Update your About Page

Almost every website has an About page, and it’s so easy for this to get forgotten about and out of date. But, it’s one of the pages many of your readers will go check out once they have visited your website, and are curious to learn more about the person (or company) behind the site. If this page is left gathering dust, it can leave a bad first impression.

Here’s what to do:

1. Read your About page text out loud. Not in your head, but slowly out loud from start to finish without stopping to edit it.

2. Fix any glaring mistakes, typos, spelling mistakes, inaccuracies, and dated information. (I use Grammarly to help spot things.) Common examples include: talking about future events which are now in the past, talking about something as “new” but it’s now not, numbers of kids you have and their ages, adding recent press coverage, adjusting the company size or years you’ve been in business.

3. Re-read it all aloud again. Now that the information is updated, does the voice of it sound in alignment with where you or your company are today? (Marketers might ask “Is it on brand?”) Is it clear to people what your mission is — i.e. who you help, and how you help them? Does it cover the important things you’d like people to know? Is it too waffly?

4. Rewrite the parts which need work, or rewrite it from scratch.

5. Read it out loud one more time. You’ll often find things you want to change by slowing down and hearing it spoken.