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Everyone wants to grow their business, but not everyone has the time or patience to learn all the ins and outs of marketing, sales enablement, and making the most out of a CRM such as HubSpot. Join the Web Canopy Studio team, a HubSpot Diamond Partner Agency, as they chat about various topics all designed to help you grow your B2B business.
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About pages are one of the most underutilized and misused pages on a company's website. In today's episode, I'm gonna break down what you should think about when you're building an about page, what you might wanna include on it and how you can make that page become one of the best tools you could use to generate more customers and to hire the right kind of people. My name is John Aikin. I'm the CEO of Web Canopy Studio and this is the website conversion show.
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Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode of the website conversion show. Today, we are talking about, about pages that was not a stutter about pages are really, really, really underutilized. They're really misused they're mistreated. I don't think people really see the value in them, or we see a lot of people where the CEO or the founder wants to have an about page that talks about that's where I'm gonna talk about how great we are and how awesome I am and how we've put together, all this information and history of the company and all kinds of stuff. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about that stuff. It's fluff. It's not important. I've been saying fluff a lot lately. It's like my keyword of, of talking about like bad content on a website, filler content. So that, that is, that is one way that, that most people end up treating how they end up treating their about page.
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The other way that I see people see people treating them is almost just like they don't exist almost like the about page or the company page is not even important. And so more and more we've been seeing companies bury the about page or bury the company page way underneath into the footer, or even like, it's not even available unless you dig through the site and other pages, but I'm here to tell you that the about page is actually a very, very awesome critical piece to the website when you treat it the right way. And the way that I would recommend you start thinking about the about page is to have it as a one pager that is about your company. That is about what you do not necessarily the, the services or the products that you're selling, but about what the brand represents. Okay.
(02:07):
So I don't know how many times you guys might have been asked. I get asked all the time, what does your company do, or who, who do you work for or what company are you? So if you treat your company about page as a one pager that might start changing the, the way that you think about, okay, how can I share what's on this content, what content's on this page? So let's think of it in the questions that people might be having. Let's think of it in that context. So context. So the, the two main reasons that someone's coming to you about page, the two main reasons that they are there, the two main questions that they have, number one, they are looking for validation that you are a legitimate brand, that you're a legitimate company, right? I don't want to go through and buy from somebody that is a brand new startup, and maybe they made a really cool website and it looks really great, but it's actually a side project of somebody who's got another gig somewhere else.
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And I don't wanna like make a recommendation to my boss that we go all in on this product. If it's a joke, if it's not something that's legitimately gonna be useful because in six months and I I'm still using it, and I need a lot of help, who knows if the company's gonna be there. Right. So the about page, I'm coming to it because I wanna do a background check. I wanna see if you're legit. I wanna see if you have any kind of like long standing potential with me that I can continue to work with you on. And I wanna make sure that I'm not gonna get in trouble for recommending that we buy from you. Right? So that's the number one reason. Number two recruitment recruitment is so big. It's really hard to hire really good talent today. It's really on anything.
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So if you have a, you're looking for a very specific skill set, the more important it is for your about page to talk about how important your company is and the cool things that you do that will make it appealing for them to come work with you. Now, what I don't mean is that you use the about page to just brag about the brand and how cool you are. And this is the history. And you know, like that's so boring. Nobody wants to read that content. That is not the purpose of an about page. And unfortunately that is what most people use for their about page. So we're gonna get away from that crap. We're gonna start talking about the about page in a context that is valuable to our potential visitors, potential clients. So I'm gonna go through 10 things that you should have on your about page.
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Okay. You can take some of them. I would recommend taking all of them, but I'm gonna give you 10 different pieces of your, about page that you should highlight. Okay. You ready? Number one. And this is, I put this number one because I think it should be at the top of your page. Honestly, most people don't even have this on their about page. So this is something you could probably install right now. Number one thing that you're you're about page should tell me is the main problem. Okay? What is your company existing for to destroy? What has your company put in front of, of everybody that you're working with and saying, this is the problem that we have set out to eradicate. This is the problem that we have set out to destroy. What is that main problem? We are here to stop this problem.
