Writing guide
How to write an about page
Check your analytics and the about page is almost certainly among your five most-visited pages — and the visit happens at a telling moment. People click About after the product page and before the contact form or the checkout, which means they are not asking for your history. They are asking the last question before money moves: can I trust these people with my problem?
Most about pages answer a different question — what the founder would like said about the company. They open with the founding year, recite a mission statement, and describe values no reader can verify. The visitor scans for evidence, finds adjectives, and leaves no more convinced than they arrived. The page did not fail at storytelling; it failed at its actual job, which is closing a credibility gap.
The structure that works reads less like a memoir and more like a quiet sales page: the reader’s problem first, an origin story selected because it explains why you can solve it, proof in numbers, real faces with real names, and one clear next step. You still get to tell your story — you just tell the part the buyer needs.
What it is
An about page is the page where a prospective customer decides whether the people behind a product are credible enough to buy from. Nominally it tells the company’s story; functionally it must answer three questions in order — do you understand my problem, why are you equipped to solve it, and who else has trusted you.
When to use it
Every site that asks strangers for money or contact details needs one; its absence reads as evasive. What varies is weight — a consultancy or agency lives on this page, a commodity store needs it lighter. Do not use it as a dumping ground for press mentions, investor history or job listings; each of those serves a different reader and deserves its own page. And on a one-page site, fold this structure into a trust section rather than skipping it.
The structure that works
An opening about the reader, not the founder
The visitor arrives mid-decision, carrying a problem. The first lines either mirror that problem back or confirm the page is a company scrapbook.
- Name the reader’s situation in the first two sentences — the pain that brought them to your site in the first place.
- Run the pronoun count on the opening: if “we” and “our” outnumber “you” and “your”, flip it.
- Delete “Welcome to…” openings; nobody has ever kept reading because of one.
The origin story that explains your credibility
Readers do not care when you were founded; they care why. The right origin is the scene where you met the problem you now solve — it converts history into qualification.
- Pick one moment, told in 100 to 200 words with a year, a place and a number — not a decade-by-decade timeline.
- Test every origin detail the same way: does it make the reader more confident you can solve their problem? Cut what fails.
- Frustration origins work because buyers share the frustration — “we were the customer this product did not exist for” is a qualification.
Proof the reader can verify
Trust needs at least one fact that would survive a skeptic checking it. Adjectives are self-issued; numbers, names and credentials are checkable.
- Give 3 to 6 items in descending strength: customer outcomes first, then volume served, tenure, certifications, named clients or press.
- Attach units — “140 restaurants since 2016” beats “hundreds of happy clients” precisely because it is small enough to be true.
- Claim only what is literally true; the about page is the first place due diligence looks.
Faces and names
People buy from people, and anonymity has a price: a page with no humans on it reads as a page with something to hide.
- Use real photographs of the actual team — an honest phone photo in your workspace outperforms polished stock every time.
- Give full name, role, and one line per person tied to what they do for the customer, not a resume.
- Solo founder? Say so plainly. “It is just me, and here is why that helps you” is a position, not a confession.
One next step
A convinced reader at the bottom of the about page is the warmest lead the site produces, and most about pages hand them a dead end.
- Close with exactly one CTA matched to your funnel — book a call, see the product, read a case study.
- Phrase it in the reader’s terms (“get the catch-up estimate”), not the company’s (“submit an inquiry”).
- Resist the row of five links; a reader given every option takes none.
Step by step
- 01
List the trust questions your buyer needs answered
Before drafting, write down the 3 to 5 doubts a real prospect holds at the moment they click About. For a consultancy: have they done this for someone my size, do I get the senior person or an intern, will they still exist next year. For a store: is this a real business, where do products ship from, who answers when something breaks. The page exists to retire those doubts in order.
Get the list from evidence, not introspection: reread your last 20 sales-call notes or support emails and mark every question that is really about trust. Then check analytics for the pages visitors view immediately before and after About — that path shows exactly which decision your page is interrupting.
