I personally always check out the about page first, basically because I want to get to know who’s behind the words I’m reading, also a photo is always nice, that way if your users see a photo they can connect to your content even more.

The about page itself is more about the content than the visual design, so try to write it well, or ideally give the job to someone competent if writing is not your thing. At least, have someone proof-read it and check for typos and/or grammatical errors as those are a real turn-off for visitors, not to mention that it’s harder to read badly formed text.

Proper typographic formatting is also important, make an effort and learn the basics about interpunction such as:

• putting spaces after full stops and commas, but not before
• acknowledge differences between em and en dashes, and hyphens and when to use them respectively
• avoiding double spaces between sentences
• using an ellipsis instead of three consecutive dots
• etc.

When writing your about page — remember — it’s not an essay, it’s not your cover letter or your biography, perhaps the most relevant term would be colophon. The most important thing is to keep it concise and use appropriate language that’s understandable even by non-native speakers.

A well written about page is skimmable — it is really important that your visitors can quickly scan your about page, and see if something interests them, because people mostly just glance at text on the Web, they don’t really read the content of the pages they visit but scan the page until something catches their attention — again, a photo goes a long way here as it provides that personal touch.

As you can see, an about page is practically the doorway to your site to a potentially large number of users, and it is very important to execute it well. Your users will appreciate it, and you’ll certainly be happy with the results.