Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#2I'm a one man startup.
My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own.
---OR---
Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry, we build this tool to help our clients… etc
please let me know what do you prefer.
Thanks!
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#3I'm a one man startup. My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own. ---OR--- Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry, we build this tool to help our clients… etc please let me know what do you prefer. Thanks…
I'd love to see what the fine folks of Hacker News think about this.
Since I most work alone, I've hit upon the same dilemma several times. Unfortunately, I didn't track my effectiveness when I used one or the other approach so I don't have any hard data to contribute :-(
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#4I'm a one man startup. My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own. ---OR--- Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry, we build this tool to help our clients… etc please let me know what do you prefer. Thanks…
I prefer the former myself, but I would guess a lot of people would have more trust and faith in the latter.
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#5I think you can go either way. Since your product seems to be targeted toward enterprise, one could argue that you want to sound more professional.
However, in my experience the About page is seen by about 5% of your users. So to say things clearly: it doesn't matter.
PS: I don't particularly like your company version. I'd still make it personal, but sounding like a company: "XYZ was started by John Foo...". So it's pro, and personal.
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#6I'm a one man startup. My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own. ---OR--- Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry, we build this tool to help our clients… etc please let me know what do you prefer. Thanks…
I'd preffer the first one, you are a startup so your company won't have 4 years of experience in the industry, you have. Also clients will figure out that you are a one man startup anyway.
Jason Cohen writes exactly about this question in http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-li...
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#7I think you can go either way. Since your product seems to be targeted toward enterprise, one could argue that you want to sound more professional. However, in my experience the About page is seen by about 5% of your users. So to say things clearly: it doesn't matter. PS: I don't particularly like your company version. I'd still make it personal, but sounding like a company: "XYZ was started by John Foo...". So it's…
1. The product is targeted towards small website owners that depend on it. (ecommerce, services that charge money)
2. When the product is finished I plan to add a payment plan for some additional features. People won’t read the about page even when they want to pay for the service?
3. Yes, your pro and personal is a very good suggestion … thanks!
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#8Personally, I'd leave the about page as is; but I'd definitively change the main page to impersonal discourse.
"tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but there is a lot of room for improvements and I’m working on them." Would become (something like, I'm not a native speaker): "tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but there is a lot of room for improvements which are being actively developed"
" The app has some unique monitoring features, but it's far from where I want it to be." Would become something similar to: "The app has some unique monitoring features, but it's far from finished"
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#9Among academics, the convention is to use "we" when writing papers irregardless of the number of authors. It's half custom and half a matter of maintaining professional distance.
Use "we" even if everyone can see that it's a single-author paper. It communicates that it is a company and not just your personal services, which is especially important if it's just your services for now. You can still come back and talk about the exciting thing you're personally working on as a founder.
In either case, pick the singular or the plural and stick with it. Mixing "I" and "our" like you currently are is a matter of grammar rather than style.
Re: Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page?
#10It's definitely a good question. You need to consider the pros and cons and decide for yourself.
If you present it as a company, people will be much harsher with their criticism and expectations. If you present it as a person (yourself) people will be more lenient, but at a cost: they could question the longevity of the service; trust, support capacity etc. More important for enterprise customers though, imo.
On the other hand, there is a sense of wanting to help the 'little guy' when I read your about page. Like, if I was on the fence I could be compelled by the fact that it was done by a solo entrepreneur, and want to try it out of support. But, that's probably because I am in the same boat :)
Finally, you could take the middle road and personalise the about page from the perspective of ceo / founder of the company.