It was an innocent enough question from a very smart person.
“What is the difference between my Home page and my About page?”
As an interactive marketer, this question generated heart palpitations in me. But I needed to take step back and embrace the fact that not everyone bleeds the internet like I do. And if one person asked it, many people are wondering it. So here is my answer.
Imagine you walk into a store. The first thing you see is a wall of family photos of the store owner, her college degree, funny picture of her cat, the industry articles she’s written… you’d think to yourself “what the heck does she sell in here? Why did I come in, anyway? Hey, I’m hungry. I want a pretzel.” And you’d turn around to leave.
This is the brick-and-mortar equivalent of what you do when you put About content on your Home page.
Here is a hard truth that is a bitter pill for all of us and goes against everything they said on Sesame Street: nobody cares about YOU.
When your visitor comes to your web site, he is thinking “What is in this for ME? How is this going to solve my problem?”
So your Home page has a very specific job: identify your visitor’s problem/pain and illustrate how you will solve it better than anybody else. In 8 seconds or less.
That doesn’t mean you can’t list your services on your Home page, or show a photo of yourself or your product. But these things can only be done effectively if there is something — a combination of graphics and content — that speaks to your visitor and lets them feel that yes, they are in the right space. You get it. You know who they are and what they need.
Writing my own ABOUT page, I had to think about what facts I wanted to share that would make me approachable, human and normal, while still being professional and experienced. Take look and let me know your thoughts.
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