What does an About page have in common with a junk drawer?
It has a generic name that doesn’t provide any information about its contents. You don’t really know what you should put in it, or what you should expect to find in someone else’s. And no matter whose it is, it’s probably full of unrelated things of widely varying value.
Here are some highlights from my junk drawer:
A rubber band, three pens, a cat toy, a couple of interesting coins I’m saving for my nephew; a pair of sunglasses that I hate; a pocketknife that I value highly because it was my dad’s; a remote for a TV I don’t have.
Here are some things I found on About pages in a five-minute tour of sites in my bookmarks list:
Mission statements, company history, company culture, lists of clients, testimonials, slideshows of company campuses, executive bios, contact information, news, press packets and press releases, a blog with one 3 month old entry, a privacy policy and terms of service statement, an FAQ, career information.
There seem to be two criteria for what goes into a junk drawer, and what goes into a typical About page:
- I haven’t made another place for it, and/or
- I don’t want to be the one who gets rid of it.
And here are two more ways junk drawers and About pages are alike:
Almost everyone has one, and I really admire those who don’t.
Okay, enough with the analogy, but seriously–who is the information architect who invented the “About” page? In order for your users to find what they came for, you have to group related things together and label them accurately. Instead of thinking, “I wonder if it’s in here,” or “I wonder what’s in here,” and having to click to find out, your users should be thinking, “What’s the history of this company? I’ll click Company History to find out” or “Where is this place? I’ll click Location and see.”
And if you want users to notice things they weren’t looking for, and click on them, you certainly need to come up with a more intriguing label than “About”!
Sure, there are things users typically look for on About pages. Like everyone else, if I don’t see “Contact” or “Careers,” for example, I look in “About.” And if I can’t the scotch tape or my birth certificate, I check the junk drawer. That just means I’m conditioned to cope. Don’t make your users cope.
Don’t let things end up on an About page because you’re having a hard time categorizing them. Figure out where the information belongs, and what the label is. Why are you putting this content on the site? (If it’s because you’re afraid to be the one who gets rid of it, get rid of it!) Who will be looking for this content, or whom do you want to entice to look at it?
Suppose you’ve filed and labeled almost everything, but the difficult leftovers include a page of your executives’ bios, some testimonials from customers, and a description of your company’s culture. Before you throw those together on an About page, try some other solutions.
For example, you could put the bios on a Leadership page, and the description of company culture in your careers section. Or you could combine those two items into a Who We Are page. Then you could pair the customer testimonials with the products or services they recommend. Without even having to invent something new or unusual, you’ve now put those items where they’ll do some work for you.
Oh, er, yes, this blog does have an About page. But I’ve already convinced my colleagues to give that page a better name and a clearer mission in the next redesign!
Tags: About pages, User Experience, UXD
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