How to Write an About Me Section That Converts (New Designs Included)

Can you perfectly summarize yourself, your skills and your businesses’ mission in just a few sentences?

That’s basically the task you're faced with when you get to that little ‘About Me’ section on your website.

'Write about yourself. Make sure you highlight all your achievements...but don’t sound arrogant. But at the same time don’t sell yourself short. Oh and make sure you add some personality…'

And then there’s putting it all together so it fits your branding and looks professional enough to be trusted.

It’s safe to say crafting a bio for your site is not as easy as it sounds. Unfortunately, it’s also an essential element for conversions.

In this article we’re going to take you through a fool proof, step-by-step method to crafting a killer biography section. You’ll learn how to come up with your bio text, how to edit your bio for maximum potency, and how to present it all in a professional and trustworthy fashion. 

First let’s start off by clarifying what we mean by a biography section. We’re not talking about the about page (although this is another essential element of a successful website).

The bio section is a small blurb found on certain pages that lets a visitor know who you are and why they should trust you and your content / product / offer / etc.

An example of a bio section within a page, taken from our Chic template set.

A well polished bio section is useful for establishing:

•  Authority
•  Brand
•  Likeability
•  Context for the visitor

Because of its positive impact on conversions, a bio section should be included on any page that requires authority and trust. This includes sales pages, your homepage and E-course pages.

As for posts, WordPress automatically includes a pre-formatted 'About the Author' box at the bottom of your article. We'll show you how to add your new bio paragraph to this box later in the article.

Your bio section is short, so it needs to be potent.

We’ve created a simple step-by-step process to help you craft a sale clinching bio section. 

Phase one is about creating the initial content for your bio. Phase two is about improving it 

If you have a personal story that got you into this business or industry, share at least a teaser to it here. You can explain it in full within your About Page.

This helps the reader connect, and pulls on those emotional heart strings. A reader is much more likely to be invested in you and your brand if you can elicit emotions in them.

Write one to two sentences on this.

Here is where you want to provide some context for your visitors.

Who are you? Why should they listen to you? Draft one to two sentences answering these questions.

Include your most impressive qualifications and / or awards (provided they’re relevant to the topic of your website).

This is your opportunity to really resonate with your audience and cultivate brand likeability.

Ask yourself:

• What merit am I bringing to the world with my website, product or service?
• What is my brand mission?
• What are the defining values of my brand?

If you don’t have defining values for you brand, try this exercise:

Now that you have the building blocks, you can put it all together.

Create a paragraph out of all your sentences, combining sentences together where you can.

Now it’s time to run your paragraph through the wringer for a bit of fine-tuning…

Is your bio clear and concise? Have you eliminated all fluff and filler words? Are you using any Jargon?

In Sarah's Example

‘Canine Cognitive Gender Oriented Biases’ means nothing to the visitor. What Sarah really specialized in was ‘how to deal with dogs that react negatively towards males.’

What emotions are you targeting? Does the reader feel it? Make sure you speak like a human, using plain English. No one resonates emotionally with academic style writing.

In Sarah's Example

‘After realizing she was proficient at getting them to behave’ is too clinical. The whole story section could be improved by adding the emotions Sarah experienced growing up with dogs during childhood. 'Sarah was blessed to grow up surrounded by dogs, forming a strong connection to these four legged wonders that she could never shake.'

Speak in the first person. It’s much more relatable and helps the reader feel closer to you and your mission. Use you audience’s words and terms in your bio. You can pull these from any recent surveys, comments or testimonials you’ve gathered.

In Sarah's Example

‘Sarah grew up in…’ should be ‘I grew up in…’ and instead of using the word ‘dog’ repeatedly, she could mix it up with common terms like ‘man's best friend’ instead.

Position your bio in the audience’s perspective. What’s in it for them? Why should they care about you and your brand? Craft your bio using the word ‘you’ (referring to the reader) more than the word ‘I’.

In Sarah's Example

‘She believes in compassion, empowerment and determination, and her mission is to show that every dog is trainable’ should be ‘Your best friend should be trained with compassion and determination.'

Does it sound good when you read it out loud? Is it natural and conversational, or clunky and weird?

