Presenting thorough analysis on the five main types of About us/me pages for web design blogs.
The following are the different types – 'The Large company type’, ‘The funny man type’, ‘Veterans’, ‘Minimalists’ and the ‘Timeliners’. Read and find out which category you fall in.
The websites given as example in the article are properly linked with their respective about pages. You are free to visit for a better experience.
The Large Web Company type
A classic example of a large web company is sitepronews or webpronews or even web design ledger (WDL). These websites’ ‘about page’ blares out loud, “You can try and ignore me, but I am WAY TOO big to be ignored.” The webpage starts with an ‘ignore-us’ type paragraph sans any links or large font headings, but then comes the blacksuit-sunglasses type language about the organization and its incorporation. All of this in a typical office like background in addition to a hefty contact information. But again there are exceptions of course, some of the companies do have a story to share, a tale to tell that too in a person to person language, don’t believe me, take a look at the ‘A list apart’ about page or sitepoint(close enough).
The Funny-man Type
You can even try the style adopted by coding horror, the ‘about page’ is written in simple first person peppered with small gimmicks using strike outs in some places. Needless to say it helps the visitor stick to the page and read it to the end. After the usual introduction with me and myself, the article takes the shape of a timeline about the author.
Though the about page must end here but, the page goes on and becomes a question and answer session. The author, Jeff Atwood then explains why he chose to blog, how he does blog and why does he give such weird names to his creations. As a whole the, complete page is beautified with photos and images of website and logos and of course a smart photo of the author. He did not forget the ‘contact us’ phrase and has disabled the comments section.
Do not be misled by the term funny. Funny in this context might not always mean something hilarious, but something which touches your heart and makes an emotional connection with the author. An example is smileycat.com,
The Veteran Type
This type of ‘About Page’ always works well with veterans, who have been in the business for quite some time before (take Amit Agrawal for example). They have many-a-times touched the levels of greatness. The page starts with a life-sized picture of the veteran blogger probably pictured with a professional photographer. Then the text starts with the qualifications of the blogger, where he’s from and what he did before blogging.
To pull the audience in the loyalty circle, this page brags (in a positive way) about the achievements of the author. The works or projects undertaken by the author (like some website tools programmed by the author) which will help the reader to develop a connection, so that a moment comes when the user thinks (Oh so he’s the creator of the tool, he’s so awesome). Obviously the last part will contain contact information along with a small social media widgets like Facebook like box or twitter feed. You might use some vector social media icons so that when the visitor clicks on it, he is taken to the author’s social media presence.
Some veterans also use a YouTube video on themselves. Which is no biggie for them as they’re the holy grail of their field but it can be used as a tool to inspire the amateur bloggers to either like the page’s Facebook page or twitter feeds or even better, subscribe to the blog’s feed itself.
Minimalists
Some about pages are minimalist, like take shailan’s for an example, the guy is an expert in wordpress plugins but the about page is nothing like its usual blog post. The page, prepped with links is simple and just informs the visitors about what it does before ending with a ‘contact me’ phrase. Taking henry’s example, though he has taken a lot of space on the about page with his oversized fonts and beautiful pictures of his creations, but still hasn’t given a lot of information about himself. Though there is a link to his complete portfolio in the about page but you do not expect the user to scroll up and down in frenzy looking for his portfolio. Another example is ‘tutorial Blog’.The Timeliners or The Timeline lovers
There are some people who love history, who love answering questions like how did this start? How did this come to life? They have been in the game for long but they’re not veterans. They rely on a timeline divided by years, months etc. to pronounce their achievements and milestones in their or their creation’s life. They’re the bubbly archivers who want to impress the readers by the sheer presence and many a times they succeed. For an example, you might want to take a look at chriscoyier’s about page. A very good idea, if you decide to go for it, would be to create a javascript based timeline which opens up in front of the user while hovering on it (use your imagination!!!). Another very unique type of about page is of 37signals. The website contains a mixture of timeliners and the funnyman type. It is a fun to read.
Can you find some type other than the given
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