- 02
Open with the reader’s problem in the first 100 words
Write the opening as a mirror: the situation that brought the visitor here, in their vocabulary. “If you run a restaurant, your books are probably three months behind” builds more trust than any paragraph about passion, because recognizing someone’s problem precisely is the first proof you can solve it.
Then audit the pronouns. Count “we”, “our” and “I” against “you” and “your” across the full draft — on a reader-first page the second group wins. This is a mechanical edit, not a stylistic preference: every we-sentence answers a question the reader has not asked yet.
- 03
Choose the one origin moment that qualifies you
From the company history, select the single scene that explains why you can solve the reader’s problem — the product you needed and could not buy, the six years inside the industry, the failure you watched up close. Tell it in 100 to 200 words with a year, a place and one number. Everything else in the timeline is trivia.
Apply the credibility filter to each detail: the second office and the rebrand fail it; watching a profitable restaurant die of bad bookkeeping passes it, if bookkeeping is what you sell. An origin chosen this way doubles as positioning — it tells the reader which problems you are for.
- 04
Stack proof in descending order of strength
Rank what you can claim: measured customer outcomes first (“the average client closes books monthly within two cycles”), then volume and tenure (“140 clients since 2016”), then credentials, named customers and press. Lead with the strongest 3 to 6 and give each a number or a name; a proof block where nothing is countable is an adjectives block in costume.
Small true numbers beat big vague ones. “31 kitchens renovated in Leeds” persuades more than “countless happy customers across the UK”, because precision signals auditability — readers instinctively trust figures exact enough to be checked and round vague ones down to zero.
- 05
Put real faces and full names on the page
Photograph the actual people — at work, in the workspace, in decent light. A slightly imperfect real photo builds more trust than a flawless stock image, because visitors have seen the same smiling stock team on a hundred sites and have learned what it means: nothing. Add full name, role, and one sentence each connecting the person to the customer’s outcome.
If the team is two people, show two people; if it is one, own it. Faking scale with “our team of experts” over a stock photo is the fastest way to lose the exact reader this page exists to convince — the one doing diligence.
- 06
Close with a single next step
End the page with one action matched to where about-page readers sit in your funnel — usually one step from contact. A services firm closes with “book a 20-minute intro call”; a product closes with the product or a case study. One button, phrased as the reader’s gain, with a line that lowers the stakes: how long it takes, what it costs, what happens next.
Then sweep the page for exits you did not intend: a strip of press logos that leads readers off-site mid-decision, a closing row of six competing links. You cannot remove the navigation, but the strongest visual pull at the bottom of the page should be the one action you chose.
- 07
Run the skeptic pass and cut the self-praise
Read the finished page as your most suspicious prospect. Every claim gets one of three verdicts: verifiable (keep), rewritable into something verifiable (rewrite), or pure self-assessment (cut). “We are passionate about quality” fails; “every order is checked by hand before it ships — 0.4 percent return rate last year” is the same intention, made checkable.
Finally, read it aloud once. The about page is the one page visitors hear in a human voice, and the read-aloud pass catches the corporate stiffness silent editing forgives. Anywhere you would not say the sentence to a customer’s face, rewrite it in the words you would actually use.
Before and after: what good looks like
Before
Welcome to Harbor Bookkeeping. Founded in 2016, we are a leading provider of bookkeeping and accounting solutions for small businesses. Our mission is to deliver excellence through innovation and an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction. We are passionate about numbers and dedicated to helping our clients succeed. Our experienced team brings years of combined expertise to every engagement, and we pride ourselves on building long-term relationships based on trust, integrity and results. Contact us today to learn more about how Harbor Bookkeeping can help your business thrive.
