The About Us page for Clarks Originals (“Our Story”) is here.
OVERALL GRADE: D
Via the Collection menu on the top navigation bar, we know
that Clarks offers a couple dozen styles -- but nothing on the Our Story page indicates that
Clarks produces more than the five styles featured there. We are befuddled. This
slice of business history (dare we say it?) sets off on the wrong foot.
Products/Services: D
Clark’s Our
Story is one of the most aggravatingly cute About Us pages we've ever seen.
The cursor turns into a big black dot that says “Click.” Clicking it shows us a
pull-down menu of 7 options (Introduction, 5 shoe styles, Shoe Making). Click
any option and we progress, jerkily, along a trail of shoelaces to a paragraph
so short (100 words or so) that reading it takes almost the same amount of time
as arriving there did. A tremendous amount of space and time are wasted on this
page. Remember our Commandment
Five of About Us pages: respect your readers’ attention spans. In this
case, make the story worth the wait – or shorten the wait. And make it a story.
Why not fill some of the empty space on the Our Story page
with images that would make us want Clarks shoes on our feet? The famous crepe rubber
sole, the tree that’s the source of it, the Harris tweed used in the shoes ...
The Collection pages (here,
for example) have black-and-white images that look archival. These images ought
to also appear on the page devoted to the company’s corporate history, where
they would visually reinforce a company history that’s approaching the
two-century mark.
Personality: E
From the Our Story page, we don’t get any sense of the
personality behind the company. Who was the founder? When and where and why?
What’s the policy behind limiting shoes to a few timeless styles, and making
them the same way they’ve been made for ... Well, we don’t know for how many
years.
Actually, we do know--but only from Wikipedia. The fact that
we learn far more of Clarks’ business history from Wikipedia than from the
company’s own site is a black mark against Clarks.
Accessibility: C
The company’s mailing address is at the foot of the Our Story page. Contact
information is via the Feedback
Form, which includes a phone number, snail-mail address, and the ubiquitous
online contact form. This is not exceptional, but it’s adequate.
TAKEAWAY
The About Us page should give an overview of your company. By
all means brag about your bestsellers, but if you offer other items, give your
visitors a chance to learn about them, too.
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?). To talk about your About Us
page, contact us!
Today’s example was chosen at random;
CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.
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