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I want you to tell me that on the website, cuz I wanna know that this is our guiding light. Now it doesn't necessarily be that the product or the service that you sell is that the only thing that's there because this should serve as something that the company has in the long run, like your main problem that you're solving could still be in existence even after you sunset your current software. And you've created a new software that solves that problem fixes that problem even better. So what does that main problem that your company has set out to destroy? Number two, what's the mission of your company? I hate mission statements. I cannot tell you I've been on, I've been on boards. I've been a part of so many nonprofits. I cannot stand the mission statement, discussions and people, you know, they live and breathe the mission statement.
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And honestly, again, I'm gonna use the word fluff. It's so much fluff. It does not have any root and actual value. So a mission to me, the mission of a company is looking at what the end goal looks like. That is our mission to achieve this. So yes, the problem is actually probably part of your mission, but what does the end goal look like? Why is that important? Well, I want to know as a, as a prospective employee, that this is where you're trying to take the company and yes I can get on that boat and I'm happy to sail with you or I actually cannot. I have no interest in helping you get to that point. I just want a job. So I'm gonna jet. And then from a, from a prospective client standpoint, I would take great pride in saying I'm working with this brand.
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I'm choosing to work with this company over these other solution providers because their mission aligns very much with something that I have very dear to my heart. So definitely definitely include a mission. And if you just put a mission statement that sounds really fluffy and talks about, I don't know, I'm not gonna give you any bad examples, but really, you know, you know what I'm talking about when you look at a non-profits mission statement and it's like, oh my gosh, that actually means zero. That has no weight at all. You don't want to have that on, on your website as a primary piece of your about page. Oops, get notifications here. One second. Sorry about that. Next. The values, the values that your company holds true deep at the core of who you are. A lot of companies have core values. It's not new.
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You probably have some core values inside of your brand. It's a very common thing to have most companies though. Don't live up to them and they're not really cool with sharing it with the world. I love that the discussion around sharing core values. Why, because I want number one perspective clients to know that this is what we are all about. This is what is deep inside of our hearts. All of my staff is on board with our core values. And this is how I actually evaluate my team. Right? The core values are so true to also the product development or service development, because that's really like what's at, at the root of why we're building things. And what's going into the products I'm building that is so much more than just a surface level. This is the product. This is the feature. This is what it does.
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And this is how much it costs so much more than that, right? From a perspective employee, if I'm looking to hire really good talent, I want to like bold statement. I want to tell them the values that we C carry inside of our brand. Because if you don't share those values, then do not even apply, right? It's and more often than not, your values are gonna help attract people just like that. So you, the values on your website are really key. We put it on your about page. Do not make it this big, long drawn out thing, but it's important to share. The next thing that we want to talk about is the transformation, right? This is also one of those items that literally is not on about pages. I don't know why people don't put this on here, but your transformation is telling not, not your transformation.
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It's your client transformation. And it's telling the situation, the current state of what you are setting out to take somebody from this place and you're gonna take them to that place. So what is the current situation that someone's sitting in, that your company is gonna help them go from here to this desired situation? Okay, what are you helping them leave? And where are you taking them? That transformation can be represented in text. It can be represented visually with two, you know, icons or diagrams and saying, we help people go from here to here. It's a great power statement to just be like, whoa, this is exactly what I'm looking for. This is exactly where I'm at. I can see myself sitting in this current state. I definitely wanna be in that desired state. We are definitely aligned there. And number five, the clients, what are the kind of companies that, or the kinds of people, groups of people that you work with, okay, this is not a list of all the different brands.
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This is not a list of logos. We're not like pumping up our stats here. We'll talk about authority in a minute. This is the clients, the kinds of people that you are best fit to work with, right? What are the companies or the styles of companies that most likely align with who you can help? That's important because you are a hundred percent differentiating yourself from everybody else on the market when you're talking to your exact audience. Okay. I have for our brand, we work with a lot of, for our done for you website services, we work with B2B SAS companies that use HubSpot. That's pretty niche. That's pretty specific. It's, we're, we're really kind of, and we do really good job of it. So we're kind of setting ourself apart from a lot of these other agencies and a lot of these other brands just by saying that is who we work with.
