“ABOUT US” PAGES

If you are a new or relatively unknown company, each visitor to your site should be thought of as a valuable prospective customer. It is therefore essential that you make your company’s purpose instantly clear, since visitors are likely to leave as quickly as they came. You must present what you do, why you do it, and how it gets done to each visitor in a way that is both direct and appealing. This information is most often contained on a site’s “About Us” page, and it typically consists of a few sparse paragraphs of formatted text describing the company’s history, location, and purpose.

Unfortunately, customers will probably skim over and not really read content like this if it is standard and predictable. That’s exactly why this is a great opportunity to make your purpose and unique value proposition stand out. This information should be front and center on a start-up’s homepage, not relegated to a sub-page of the site. Using infographics to display this information will bring the content to life, and ensure that your visitors are getting the message quickly and clearly.

If potential customers don’t commonly understand the need for your product or service, infographics can help to set the stage and explain this need. This is a good opportunity to visualize industry statistics, demographic details, or problem statements. This setup is shown in Figure 6.1, which shows an explanatory infographic Column Five designed for shopping search site Milo.com in 2010, before ...

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