The ‘About Us’ page—just about every single dance studio website has one -or they should anyway…. The ‘About Us’ page is where your parents, students, and prospective students learn you and your studio. If you want to convert those visitors to give you a call, consider you studio, and/or give your current students and parents a deeper appreciation of what your site does & what your studio is about, you NEED a well written ‘About Us’ page.

The Mission of the ‘About Us’ Page

The ‘About Us’ page is the section of your dance studio site where people go to find out about not only the site they’re on but also the studio they’re reading about or considering. I mean they’re on your page already so they must be a little interested, right? I mean, they *may* be there for another reason but the objective is the same: inform them why they are on the site and why they should consider your studio.

Who Reads ‘About Us’ Page Anyway?

You really need to define the people you’re writing your ‘About Us’ page for. It helps you write more stuff that’s relevant to the students you’re trying to attract. Here’s three common types of of ‘About Us’ page readers:

• Group 1: First Time Visitors
  This group of folks heard about your studio from a friend, stumbled upon one of your dance site through typing something in the search engine or social media service aka Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. They liked it or you enough to go ahead and decide if they should keep coming back.
  In this scenario, your studio ‘About Us’ page is an opportunity to convert a visitor to a phone call and hopefully student.
• Group 2: Your Students or Parents
  Your ‘regulars’, parents and current students, sometimes want to know more about the your studio than what they learned through word of mouth at the studio, in class or just over hearing stuff in the halls or lobby. Now, the ‘About Us’ page should give them reasons to keep coming back, tell their friends, have a greater appreciation of your studio, and generally just make you more “cool” in their eyes so they’ll start telling everyone about you.
• Group 3: People Who Want to Work with You
  These people are types like advertisers who want to sell you stuff (merchantCircle.com, Yelp.com, YellowPages, etc), other site owners in the dance niche or small business owners in your area, dance teachers who want a job, and (hopefully) researchers putting together a feature about you in their blog post, interview, local newspaper or school paper.
  This group of people are generally interested in two things: facts and your history.

All three groups have one thing in common: they’re basically checking you out, checking out your dance studio site.  Your ‘About Us’ page gives them what they want about your or it doesn’t. Make it good and it’ll help grow your studio.

How do I make a “good” ‘About Us’ page? Glad you asked! Let’s start with the basics:

The Basics of a Dance Studio ‘About Us’ Page:

In case you didnt’ go to journalism school, start with the “Five Ws“:

Who are you?
What do you do? Or, what does your studio specialize in as far as dance goes?
When did you start the studio?
Where are you located?
How are you accomplishing what you claim to do? ie are you winning competitions, teaching kids self confidence, giving people a new sense of self, etc
Don’t get all freaked out on these things. They’re just meant to be a guide. A simple 1-2 paragraph summary at the top of your webpage gives your web browsers the quick overview they’re looking for. Don’t burden them right off with a big block of intimidating text they have to wade through. Just keep it simple.

Then, after you have that summary of sorts, then go ahead and get into a little more detail below that. Get into a story of why you started, why you started dance, why you started teaching dance, what keeps you going all this time, and stuff like that. Not everyone will read it but the people who do will become your biggest fans. It allows them to really bond with you on a deeper level.

Oh, and here’s a trick to really serve your parents and/or potential students….

There are some studies about how people read stuff on the web and it’s a little different than just plain ole print stuff. The basic idea is they have very little patience. So, if you put all the most important stuff first, it works best.

So, put your your 1-2 sentence summary at the top. That way, the people who are ADD, out of patience, time, or both will get what you are and what you’re about right away. Usually these are the Group 1 folks above. Then, the other two groups, Group 2 and Group 3, will want more info and *that’s* what you’re giving them with the more explanatory paragraphs.

If you’re looking to upgrade your website to a web system that draws in new students, be sure to check out my dance web design system.