After the homepage, the most visited page on most websites is the About Us page.  The web is a great equalizer for business and your visitors know a shady company can put up a reputable looking website.  In order to gain trust, you have to answer the biggest question a consumer on the web is asking:  Can I trust you?

To answer that question, your visitors will turn to the About Us page.  You need to convey information about your company, demonstrate why you are trustworthy, and develop a personal connection with your visitor, all in 400-600 words.  This information is expected and delivering the goods boosts your online image.

Elements to consider when crafting an About Us page:

• A physical address – An 800 number and contact form are easy, convenient ways for customers to reach you, but a physical address shows a prospective customer that you are a real business.

• What you do – Most of your site will focus on solutions for your customers.  The About Us page is the corner of your site to talk to visitors about your company.

• Why you do what you do – How did the company begin and what is the driving passion behind it?  This is a great way to demonstrate dedication to your customers.

• Your successes – This page is not for the modest!  If you have received any awards or recognition, tapped into a competitive market, or experienced impressive growth mention them.  These are signals to your potential customers that you will do a good job for them.

• What makes you different– Chances are you are not the only business doing what you do.  A look at what sets you apart gives visitors a reason to choose you.

• Personality – If your company is fun to work with or singularly dedicated to helping customers, make sure visitors know that.  Your company’s culture should shine through in the writing.

• Staff bios – Give your visitors a connection with the people behind the business.  The web is cold and impersonal, but humanizing elements add a friendly face and make the experience more personal.

As much as the web has changed the way businesses relate to their customers, the importance of trust has not diminished.  Potential customers want to know they are dealing with a reputable company in addition to getting a great product.  Build credibility on your site and convert visitors into customers.

There are some good books out there that describe the impact of usability on everything we do. Consider this, you’re at home on the couch and it’s late at night. You decide it’s time for bed so you reach over to your televisions remote to turn it off. When you reach for the off button where does your thumb go? Most likely, if it’s a usable remote, your thumb reaches up to the top left of the device.

Well, why did you do that? Without even thinking you already knew where to go because this has become a standard on all products throughout the world. Let’s say we change the standard and now the power button is located in the bottom right.

Does that make sense? Of course not! Why is that? Because developers thought about this a long time ago. It doesn’t make any sense at all to have to make people use to hands to turn the power on our off. Some people like holding the remote while they’re watching TV. With a power button in the bottom right position, it’s a guarantee that someone out there would be getting rather upset that they keep turning off their television on accident.

Look, we’ve standardized things for a reason. When you’re building a website, don’t reinvent the wheel. People are already attached to standards and expect various pieces of information, like a phone number, to be located somewhere near the top right of the website. Make smart decisions and the customers will keep coming back to your website.

When you’re planning out a new site take into consideration the following three questions that users subconsciously ask themselves.

Where am I? - The user needs to know where they are the entire time they’re browsing the site. If they click on “Car Insurance Information” they’ll be taken to the existing page. On this page, you should always have a header that refrences the page you are on. You should also have a descriptive title tag. SEO tech’s would argue that the “title tag” area is reserved for SEM (Search Engine Marketing) efforts. Still, your title tag can get effective SEO results and be descriptive enough.

What am I doing? -   Often times the user doesn’t even know what they’re doing at your website. Sometimes they stop by because it’s a knee jerk reaction when getting a list of results from a search engine. That’s why it’s always important to make sure you’re leading the Web users to a specific area on the page or site. If your call-to-action is to get people to click on a “more info” button you’re going to want to make that a more prominent part of the sites design. Always ask yourself, what is the visitors goal on your website?

How do I get there? - A potential customer is sifting through Google results on insurance providers and they come across your site. When they come to your home page, what are they looking for? Let’s say they’re looking for liability car insurance info, but there’s no obvious link on the page. They’ll then check for a search box or other referential type of pages such as “about us” or “FAQ” to find a link that will take them to what they want. If they haven’t found it yet, they’re gone.

The bottom line, make sure you’ve set goals for your website and that the marketing company you’re working with is leading you in the right direction. There’s nothing worse than having a beautifully designed website that’s impossible to navigate. That’s a quick way to lose out on business.