Creating a “meet the team” page for your startup might seem like a boring formality. It’s something you should do to show website visitors that your company employs real people and isn’t run by an algorithm. Don’t think of it as a chore. On the contrary, your team page is an important part of your marketing strategy. It’s also a great way to humanize your business and show off your greatest assets – your team members.

Particularly in creative fields where you’ll be working closely with clients, showing that your team might be a good fit with potential clients in terms of chemistry and culture is key. As a startup, you want to use your team page to project who you are and who you’ll be in your relationship with clients.

We recently redesigned our own website and re-designed our team page. We’ve also designed websites for a variety of clients. Here are a few tips we’ve picked up along the way to help you develop a great team page.

Our Top 4 Tips for a Great Team Page

Showcase Your Team’s Skills & Your Work Culture

Your team page is a great way to showcase your team’s skills and your work culture. These are important to attract the right clients or the right talent when it comes to recruiting. Some elements of this are easy. For instance, make sure to include LinkedIn links on your page. This lets potential clients connect with your team on LinkedIn. This can help with developing business leads and relationships. It also lets your team show off their credentials. Potential clients want to know who they’re working with and what experience they have, and LinkedIn easily connects them to this information.

But, beyond this, you want to showcase your work culture without blatantly spelling it out. If your company is a bit more formal and works with more formal organizations in the finance or legal sector, then make sure that your team page has a more formal business feel. If you work with more casual companies, make sure that your team page shows this. You can be more creative with the overall design and layout of the team page. 6tematik, for example, has unique approach to the team page. They use simple, modern illustrations with slight movement rather than photographs to show off their team and their personality. 

Put a Face to Your Company – Include Pictures of Your Team Members

Pictures do more than show the faces of your team members – they show your team’s and company’s personality and make them more than just a resume or set of credentials. Some companies opt for illustrated images or avatars, which can add some creativity and artistry to your page. Others use photos. Either choice works and it’s up to you to decide what image you want to portray with your pictures. Humaan has an amazing team page. Even though it’s quirky and fun, the high-quality images still make it look professional and portray their team personality. 

If you opt for photographs, make sure to use high-quality images. These exude professionalism, which is important no matter how creative you get with your team page. You can choose to go with a professional photographer or have someone on your team take them. We opted for an experienced professional photographer, who did a fabulous job! He is familiar with a number of photography styles and worked with us to develop the tone for the page. 

When going with a professional photographer, you have a couple of options. New photographers who are just starting to build their portfolio can be less expensive, but they may have fewer examples for you to look at before hand. Look at their available work to see if they would be a good fit for the style you want to use. More experienced photographers can be more expensive, but they also often specialize in business headshots with a wider variety of styles and examples.

If you don’t have the budget for professional photographers, someone on your team can take the photographs. Make sure to use a high-quality DSLR camera or a portrait mode setting on a good camera phone. You want them to look like a professional took them, even if they didn’t.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – Think About What You Want Those Words to Be!

Before you take pictures, you’ll need to do some research. First off, what style do you want to use? Look at styles of photography and examples of other startup team pages and develop a concept for your team page. These pictures are going to represent you – make sure they say what you want them to say. You’ll likely want to cater things to your client-base. While funny and campy can be great, especially in creative spaces, if you’re client-base is from a more traditional background these may not be acceptable. In this direction, you’ll want to think about things like colour schemes and dress codes. If you’re going with a more corporate business style, have your team wear suits and tone down your colour scheme. If you’re going with a more creative style, have them wear business casual and be more creative with your colour schemes.

Another decision will be whether you take the photographs outside, in a studio, in your office or in another location. Again, where you do this will say a lot about your company, so make sure to nail down your message and try to convey that with the location. Likewise, you can use a light or dark background for individual photos. For our page, we chose darkgrey because they were more flattering. However, a plain white background makes it easy to add more team members to your team page if the business is growing. Any photographer can get a white background. To make photos appear cohesive, if they haven’t been taken by the same photographer or in the same place, you can make them black and white.

Group photos are another great feature to include, as they provide a glimpse into your business culture, the personalities of your team, and bring a more personable presence to your website. They don’t have to be posed photos. Use candid images from team events, holiday parties, or from the everyday humdrum of the office. But make sure you’re putting your company’s best face forward when choosing photos; curate them to portray the image you have chosen.

Your Team is Made up of Individuals – Let Their Uniqueness Shine Through

While this is a team page, your team is made up of individual members. Some industries might best be served with a more basic and toned-down biography and image of your team members. If you want to get creative you might want to let your team members’ unique personalities shine beyond their skill set. For example, we had each of our team members choose a GIF that they love or represents them to appear on the flip side of their headshot. Likewise, if you are writing team bios, you can always include a couple of fun facts about each member. This shows that you value your team members individually and not just as extensions of the business. We also included our furry office mates to demonstrate that we are a pet-friendly office and that we have a good sense of humour.

Build Your Team Page with RFDM

For more pointers on setting up a team page for startups, contact us for a free consultation – let our team help yours!