In Sarah's Example

‘her mission is to show that every dog is trainable’ can be far more casual - ‘My mission isn't just to train, it's to empower YOU to learn to control and connect with even the most unruly pooch (don’t worry, there’s no such thing as an untrainable dog 😉 ’

Now that you have your bio blurb, you’re going to have to present it well. Having a nicely designed bio section adds to your site's authority. Here’s how to ensure your bio section design and layout puts your best foot forward.

Yes, you absolutely need a picture in your biography section. Don’t be afraid to get creative with this one. Bright colors, props, action shots are all welcome.

Make sure your bio picture is the highest quality your budget allows for. This may mean hiring a professional photographer to take and edit the photos for you. If you don’t have the budget for that, get a photography student or a friend who's an amateur photographer to do the shoot for you. They’ll charge a lot less and may even do it for free since they need the practical experience.

Nothing builds trust like a face, your visitor needs to see yours, and see it clearly. Even if you're self-conscious of your appearance, or have a really cool scenery shot with a really tiny you in it, your best choice is still a front on close up shot of your face. 

While a big friendly smile can be huge boost for likeability, new research shows it might not be so effective at building trust.

"Broader smiles that tend to elicit more warmth seem to be more effective in promotional ads for a service that would carry less risk. But photos with a slight smile did better in marketing scenarios where services were higher risk, such as a medical procedure, legal representation or investment in a startup company.” ~ Science Daily Excerpt 

You’ll have to decide what’s most appropriate for your industry, and whether it’s more important for you to flip the warmth switch or the authority switch.

When choosing a picture, have your core values handy. Ask yourself of each possible picture choice - does this picture express and fit with my core values? Does it express the right amount of warmth vs. authority?

If you’re doing a dedicated photo shoot, take these core values along with you and keep them in mind when taking your shots.

If you’re unsure, send your pictures and list of values to friends and ask them to choose the picture that matches those core values the best. These sorts of decisions are always easier to make with outside eyes.

Whether of not you include links to your social networks depends on what your goal is.

If you are the brand then yes! Add social links. However, if the website is not related to you as an authority or influencer, then links to your personal social networks are not relevant.

If the bio is on your home or blog page and you’re trying to build up your following, then it’s a good idea to add those links to your social networks.

For bios on sales or landing pages, it’s not a good idea to add social links, because you don’t want to distract visitors away from the goal of your page.

There are plenty of ways to add links to your social networks. One of the simplest methods is to add an icon element: 

So you’ve hooked them in with your blurb, well done. Now give the visitors that want to continue their journey with you a place to go.

Link to your About page so visitors can get more information on you, the website and brand.

Here’s a full tutorial on how to put together your entire about page.

Again, this is something that you only want to do on pages without a specific conversion goal. Never distract visitors away from conversions with your About page.

If you have Thrive Architect, a simple way to add your finished bio section to your sales and landing pages is to save your finished design as a content template. Once saved, you can load the customized design onto any post or page you're editing with Thrive Architect.

To help with this process, we've created a collection of stylish bio section designs for you to choose from:

The new ‘Bio box’ designs are available in our content templates cloud.

To access these designs, just add a Styled box element to any post or page. Then select one of the ‘Bio Box’ designs. From here you can add your new blurb, picture and name, then save the customized design into your own content templates library.

Now you can drag and drop your completed bio box into any post or page.

Now you’ve got an awesome bio paragraph and picture, you can easily add it to the author section of your post.

The design of your post author box depends on which theme you're using.

Scroll down to the About Yourself section and add your new bio to the Biographical Information input.

Just under that, there’s a Profile Picture section. You’ll need to create a Gravatar, which is a globally recognized avatar (basically the picture that will appear by your name when you comment on WordPress websites). Just follow the prompts on the Gravatar site to create your own.

Make sure to click the Update Profile button down at the bottom of the Your Profile options to save your changes.

Whether or not the author bio is showing underneath your posts is a theme option.

This whole exercise should take you under an hour to complete, so what are you waiting for? It’s time to start crafting an authority building bio section for yourself right now.

Post the bio you came up with below! We’d love to read yours (and maybe even give a little constructive feedback) ;-).