways you can tackle your About Us page design. I’ve included screenshots of the pages in their entirety so you can see the full layout of information and imagery in order to plan your own page.
- Yeti
- 40 Colori
- MVMT
- Marie Forleo
- Cotopaxi
- WP Standard
- Mailchimp
The mission focused company by Yeti
The About Us page design of Yeti helps tell the founders’ story. At first glance, you get the impression of the company values through imagery and a clear mission statement.
Scroll down the page: you can see the people running the business and photos of them fishing.
When site visitors visit the brand’s About Us page, they get all the information they need to determine whether to engage with the company or not.
Yeti takes storytelling to another level on its About page. Visitors can click-through different stories about the brand’s sponsorships, like providing gear for Heroes and Horses. It also showcases stories about inspiring people from the outdoors scene, such as the story behind Mark Engler, a legendary fishing guide in the Colorado/New Mexico area.
Yeti tells its story. It also features key highlights about the brand that keeps visitors inspired and creates a good user experience. These summaries help showcase Yeti’s unique qualities and earn trust with potential customers.
An ode to craftsmanship by 40 Colori
40 Colori is a great model for About Us pages for small businesses. It provides a nice company overview, including a How We Work to give site visitors an inside look at operations. 40 Colori’s page holds promise to readers, telling a coherent story that increases trust and transparency.
Its summary explains who the company is, its brand values, and how it differs from other Italian menswear brands. The copywriting is clear and straightforward, which makes 40 Colori sound credible and friendly.
A founding team story from MVMT
The MVMT About Us page makes use of sections to tell different parts of its story.
It centers on the company’s two co-founders, who dropped out of college, and includes photos of them to put a face to their names, before getting into their product promise and finally their company philosophy.
But what’s worth noting about the page design here is that you can break it down into three sections you can also use to organize your own About Us page:
- Who you are
- What you sell
- Why you do it
Personal branding like Marie Forleo
Marie Forleo structures her About page like a long-form letter to the reader. It tells her story in the format of a condensed autobiography before refocusing on the reader with a section aptly titled “Which brings me to you.”
For entrepreneurs who have a personal brand that goes with their business, this style of About Us page might be better. You can treat your business as one important chapter in a much larger series of stories, starting at the beginning and ending where your ideal reader is introduced as a character.
Starting with “why” like Cotopaxi
The essence of a brand can be found in the feelings and meaning its name evokes. So another good place to start your story is with why your business bears a certain name.
Cotopaxi takes this approach by explaining the personal relevance the brand name has for its founders, before continuing to tell the rest of their story through the actions they’ve taken in building the business and pursuing their cause.
Telling your story through media like WP Standard
WP Standard’s About Us page is almost like a look book with a minimal amount of copy or details about its origin. Instead, the story is told through a video, imagery, and sparse copy that summons the idea of resilience, exploration, and embracing the essential.
In a way, its About Us page is more of an “about the customer” page that casts shoppers as the exploring protagonists in its video before bringing it back to its promise as a company.
It’s a departure from the copy-driven pages we covered above, but it works in the favour of WP Standard as a brand of few words, or for brands that want to say a lot by saying very little.
Driving positive change with Mailchimp
Mailchimp’s About Us page expresses the brand’s commitment to small businesses and community. It kicks off with an overview of the founders’ story, showcasing their 20 years of experience in web design and email.
The page continues to explain Mailchimps’ company culture. Here it discusses Mailchimp’s commitment to learning and educating employees about small businesses so that each employee they hire is a perfect addition to the team.
One element that stands out on Mailchimp’s About Us page is its section on corporate citizenship. You’ll learn how the brand invested over $12 million through Big Change Starts Small to help get small businesses off the ground and running, plus, how it works with local organizations and universities to create positive social impact in its hometown of Atlanta.
Overall, Mailchimp’s About Us is real, honest, and shows how it stands by its mission to support small businesses in real life and online.
Building trust with your About Us page
When you’re starting out, it might seem like there’s not an awful lot to say on your About Us page.
But if you have a point of view and know why you’re doing what you do in service of your customers, you have enough to start with. You can expand upon what milestones you’ve crossed as you grow, improving your About Us page over time.
And for those who are already well into their own story, it might be worth taking a look at your analytics to see if new visitors are regularly stopping by your About Us page.
Maybe it’s time to take another pass at it and start treating your About Us page like the valuable online asset for your business it’s meant to be.
Illustration by Alice Mollon
About Us page FAQ
What is an About Us page?
Your about page introduces you to your customers. Share who you are, why you started the brand, your vision and mission, and how you plan to grow. Treat your About page like your store’s résumé, and make sure it’s updated at all times. The more you share about yourself, the closer your customers will feel to your brand.
How do I write an About Us page?
- Set the scene by introducing the characters and status quo.
- Introduce the problem that caused you to act.
- Explain how you found a solution and the challenges you faced.
- Share the milestones your business has hit.
- Describe the future for your company or state its mission and goals.
Why do websites have About Us content?
While you don’t technically need an About Us page, it’s definitely a good idea. About Us content is a way for customers to learn about you and create a sense of trust in your brand. If they feel connected to you and your brand, they’ll be more willing to purchase your products.
How do you add an About page in Shopify?
Log in to your Shopify admin dashboard and click on “Online store” from the left hand side menu. Click on “Add page,” create your content there, and name the page ‘“About.” Save the page and then add it to your menu.
