Building trust in your shop with your “About us” page
In conjunction with detailed product descriptions and high-quality images, an effective “About us” page can provide users with important information as they decide whether to buy from your online shop. This article describes how to create a personal page of this type and thereby gain the confidence of your customers.
Why “About us” pages are so important
When potential customers become aware of your shop as a result of a Google search, for example, they might well be keen to find out about not just your product range but your company, too.
Many shops, however, fail to provide visitors with any details of the people operating the shop or their motivation for doing so. Particularly before placing their first order, customers often attempt to minimise their personal risk by looking for further information about the company. An effective “About us” page can therefore represent a valuable way of building your visitors’ trust in your shop.
They give smaller online merchants in particular a powerful way of showing who they are and what makes their shop so special. Below, we suggest some specific tips and ideas for designing your very own “About us” page.
Seek inspiration from others
Before starting work on your page, take some time to conduct a little research. For example, what do the “About us” pages look like for shops that you frequently use yourself? Similarly, take a look at your competitors’ pages. Consider what things you particularly like there as well as potential ways in which you can differentiate yourself from the competition.
Write for your customers
You no doubt already know some of your customers from real life. Perhaps you operate a bricks-and-mortar shop alongside your e-commerce activities or you have met some of your customers at events or trade fairs.
Think about the kind of questions you have been asked by your customers at such times. What issues were especially important and what keywords tended to be used?
Tell your story
What were your reasons for setting up your shop? In what circumstances did you start your business? Did you, perhaps, decide to turn your hobby into your job or was there a specific situation that gave rise to your business idea? You can use questions like these to tell your story on your “About us” page, to emphasise particular events and to give your customers a succinct overview of your company.
Introduce yourselves
It may be the case that only a small proportion of visitors to your shop already know about your company or have previously ordered from you. The majority will most likely have found out about your shop by running an online search, for example. For this reason, it makes sense to allow them to look behind the scenes by providing an “About us” page that lets visitors find about more about you and your business.
You can also include photographs in the “About us” area of your shop to give it a more personal feel. If you do this, we recommend that you employ a professional photographer to take pictures of you and your team using the best possible lighting and set-up.
What do you see as important in your work? Do you place particular emphasis on sustainable trading by only using environmentally-friendly packaging, for example? This is the kind of information that can help your visitors to gain a better picture of you and your business.
Show people your strengths
What is your shop’s USP – its “unique selling point” – and why exactly should your visitors buy from you? Show them your strengths and the things that make your company special, such as the years of experience you bring to your field or the unusual product range you offer.
Ratings from any third parties that recommend your products and service levels are a great way of emphasising your strengths. This is why it makes sense to refer to any awards you may have won on your “About us” page. Perhaps you received fantastic praise from some particularly happy customers. In such cases, you should ask the people concerned if you can use their positive review together with their names as testimonials on your site.
Use a structure to help you write
Open questions, starting with words like ’how’ or ’what’, can help you to devise your structure. We’ve brought together a few examples for you:
- What were your reasons for setting up your shop?
- How long has your business been trading?
- Do you use any other channels, such as a bricks-and-mortar shop, to sell your goods?
- What makes your business special?
- How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
- What does your company sell?
- Who benefits from your products?
- What do you do for your customers?
- Why exactly should visitors buy from your shop?
These types of questions should have helped you come up with ideas for things to write about on your “About us” page. Before starting to do this, however, you should consider the structure used for the page overall. Use headings, for instance, to note down – either on Post-It® notes or in a Word document – what you are writing about and which images you want to use. Rearrange the headings until you have a logical order for the content. This will both make writing easier and help ensure that the content is comprehensible for your readers.
Another helpful tip is to place your “About us” page in a visible location within your shop. To make sure that is easily found by your visitors, it makes sense to include the page as a specific menu item in the site navigation structure.
It can also be listed within the footer area of the site pages. This will ensure that your visitors can access the “About us” page at any time, irrespective of the particular page they are currently looking at.
We hope that we have given you some useful ideas for designing your own “About us” page and that you enjoy writing it.
Friederike Beins
Friederike Beins ist Mitarbeiterin bei Newsletter2Go.
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