“About Us” Evaluation: Groupon Gets a B+

Groupon, established in November 2008, harnesses the power of social media to offer customers substantial discounts on food, entertainment, shopping, and services in 45 countries. The company employs over 10,000 people in its Chicago headquarters and has offices in an increasing number of locations around the world. Groupon’s About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: B+

Products/Services: A

The About Us page is buried at the foot of the home page, under the Company menu. That’s a pity, because it’s well written and intelligibly organized, moving from the service Groupon provides to its operating principles and then its origin.

Accessibility: A

If you’re asking customers to shell out money for a service to be provided by a third party, at an indefinite future time, you’d better be sure they trust your customer service. We like the fact that when Groupon mentions their dedication to customer satisfaction on the About Us page, their email address and a telephone number are right there in the text.

The Get Help section of the footer offers a Customer Support page with an online form, online support, an email address, and a telephone number with the hours that staff are available. One would expect a mailing address for corporate headquarters--but then, no one without a computer is ever going to use Groupon.

Personality: C

The final section of the About Us page, headed “Our People,” states, “Groupon’s people are our most valuable asset. Everything about Groupon is a reflection of the interests and ethics of its wonderful staff.”

And that’s all it says. Why make a statement so sweeping, and then not elaborate?

The photo under this heading--the only one on the About Us page--shows dozens of people in choir robes on a stage. The caption states that this is the Groupon staff singing at the Chicago Lyric Opera. We suspected this might be a joke, like the “Groupon Says” feature at the lower left of the home page. But there they are on YouTube, belting out Bach. (Don’t leave your day jobs, guys.)

At minimum, we’d like to see a link here to the team that founded and still runs the company. The link to them is buried under Company / Investor Relations / Corporate Governance / Management. These bios could use some tweaking, to make them more closely related to the current positions of the executives: see AirBNB’s site, for example.

TAKEAWAY

Groupon gets almost everything right, but more personality--a sense of who runs the company and what the employees’ attitude is--would improve the About Us page.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Contact us if you’d like to have your site evaluated—there’s no charge and no obligation.

Today’s example was chosen at random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.