

 Should I present myself as a person or as a company in the about page? - racoder
http://tagbeep.com/about.php

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jason_tko
This all depends on your target customer.

Put yourself in their shoes, and try to do your best to write what would make
them feel comfortable and good about your product for long enough for them to
get out their credit card.

Regardless of the size of your company though, it's good to keep in mind that
some people are going to be very sensitive to stability when making purchasing
decisions, especially if they've been burned in the past by a service that
suddenly stopped working. The people who don't care about this, won't care
anyway, so for them it doesn't matter what you write.

So I'd be erring on the side of talking about stability, even if you are a one
man shop. Especially if your product is still in the early stages and lacking
the polish of more mature products.

So perhaps instead of: "After working for 4 years as a server administrator
for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of trouble with
existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own."

Maybe something like: "TagBeep was developed in response to a gap in the
market for a professional yet simple tool to track website uptime.

Our years of experience in server administration for medium to large sized
websites provided us with unique insight into designing a powerful application
that takes 5 minutes to set up, and helps you keep your sites up and running
24 hours a day."

Also, while you're clearing in active development and doing a lot to improve
your product, I'd hesitate before broadcasting this process that to a small
business owner who might not be familiar with the development process, and who
is in the decision making phase while looking at your About page. I'd be
moving the "Whats Next?" stuff to a dev blog hosted on tagbeep.com/blog.

~~~
racoder
Your comment has some very good advice. I realized now that most of the
marketing stuff that I’ve written was made with the assumption that the user
is like me. I like reading about the developing process of an app… that’s why
I thought it is important to broadcast that. I will try to read more about
marketing and about how to know your clients and market. Thanks for your time.

------
racoder
I'm a one man startup.

My about page should be personal like: After working for 4 years as a server
administrator for some medium to large websites and after having a lot of
trouble with existing monitoring solutions I decided to build my own.

\---OR---

Like a company: With our 4 year experience in the server management industry,
we build this tool to help our clients… etc

please let me know what do you prefer.

Thanks!

~~~
imeikas
I'd preffer the first one, you are a startup so your company won't have 4
years of experience in the industry, you have. Also clients will figure out
that you are a one man startup anyway.

Jason Cohen writes exactly about this question in
[http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-
li...](http://blog.asmartbear.com/youre-a-little-company-now-act-like-
one.html)

~~~
racoder
the short summary of the article: "Be human. Stop hiding. Be yourself." is a
good suggestion

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biot
Both! Describe the company: "tagbeep's goal is to help administrators...".
Then follow it up with a message from "Your Name, Founder": "After working for
four years as an administrator, I started this company to...".

That way, the about page projects a professional corporate image while keeping
the personal touch. A bit like how GoDaddy is more than just Bob Parsons but
he's the face of the company in some ways.

------
jmitcheson
It's definitely a good question. You need to consider the pros and cons and
decide for yourself.

If you present it as a company, people will be much harsher with their
criticism and expectations. If you present it as a person (yourself) people
will be more lenient, but at a cost: they could question the longevity of the
service; trust, support capacity etc. More important for enterprise customers
though, imo.

On the other hand, there is a sense of wanting to help the 'little guy' when I
read your about page. Like, if I was on the fence I could be compelled by the
fact that it was done by a solo entrepreneur, and want to try it out of
support. But, that's probably because I am in the same boat :)

Finally, you could take the middle road and personalise the about page from
the perspective of ceo / founder of the company.

~~~
racoder
I don't think I'll have enterprise customers, my target market is formed by
small sites that have to be online (eCommerce and services that ask money). So
i'm left with the middle path or personal.

Thanks for your suggestions!

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patio11
3 seconds of thinking about this is at least 2 seconds where you could have
been doing something which actually matters but were not.

It is the _canonical_ question asked to avoid actually making or selling stuff
on the Business of Software forums.

~~~
racoder
I know what you’re saying but I really needed some help on this part of the
project. For example when I was listing my site in web app directories or in
the chrome web store I always tried to talk about my service in a very
personal way (that made it look like a hobby) but after getting a lot of
feedback here I will talk about the service in a professional way and about
the company and plans in a personal way.

The feedback from this thread is amazing, thanks to all!

------
glimcat
Among academics, the convention is to use "we" when writing papers
irregardless of the number of authors. It's half custom and half a matter of
maintaining professional distance.

Use "we" even if everyone can see that it's a single-author paper. It
communicates that it is a company and not just your personal services, which
is especially important if it's just your services for now. You can still come
back and talk about the exciting thing you're personally working on as a
founder.

In either case, pick the singular or the plural and stick with it. Mixing "I"
and "our" like you currently are is a matter of grammar rather than style.

~~~
icebraining
>irregardless

I was crucified on /. when I wrote that :)

~~~
glimcat
Call it revenge on my elementary school English teacher for complaining about
"ain't." ;)

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icebraining
Personally, I'd leave the about page as is; but I'd definitively change the
main page to impersonal discourse.

"tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but there is a lot of room
for improvements and I’m working on them." Would become (something like, I'm
not a native speaker): "tagBeep has some unique and very useful features but
there is a lot of room for improvements which are being actively developed"

" The app has some unique monitoring features, but it's far from where I want
it to be." Would become something similar to: "The app has some unique
monitoring features, but it's far from finished"

~~~
racoder
When I've made that page the idea was to present myself as a person, as one
software developer working on a nice product.

A lot of people suggested a middle path... that is what I'm thinking to do now
but I will give it more time.

~~~
amirmc
The poster was suggesting that you use 'impersonal discourse' on other parts
of your site but can leave the about page as 'personal'

The rest of site should not be about you. It should be about the product.
Otherwise it comes across like a hobby project (and I'm guessing you don't
want that).

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alain94040
I think you can go either way. Since your product seems to be targeted toward
enterprise, one could argue that you want to sound more professional.

However, in my experience the About page is seen by about 5% of your users. So
to say things clearly: it doesn't matter.

PS: I don't particularly like your company version. I'd still make it
personal, but sounding like a company: "XYZ was started by John Foo...". So
it's pro, and personal.

~~~
racoder
1\. The product is targeted towards small website owners that depend on it.
(ecommerce, services that charge money)

2\. When the product is finished I plan to add a payment plan for some
additional features. People won’t read the about page even when they want to
pay for the service?

3\. Yes, your pro and personal is a very good suggestion … thanks!

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gte910h
Both!

It's important you don't just say you're a person, because you'll piss off
some random person who doesn't understand you need to outsource some part of a
project you don't know how to do (who is angered you personally didn't do it).

