How to Write an About Page That Wins Customers (and Helps You Get Found)

Read this with AI

Read with ChatGPT Read with Claude Ask Gemini

Short answer: A good About page is written for the customer, not about you. Lead with the problem you solve and who you solve it for, tell one short true story, show a real photo, add a proof point or two, and end with one clear next step. That mix builds trust and gives Google the experience signals it rewards.

Picture a solo plumber's About page. Three sentences: "We were founded in 2009. We are a family-run business. We pride ourselves on quality work." That page is doing nothing. A homeowner with a leaking pipe at 8pm does not care when the company was founded. They want to know one thing: can this person fix my problem, today, without ripping me off. The About page is where they go to decide that, and most of them never get an answer.

Here is how to fix that, element by element. None of these are hard. They just require you to write for the person reading, not for yourself.

Why does your About page matter more than you think?

When someone is close to calling you, they check the About page. They have seen your services. Maybe they read a review. Now they want to know who they would be handing the keys to. That is the moment trust is won or lost, and a dull page loses it.

The data backs this up. The 2015 B2B Web Usability Report from KoMarketing found that About and company information is among the top things buyers want when they land on a vendor's site, with 52% naming it, behind products and services and contact information. People look for it. The page just usually disappoints them when they arrive.

It matters for a second reason that did not exist a few years ago. A clear, real About page is one of the trust signals Google and AI assistants use to decide whether your business is worth recommending. More on that below. First, the part most owners get wrong.

Write about your customer, not about "we"

Read your current About page and count two words: "we" and "you." If "we" wins by a mile, you have the most common problem there is.

Conversion copywriter Gill Andrews, who writes these pages for a living, puts it bluntly. Most business About pages, she says, "can put a prospect to sleep faster than a sleeping pill," because they open with a mission statement and "launch into the company's founding story no one asked for." Her fix is to remember what the page is actually for: to "reassure your prospects that you're the right choice by telling them only the things that will make them like and trust you more."

So flip the opening. Instead of "We are a family-run plumbing company established in 2009," try "If you have a leak, a dead boiler, or a tap that has dripped for a month, you want someone who turns up when they say they will and tells you the price before they start. That is what I do." One of those sentences is about you. The other is about the reader's problem. The second one gets the call.

I have rewritten a lot of About pages for owner-run businesses, and the same shift fixes most of them. You take the page that opens with "Founded in..." and you replace that first line with the exact problem the customer walked in with. Nothing else changes. The phone starts ringing more, because for the first time a visitor reads the page and thinks "yes, that is me." People do not call a company history. They call someone who clearly gets what they need.

If you want to go deeper on writing copy that speaks to the reader, our guide on how to get more customers covers the same shift across your whole site.

Say plainly what you do and who you do it for

Within the first few lines, a visitor should know they are in the right place. That sounds obvious. Most pages fail it anyway.

A good test: could a stranger read your first paragraph and finish the sentence "This business is for people who..."? If the plumber writes "I handle emergency repairs, boiler installs, and bathroom fits for homeowners and landlords across North Leeds," the answer is instant. If the page says "We deliver excellence in plumbing solutions," the visitor has learned nothing and clicks away.

Name the work. Name the customer. Name the place if you are local. Specifics do two jobs at once: they reassure the human reader, and they tell search engines and AI tools exactly what you do and where, which is what they need to recommend you. The same plain-language thinking applies to every page you build, which is why our landing page best practices guide hammers the same point.

Tell one short, true story

People trust people, and a story is how you become a person instead of a logo. But there is a rule: keep it short and make it about why you do this, not a year-by-year company timeline.

Aim for under 300 words. One reason you started. One thing you believe about the work. The plumber might write: "I spent eight years working for a big firm that double-booked jobs and left customers waiting all day. I went out on my own so I could give people a real arrival window and stick to it." That is a story. It explains the why, it signals how you work, and it took four sentences.

Skip the founding-myth novel. No one asked for it, and it buries the part that builds trust. A short true story beats a long polished one every time, because the reader can feel that it is real.

Show a real photo of you or your team

This is the cheapest trust you will ever buy, and almost everyone skips it.