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That's our, our ideal clients sit in that, in that world. Now it does not mean that I don't work with people who don't fit that perfect, that perfect trifecta, if you will, of, of the, the kinds of things that we do, but it is definitely calling out who my core audience is and who I can help the most from, from a webcam studio services side, that is, so we have a lot of clients. We have some very large college institutions in the United States that work with us repeatedly because we help them so much inside of the things that they're trying to accomplish in HubSpot and their marketing and so on that does not really fit all, all the different pieces of the, of the three things that I had mentioned about HubSpot B2B software and so on. However, it doesn't necessarily always have to.
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And that's a really important note because a lot of people will say, well, I don't want to say specifically, we only work with this kind of group because we have some clients that are not in that group. They're so afraid of offending people. You have to stop not thinking about like, you can't worry about that stuff because yes, they're still gonna find value in what you do. They're still going to want to work with you. You're just helping align and go really narrow into your best audience, because guess what's gonna happen. Somebody that's gonna come and be your ideal client that fits all the things that you want to call out us. This is our ideal client, and you're stating it on this page and they're evaluating you and they're evaluating two other solution providers. They don't say that they work with that audience.
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They don't say that they specifically are set out to accomplish this goal for this audience. You a hundred percent have the upper hand just by sharing that information on your website. All right. Super, super important next founder statement. So this is where most people spend their content time on their, about page. They talk about company history and they talk about all the background of the company relevant. Yes. Important. Yes. Should it be the intent of the, about outage? Absolutely not. So if your company, if you're about page, literally just says, we were founded on this in this time and this was the company founder. And you know, this is what we've done over the last several years, and this is our where our location is, and we've expanded into all these markets like, okay, I get it. Like, that's, that should be like a paragraph on the website, but it's not necessarily the purpose of the, about page, right?
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That's, that's the kind of about page that people have that they bury in the footer of their website because it sucks. So what do you do instead? The founder statement have your CEO, your founder, you have somebody write a quick, informative piece, a paragraph, maybe two paragraphs that include that information and make it a very prominent thing. Middle of the page, scrolling down past the important items that we've already talked about, items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then we get to the founder statement. Okay. Why? Because you're queuing people up who are actually exploring, oh, yep. Oh, I have this problem. I also think it's cool that you have this mission. I have some of these same exact values that you do. I am sitting in this current state for the transformation, and I'd love to get to the desired state that your company is taking me from.
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And I am one of these perfect fit clients that you're calling out. That's really cool. And then boom, a letter from the founder that talks about this is our background. This is who we are. This is where we've come from. This is why I've created this company. That is the perfect place, the perfect time. Cuz now I'm actually queued up to read it and I'm interested. It's not just fluff. That's sitting at the top of the about page. Then we have the authority factors. So this is awesome because this will let the clients or the prospects coming to your website know that they are in the right place because they have aspirations to look like the people that you already work with. If you have notable clients notable logos, you're gonna wanna put them here. Now I wouldn't put a massive amount, but definitely put some notable ones, you know, four or five, if you have it they don't have to be animated.
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You could just literally say people we've worked with or clients who trust us, something like that. And just put the logos there, leave it at that other things, awards. If you've ever won any awards, if you've ever been a part of any kind of ceremonies or you've been on boards or different things like that, let's share that here so that it also lends credibility and lends authority. What we're not doing is putting at the top. Why? Because no one cares yet. So, and we want them to go through this information here, the founder's statement, and then bam. Also, here's a whole bunch of credibility by the way. And they're like, that is awesome. That is exactly who I need to be. Like these people are here. So any other name dropping, any other notable things that you can put, you're gonna wanna make sure you do there.
(15:43):
Then also a lot of people miss this stuff, they put it way at the top or like they focus on this as the about page and they make it where they make all these, like the about section of the, of the website has like eight different pages and dropdowns, like, don't do that. Nobody cares. Nobody's gonna spend a bunch of time going through that unless they're just trying to be, you know, ripping you off and their competitors. So the team I wanna know who already works there. I wanna know if I am similar to the kind of people that you work with. I wanna know what their credibility is. I wanna know who on the team might be. I could reach out to that is a very important piece, but it's not something that your entire about page should be about. It's also getting credibility to prospects who are coming to the website and they're like, Ooh, this company is awesome.