After
If you run a restaurant, your books are probably three months behind — that is the state most of our clients arrive in. Harbor exists because our founder, Dana Reyes, spent six years on a kitchen line and watched a good restaurant die of bad bookkeeping: profitable on paper, out of cash by March. Since 2016 we have closed the books for 140 food businesses in Portland, and the average new client goes from 90 days behind to a monthly close within two cycles. There are four of us — Dana, Marcus, Priya and Sam, pictured below — and you work with one person, not a rotating inbox. If your books are behind, start with the free catch-up estimate: ten minutes, and you leave knowing the real number.
The before is 87 words about Harbor; the rewrite is 125 words about the reader — and it still tells more company story. Every trust element got specific: the mission statement became an origin scene with a year and a mechanism, “experienced team” became four named people, “helping clients succeed” became 90-days-behind-to-monthly-close, and “contact us” became a ten-minute estimate with a stated payoff. Nothing was invented; the same firm simply chose the facts a buyer can act on.
Mistakes that sink an about page
| Mistake | The fix |
|---|---|
| Opening with “Founded in…” and narrating the company timeline | Open with the reader’s problem, then tell only the origin scene that explains why you can solve it. The founding year belongs inside the story, not as its headline. |
| A mission statement standing where evidence should be | Swap every abstraction for a checkable fact: clients served, years in, outcomes measured. One verifiable number outweighs a paragraph of values. |
| Stock photos or a faceless “our team of experts” | Show the real people with full names and roles — or, if you are solo, say so and sell the upside. Visitors doing diligence recognize stock photography instantly. |
| Writing one page for four audiences — buyers, press, investors, candidates | Write this page for the buyer and give the others their own destinations. A paragraph courting investors reads as noise to a customer mid-decision. |
| Unverifiable adjectives — passionate, innovative, world-class | Run the skeptic pass: keep what a suspicious reader could check, rewrite what could become checkable, cut the rest. |
| Ending in a dead end with no next step | Close with one CTA matched to the buying stage — a call, the product, a case study — phrased as the reader’s gain and standing alone. |
Pre-publish checklist
- The first two sentences are about the reader’s situation, not the company.
- “You” and “your” outnumber “we”, “our” and “I” across the page.
- The origin story is one scene of 100 to 200 words with a year, a place and a number.
- Every origin detail passes the credibility filter: it builds buyer confidence, or it is gone.
- The proof block holds 3 to 6 verifiable items, strongest first, each with a number or a name.
- Real photos of the real team appear, with full names, roles and one customer-facing line each.
- No stock photography anywhere on the page.
- Every adjective survived the skeptic pass or was replaced with evidence.
- Exactly one CTA closes the page, phrased as the reader’s next step.
- Press, investor and hiring content lives elsewhere, not on this page.
- The page was read aloud, and every sentence you would not say to a customer was rewritten.
Free tools for this work
Check your about page before it ships.
Frequently asked questions
- How long should an about page be?
- 300 to 600 words for most businesses — long enough for the problem, origin, proof, faces and CTA, short enough to be read at the moment of decision. A services firm selling pure expertise can justify up to 800; past that you are writing content the buyer did not come for.
- Should I write it in first person or third person?
- First person, matched to headcount: “I” for a solo founder, “we” for a team of 2 or more. Third person — “Harbor was founded to…” — reads as distance on a page whose whole job is closeness. Whichever you choose, the reader’s “you” should still be the most frequent pronoun on the page.
- What photos does an about page need?
- At minimum one real photograph of the actual people, faces visible, plus a workspace or process shot if you have one. Two honest photos beat a gallery of ten staged ones, and stock imagery scores below zero — visitors discount the page that uses it. Name every person shown.
- Does the about page matter for SEO and AI answers?
- Increasingly, yes. It is where search engines and AI answer engines look for who-is-behind-this signals — real names, roles, credentials, founding facts — that feed assessments like Google’s E-E-A-T. Practically: state names and the founding year in plain text, keep the page above 300 words, and echo the same details on author and team pages.
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