Best Practices

The About Page. Yes, we’re still talking about it!

A dealer called me to ask what I thought of his new website the other day, and it looked like he only spent time working on his home page. The rest of the site was canned.  You guessed it, the most obviously canned page….the About Page.

Why would you stick to the templated About page when you know everything about yourself?  Don’t you sell yourself every day?  Sell yourself, the house, and then the product…right???


about-us-pageIf you’ve been following DealerRefresh for any amount of time, I think you may have figured out that my articles are always inspired.  After 5 Billion years of the Internet (that’s like 10 minutes) we’re still not paying attention to the About page, so let’s make a strategy for it.

There are 3 core things you should have on your About Page:

1.  Who you are

What makes you different?  What makes you the best dealership to work with?  Do you have a value-added program?  Sell yourself!

2.  What can I do for you

What services do you offer.  It might be obvious to you that you sell Toyota’s, but the obvious to you isn’t always the obvious to the customer.  Do you service them?  Can you provide dent removal services.  I think you get the idea.

3.  How can you contact me

I’m sure you have a link to your address, a fancy directions creator, your phone number(s), your store hours, and all that kind of stuff.  Make sure it is on your About Page!

How about some other things…

4.  A few testimonials

If you’re a certified DealerRater Dealership you can feed your last 10 DealerRater reviews right in.  Get your site host to help you because most don’t allow dealers to input their own JAVA.

5.  A video

It is true, the average American is reading less and watching more.  If you really want to get your message across, add a video.

6.  Link to your other pages

If you have a YouTube Channel, a facebook fan page, blog, or a twitter account link to it!

7.  Optimize it!

This could be an entire posting on its own.  Make sure your page is geographically targeted to your marketplace.  Create an idented listing of your “About Page” on Google.

Make sure your name is part of your keywords on your Home Page and also on your About Page, and create links between the two pages.  You do this simply by typing out “About Us”, “About Me”, or whatever you want to call your About Page on your home page and then turn it into a link to your actual About Page.  That’s really all there is to it, and Google will (hopefully) do the rest of the work.

More resources on how to setup your About Me Page.

Who knew an argument with Jeff Kershner, in 2005, would lead to Alex becoming a partner with him on DealerRefresh. Where will the next argument take ...
S
Great article. I look at the About Us page as the best way to let everyone know what you are about both on a business and a personal level. If your dealership is sponsoring events, that should be on there. I agree that social network pages should be on that page as well. I also think that reviews from DealerRater need to be on there. It is a great opportunity to include videos of testimonials and even a letter from the Owner or GM. It is the best opportunity to add personality to the dealership.
J
You nailed it Alex. I think everyone gets so focused on "Selling Cars" that they forget the basics like what makes you different and why they should buy from you.
The best About Us page: http://www.thefordstory.com
Thanks for bringing this much overlooked page on a dealers website back to light. I would take a guess and say over 80% of dealers have not applied your listed steps for optimizing their About Us page.

I'll admit that since taking on a new vendor for our sites, we have not optimized the About Us pages. It's been on the To Do list but with a 2% visitor rate on average across all my dealer sites, the urgency has not been there. Some might say with only a 2% visitor rate, why worry about it? I'll take the opportunity to engage that 2% .. If someone clicks on your About Us page..there is a reason they did so.
A
Seth Godin had his own article on the About Page: <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/09/five-rules-for-your-about-page.html" rel="nofollow">http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/09/f...</a> ...just wanted to add it here.
A