The major problem with most "About Us" pages is the name and the content of the link. Nobody gives a rats about you the website owner, they only care about themselves. About us is such an arrogant title.

We encourage all our clients to eliminate their "About Us" pages, or at least give them a different title. We recommend an "About You" page on which the website owner demonstrates how they can help the potential customer.

WIIFM - What's In It For Me is all the punters care about.

In the current web vernacular, an "About Us" page is sooo web 1.0.

ok - so what should we change the name of the gooruze  "about us" page to ?......

I totally disagree, Malcolm. I frequently browse the about us pages and would never recommend that a client eliminate one.
"...an "About You" page on which the website owner demonstrates how they can help the potential customer"? So yet another page on which the company is advertising to me. Sorry, but if the rest of their website doesn't convince me to hire them/buy from them/recommend them/ whatever the about us page is not going to be the tipping point. As far as it being sooo web 1.0, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's value in web 1.0 ideas even as we embrace new standards. Leave the about us page alone!

OK, so just leave the "Us" out of the page title and navigation menu label.

People do want to know "about" the business whose website they're reading - and they want to know "about how" the business can help them.

An "About" or "Profile" page is a convention, like "Home" and "Contact". I suspect that the label itself isn't as important as the content that people see when they go to the page.

I changed the long title (and hence headline) on my About page to "It's really about you" for a while. After a couple of weeks I decided that was just a bit too wanky and changed it back to good old "About".  Hopefully the copy on the page communicates the right messsage.

Couldn't have said it better than what Vanessa said. And as JamesBill says, "About Us" is a convention. For the sake of usability, I'd be hesitant to throw out a title that just about everyone is familiar with, comfortable with, and knows what will be found when they click. I'm not sure I'd want to click on an "About You" link. Sounds a bit creepy. :-)

I agree on the "About Us" convention.  I would love to shake it as well, but it took nearly a generation to banish "hit any key" (I was especially ticked at the right CTRL key and walloped it a hard one...) and similar jargon that slips into the lexicon.  And speaking of lexicon, did you see Merriam-Webster's linkbait when they announced today that "w00t" is the word of the year?  Brilliant move.

Back to "About Us".  How many of us still keep "Site Map" in the footer or at the end of top or side navigation?  If your site is 100% Flash and navigated by clicking on a map (I have a client who uses a map for site selection), sure a map is nice.  Otherwise, a map is just "More Headings We Couldn't Fit In The Nav Bar, But Want You To Drill Through".  It's how we thought about the architecture, starting with the root and building out.  Wouldn't a really good site search be better than a "Site Map"?

As for this particular company intro (and no, I'm suggesting "Company Intro" replace "About Us"), I kind of giggled at the notion of a rant as the justification.  I almost thought that the screed could be boiled down to a slogan under their logo that said something like, "Because You Don't Have To Be A Princess To Need Great Bridal Resources".  That's not the right phrase either, but gets there.

Anyway, I'm glad Matt brought the page out because it sparked a great discussion (great, spending Tuesday night thinking about "About Us" pages...) and I hope we all share anything really unique that is good or bad as we travel the web.  That said, Matt, I have to admit that I skimmed it after suffering MEGO syndrome and had to force myself to go back and read each word.  Maybe I want more than a phone number like Dan suggested, but I'm not sure they needed an essay.  Two tight paragraphs in an easy-to-read treatment would have done the trick, and they still could have been snarky.

A great article and a great way of delineating what it takes to write a good "about us" page. Personally I trust organisations that can 'write' well. It says they are educated, it says they are considered and to me it communicates a 'service driven' culture.

all i really care about is seeing an 800# and an email address.

Wouldn't you click on a CONTACT page for that, danlondon?

Sorry, I think that About Us page is plain boring. Too long. Too wordy. Maybe I'm just not interested because I'm not in the target market. But they would have held my attention longer if they'd written about 80% less.

considering they created such a unique and compelling "our vow" page - i wonder why they didn't link to it from the homepage (or did i miss it)....

not a fan of text heavy "about us" pages (or any page for that matter) ...If you can't write such engaging copy (at least indiebride enticed me to read on...) - it's important that site owners make sure you make their "about us" pages easy to read....at the end of the day it's selling the virtues of your site or business.

Very nice Matt, those are great suggestions.