Building your About page, blog articles, and Resource page
In Chapter 6, you'll set up an impactful About page for your website and create pages for blog articles and helpful resources.
You’ve created your website homepage, products, and sales pages, and you’re making excellent progress! Now we’ll add supplemental pages to your website like your About page, blog articles, and Resources page.
To create new pages in Podia, click the “Homepage” button in the top left corner and select “New page”.
How to build a memorable About page (5 essentials to include)
When a visitor lands on your About page, they're looking for answers to their questions and trying to determine whether or not you can solve their problems.
Here are some key elements your About page needs to have in order to deepen your connection with your visitor and make them more likely to take action.
As always, you can watch along with Ben below.
#1 Add a picture of yourself
Including a picture of your smiling face can help your visitors feel more connected to your brand or products. Whether your brand is professional and formal or playful and lighthearted, your profile photo should match your voice and personality.
#2 Include a greeting and introduction
Introduce yourself with your name, title, and value proposition. Your value proposition explains who you serve, what type of problem or struggle they have, and the desired outcome you can produce for them. Consider telling a story about your personal connection to your subject area.
#3 Share your qualifications and credentials
Once your visitor knows who you are and what you can do for them, build trust by sharing your qualifications and credentials. These could be anything from certifications to degrees, awards, or specific accomplishments that are relevant to your brand. When sharing, weave them into your story and share them organically as a part of your journey.
#4 Reveal something unique or interesting about yourself
There’s a popular saying that people buy from creators they know, like, and trust. Sharing something unique, interesting, or maybe even surprising humanizes us. It makes us more relatable.
#5 Close with a call to action or email opt-in
Wrap up your About page with a CTA for one of your primary offers or an invitation for people to join your email list. If someone is interested in learning more about your work, there’s a chance they’ll want to hear from you again in the future.
Ben has a great example of how an About page can look on his Song Study website:
You can learn more about how to write an effective About page in this post .
BUILD TOGETHER
I wanted to make a simple About page for Your Best Road Trip, so I opened a new page in the Podia website builder and started from the top.
First, I’ll use an image block to share my profile picture alongside my greeting and introduction.
(Note: On Image blocks, you have the option to add an ALT tag. An ALT tag is an image description designed for screen readers. Use this space to write a short description for every image on your website to make sure it’s accessible to all visitors.)
Next, I’ll use the Grid layout to add my qualifications and credentials.
To make them stand out, I’m going to center the text and add a background color in the “Design” tab.
After, I’ll include more text about how Your Best Road Trip can help visitors. I use bolding and bullet points to break up large chunks of text so it’s easier to skim. I’ll also add a button where people can get in touch if they have questions.
Finally, I added an email opt-in form to encourage visitors to join my newsletter. I used the Email form block and added a decorative image for visual interest. Then I added a background image like I did on the homepage for a cohesive look. Here’s how I styled the section in the “Design” tab if you’d like to replicate it.
Setting up blog posts and articles
Posting articles or blogs about topics in your niche is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, serve your audience, and attract new readers.
If I write an article about my go-to road trip playlist, for example, someone searching for road trip playlists on the internet might find my website. They might even buy my service or join my newsletter since they're already looking for content related to what I offer.
To create a blog post on your Podia website, create a fresh page and add your content using a text block. (Bonus points if you add creative visual elements like image blocks too!)
BUILD TOGETHER
I want to share three articles to attract visitors from search engines and educate my audience.
- A free 1-week Miami to New York road trip itinerary
- My go-to road trip playlist
- 10 tips for anyone planning a first-time road trip
To build each page, I’ll click the “Homepage” button in the top left corner and then select “New page”. This will open up a blank page on my website.
Under the header, I’ll click the plus button and add a text block. I can paste my article text into the text block and use the left-hand editor to add bolding, bullet points, italics, and other text decorations.
For a basic article, you’re all set.
If you’d like to add a little pizzazz, you can add an image block above your text block to showcase a featured image.
I moved my title text to the image block and added a background color to differentiate my blog title and image from the body of text.
I like this look, so I’m going to do the same thing for my other two articles. I’ll place the article title, description, and featured image in an “Image” section, then begin the blog text in a “Text” section below.
Repeat this for any articles or guides you want to include on your website. Click the tutorial below to see how to make a blog post step-by-step.
Organize your content or products with a Resource page
Once you have your articles finished, it’s time to organize them. A Resource page is a great way to do that. A Resource page is a single page that links related articles, web pages, services, and products.
Classical piano instructor Joseph D’Amico created a Resource page to help other teachers in his industry. He shares links to his teacher community, recommended gear, and helpful articles.
BUILD TOGETHER
For Your Best Road Trip, I want to create a Resource page with links to my free itineraries and blog articles.
First, I’ll create a new page on my website. I’m using the “Grid” section since I’m featuring other web pages, but if you want to highlight different products, you can also use the “Categories” section.
I’ll add a title and description, then in the left-hand sidebar, I’ll scroll down to edit each item in the Grid.
Click on the items to adjust the title, description, images, and button link. The button should point to your article or page URL. You don’t have to add images if you don’t want to, but I like the visual element it brings to the page.
To give the images a uniform size, I’ll change the image aspect ratio under the “Design” tab.
I’ll also change the layout from columns to rows and select the “split” card style.
To give the page a little extra pop, I added a background color to my grid section using my brand color palette.
Moving forward, whenever I have a new piece of educational content to add to my website, I can create a grid item for it here.
I’m also going to add a CTA for my free digital download to my Resource page.
To do this, I’ll click the plus sign under the blue grid section and select “Featured”.
From the dropdown menu, I’ll choose the “Ultimate Road Trip Packing List”.
The section automatically populates with the product information, and it looks great out of the box. I can also add a custom title or description if I want a slight variation from the original product listing.
I want to add a background image to this section and make a few small layout tweaks, so I’ll head to the “Design” tab. There, I switched the text and image so the text is on the left and the image is on the right, then I added a background image with a dark overlay. To make the text stand out, I chose the “Dark” color theme with white text.
Here’s how the full page looks with the resources in rows:
And the resources in columns:
Since I have three resources, I’m going to keep the column layout. As I add more, it might make sense to switch back to rows so there isn’t one resource hanging out alone on a line below.
You can switch them with literally one click, so play around with it and see what you like best.
Editing and optimizing your page settings
For each new page, you can customize the URL and search description by clicking the gear beside the page name in the left sidebar.
Adding descriptive text can help with SEO, and it’s always best to keep URLs concise without any unexpected characters or numbers.
Now let’s set up your website’s navigation and footer areas.