Guest post by Ofer Tirosh and M.E. Simpson, both work for the professional translation company, Tomedes.com. Ofer, founder and CEO and M.E Simpson, content mgr. love co-writing insightful content based on their mutual work.
As a translation company, we maintain and market a premium service image, targeted primarily at potential B2B clients. These kinds of potential clients typically take more time examining our website, compared to say, a product website for cellulite-banishing cream. It’s not so much our job to create landing pages to ads that jump off the page and grab someone by the face. B2B service websites like Tomedes have to be a bit more subtle, somewhat graceful, and constantly evolving. No impulse ads that vibrate and dance across your screen while flashing that neon green link begging you to “click here now” - will ever take you to www.tomedes.com .
As for more subdued SEO content, landing pages, and other non-caffeinated tools for increasing traffic and our conversion rates – sure, we get on board with that stuff. Here’s the thing: in doing so, we found an additional source of CRO (conversion rate optimization). What we’re about to say may cause you to think, where do these weirdos come from? Or, you may appreciate our perspective on possibilities for increasing conversion rates, which may be sort of outside the traditional outlined methods of online marketing experts. This is because the source that led to a 13% increased conversion rate for us – overnight – is one of the least likely suspects: the About Us page.
As a professional translation company and a B2B service, we offer something that is already needed – the way a rock band needs decent music equipment in order to perform. Part of our job as the communications and marketing department for Tomedes, is to attract B2B traffic and get them to see why Tomedes is better than the competition – like Gibson or Fender do for rock bands, musicians, and guitar students. When a musician weighs his options for a new guitar, he examines various models, plays several favorites, checks the price tags, and may want to know what other famous guitarists use this brand and model. In the same way, potential business clients and the majority of our site traffic typically do not make impulsive decisions about our service.
Any given translation service could affect a client’s reputation or interaction with their foreign language markets, or anyone else. They want to check our rates; see what kinds of clients we have, and look around – briefly. Still, while they may be there more than 30 seconds on average, they don’t enter our site to do some leisurely reading with their morning coffee, or spend all day checking facts in every single one of our blogs and articles. So what one page will best provide an overall feel for our company, and some necessary info about our translation service? Why, our About Us page, of course. When you really think about it, it makes sense. The About Us page probably divulges more than the content writer is aware of, in regards to the quality and caliber of a service, product, or company.
Anyway, our conversion rates weren’t dragging in the mud or anything, so we didn’t set out to build a marketing campaign of intensive conversion rate optimization, specifically. At the same time, no one is shouting the name of Tomedes from any treetops – not yet, anyway. We do focus a lot of energy on actively pursuing tools and methods for increasing traffic, conversion rates, SERP rank and SEO, yadda, yadda – you all know the deal.
A few months of Google Analytics data all revealed the same thing: our About Us page was kind of lame. More so than other pages on average, traffic was hitting that hateful X button, only a few moments after arrival. Obviously we needed a revision, asap – a web page revision that enticed our potential business customers to come have a look around and stay awhile…and buy something.
When you consider our old About Us page, it’s not hard to see why a disproportionate amount of traffic was basically telling us, dude, this sucks. Later. Here’s the intro from the old one:
“We provide high quality translations between almost every language combination. Our clients have ranged between big and small businesses, government agencies and organization, educational institutions, and individuals as well. We have had the experience of working with numerous organizations and individuals across the world, translating financial, marketing, technical, and legal documents in a wide variety of languages…”
Yeah, yawn. We know.
There are a lot of “problems” with this old intro. But, one of the major flaws is that it doesn’t reveal anything “about us.” It blandly states what any number of generic translation services can, or do, provide. It doesn’t tell clients who we are as a company, where we come from, or what exactly we translate. “Almost every language combination” is either grossly vague, or grossly overstated. No translation service can provide translations for every language combination – there thousands upon thousands of them.
So, check out the intro for the new and improved Tomedes “About Us” make-over:
“We are Perfectionists. Work-a-holics. Passionate Linguists and Personable Personnel. We are Believers in cross-cultural, cross-lingual communication between all peoples sharing this world. We are Smart, Human Translations.”
Kind of snappy, eh? Even if you aren’t impressed by it, it’s unarguably better than the old version, confirmed by the 13% conversion rate increase that happened immediately, as a direct result of the revision. It’s true. We checked.
This introduction, or the “Who” section of our new About Us page, is much more attention-grabbing. The words themselves are more colorful and dynamic. Well written About Us pages communicate passion for the work, show real people, give specific company history or details, and allow the company’s personality to color all of it. No empty droning on and on about why we’re a superior translation service – even though we happen to think so. But, rather than trying to do so in a boring essay format that feels like an old flat tire, the About Us revision brightly, candidly illustrates Tomedes as a premium quality translation service, through a series of categories that ask the most basic questions. By structuring the content into Who, Why, How, What, and Where sections, the content is streamlined into sleeker, smoother, prettier paragraphs with substance.
We got rid of the fluff, the over-statements and the cliché “selling” talk, and transformed our About Us into honest, useful information. Guess what? Honesty has worked far better than blowing hot air up our own rear ends, so to speak. If you want to check out the entire revision, you’ll find it here: http://www.tomedes.com/aboutUs.php
What we’re suggesting, is that if this works for an About Us page, chances are it will work for any page that is not already thought to directly affect conversion rates or website traffic – your Help page, FAQs page, Contact page, etc. Take a look at your traffic and site analytics. If there are one or more pages that frequently scare people away more than the others – improve them. Remove the “boring.” Give them style and character. You may be surprised at how far a great personality can go.
Related posts:
I have filled in my About Me pages but will now have to revisit and revise
I did know that folks do look at it from my Google Analytics statistics but maybe there’s still work to be done.
Nice post, thanks,
Martin
Wow. This article is great. I think this is the first time I’ve actually seen marketing information that focused on the about me page. I’ve always pretty much thought the “About” page was just a standard page that you must have but no one looks at.
Definitely will have to rethink and revisit.
Great Stuff! Thanks!