The genre ‘about us’: A case study of banks’ corporate webpages

The current communication needs in society have made genre analysis become a focus of study in professional and academic contexts in order to create rules about the use of language. This article is based on a study of ‘About Us’ pages on banks’ corporate websites and the sections that form such pages. The objective of this article is to show if the ‘About Us’ page and its different sections can be considered a genre. The basis for this study is a compilation of previous work from both researchers and web designers who have discussed the forms and main features of this type of webpages. Previous studies will be evaluated in an experiment of which the aim is to check if these sections appear with certain regularity on websites, and to determine the frequency with which these sections appear in a particular area of work. In this case there is a focus on the webpages of banks. The results of this research can help professionals in designing webpages to elaborate and work on ‘About Us’ webpages with more precise information. This research claims to provide ways to enhance communication within companies and small businesses with well structured ‘About Us’ pages.