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Let's go in here and talk to these people. Then the culture, this is awesome. Because again, most people miss this step here. If you have more, if you're a single person, company, one person sole owner, you could add some aspirational things here where you want to go. What you're trying to accomplish, who you're trying to bring onto the team. If you have multiple people in your team, 100%, you need to send them an email right now and ask them a question about what they love about this company or why they, why they want to work here or what they were seeking when they joined the team. And you're gonna put those quotes on your website, in the culture section. Describe what it's like for these specific days. Also you should just do that in general, but if people give you bad answers that tells you, you need to change something within the company.
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If you're getting really good quality content, put that on your website. I don't understand why people don't share this stuff. They think it's like internal decision making things like absolutely not. If people love working for your company, tell people about it, they have to know about it, right? Nothing is gonna be a better recruitment tool for you than having people recruit in their own words, why they love working for your company, because if that's me or if I'm coming to you and I see somebody and they look like me and they have the same skill set as I do, and they are doing cool things, then I too want to do those same cool things and wanna be a part of that. It's it is a magnet for really, really awesome team development and career development. And then last but not least, we have the careers.
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All right. So what positions do you have in your company what's available? How do I apply? How can I find out more information? What can you share with me that will allow me to become a part of this team? I've read all this information. I've been really into what you guys have talked about and now, yes, I wanna join. I think this is awesome. And you have a spot that's perfect for me, even if you're not hiring, I recommend housing, all of this information, putting it all on there because your website is your best recruitment tool for really great employees. So let them apply and hold their information, reach out to them. Start the conversation because you never know really good people might be in a current position that they enjoy that they're working and they're looking for something the next step up. And so have the conversation for two or three months with them while they're still employed.
(19:09):
Right? Use your website as a way to let people come to you to apply and then start the conversation well before you need it. Okay. That's it. That's all I have for the perfect about page. Let us know if you guys have any questions, we'll see ya. Okay. At the end of every episode, I'd like to give a quick recap of some of the major takeaways that we went over. And in this episode, talking specifically about the about page and how to make your about page super awesome, because most about pages are awful. Number one, please, please, please make sure that you do not just share a boring summary of your company history because that sucks and nobody is interested in that. Okay. do not bury that in the footer of your, your website. I think it's also a big mistake because people do wanna legitimately know who you are, what you do and some important information about you.
(19:55):
So can you highlight that in a really good way, maybe following the steps that I, we just went through and put it in the primary navigation of your website, number two, you should think about this entire page as a beautiful one pager of your company. So when someone says, what is it that you do? And you need to just give a cool one page document. It should be this page. It should be exactly what you see on, on your about page, because it literally tells you, you know, the problem we solve, how we're transforming people. It tells us notable information about the clients we work with. It talks about our mission. It talks about who we hire and our career and our culture. Like there's all kinds of really good meat in this information, in this page. So it should absolutely be a one pager for your brand.
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And then number three, it is the best possible tool for recruitment. Please do not let it just sit stagnant and go through just, you know, silly old indeed post when you need to hire somebody. Because by the time you are ready to hire somebody, you are probably already too late. I think that's it. If you have not done so yet, please go to webcanopystudio.com/assessment and fill out the website conversion assessment. This is gonna take you through 30 questions you're going to in there multiple choice. So it's super easy. You're going to answer on a scale of one to five, how well you perform in each of these individual pieces. It's based off of the honor system. So I'm not gonna know if you actually suck at this or if you're really good at this one, but you gotta be honest with yourself so that you get some really good information back. And when you answer that information, you will get a personalized report sent to you. You will get a report that has all kinds of guides and checklists. If you're watching, it looks like right here on your screen, it'll have guides and checklists and a list of options for each of the six areas of the website conversion framework to make your website convert more customers. That's it. Thank you so much for checking out today's episode. Hope it was helpful and we'll catch you next time. Byebye.