A real photo of your actual face does more than any line of copy. It tells the visitor a real person stands behind the work. Gill Andrews is firm on this, and on what not to do: "Make sure to add your photo or a photo of your team. And no, stalk photos or AI generated visuals won't cut it but rather undermine your prospects['] trust." A stock photo of a grinning model in a hard hat does the opposite of what you want. It reads as fake, and a visitor who senses fake leaves.

Use your phone. Stand in front of your van, your shop, your workbench. It does not need to be a professional shoot. It needs to be you. That is the whole point.

Add proof the customer actually cares about

Trust grows when someone other than you vouches for you. So put the proof on the page, and pick the proof that matters to the buyer, not to your ego.

A short customer quote does more than a wall of awards. "He came out the same night and charged exactly what he quoted" is worth more than a trade badge most homeowners do not recognize. Years in business is good if it is real. Certifications matter when they affect safety or money, like a Gas Safe registration for a plumber. List two or three of those. Drop the rest.

This is also where your credibility as a real, reachable business shows up. The same KoMarketing report found that 44% of B2B buyers will leave a vendor's website that has no contact information or phone number, and 54% said a lack of thorough contact information reduced a company's credibility. Make sure your About page, or the page it links to, makes it obvious that a real human can be reached. Hidden contact details read as something to hide.

State your values and how you work

People increasingly buy from businesses that feel aligned with them. Research from the Harris Poll, commissioned by Google Cloud in 2022, found that 82% of shoppers prefer a brand's values to align with their own, and they will vote with their wallet if they do not feel a match. Your About page is where you say, briefly, what you stand for.

Keep it concrete, not corporate. Not "we value integrity and excellence." Instead: "I give a fixed price before I start, so you never get a surprise bill," or "I clean up before I leave, every time." Those are values you can actually feel as a customer. They tell the reader what kind of person they are about to let into their home. Vague values say nothing. Specific habits say everything.

End with one clear next step

A visitor who has read this far is ready to act. Do not make them hunt. Give them one button, one phone number, one obvious thing to do.

The mistake is offering five options: call, email, book online, fill in a form, follow on social. Five choices is no choice. Pick the action you most want and lead with it. For a solo plumber it is almost always a phone number, big and tappable on a phone. For a service that runs on bookings, it is one "book now" button. One clear path out of the page is worth more than a tidy grid of links. Our guide on small business website tips covers the same single-CTA rule across your site.

How a real About page helps Google and AI assistants find you

Here is the part that ties trust to traffic. Everything above also helps you get found, because the signals that reassure a human are the same ones Google looks for.

Google's own guidance on creating helpful content asks whether a page shows "background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site's About page." In other words, Google names your About page as a place it checks for trust. Google also explains its quality framework as E-E-A-T, short for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, and says plainly that "of these aspects, trust is most important." In December 2022 it added the first E, Experience, to reward content produced by someone with genuine first-hand experience of the work.

A real photo, a true story, named credentials, and a clear "this is who I am and what I do" are exactly how you demonstrate experience and trust. The same page that makes a homeowner call is the page that helps an AI assistant decide you are a real, credible business worth recommending. If you want the bigger picture on that, see how ChatGPT recommends businesses and how to get cited by ChatGPT.

Frequently asked questions

How long should an About page be?

Long enough to cover the elements, short enough that no part drags. Most owner-run businesses do it well in 300 to 600 words: a customer-focused opener, a short story under 300 words, a photo, two proof points, your way of working, and one call to action. If a section is not earning trust, cut it.

Should I use "I" or "we" on my About page?

Use whatever is true. A solo trader should write "I," because pretending to be a "we" feels fake the moment a real person shows up. A team should write "we" but still talk to the reader as "you." Either way, the page should be more about the customer's problem than about your title or history.

Do I really need a photo of myself?

Yes. A real photo of you or your team is one of the strongest trust signals on the page, and it costs nothing but a few minutes with your phone. Skip the stock photos and AI-generated images. As copywriter Gill Andrews warns, they undermine trust rather than build it. Real beats polished.

Will an About page actually help me rank on Google?

Not on its own, but it is part of the trust picture Google and AI tools assess. Google's helpful-content guidance specifically names the About page as a place it looks for background on who you are, and trust is the single most important factor in its E-E-A-T framework. A clear, real page helps. The same clarity that wins the call is what helps the page get found.

Go back to that solo plumber with three dull sentences. The fix was never a bigger budget or fancier design. It was writing the page for the worried homeowner instead of the company, showing a real face, and giving one clear way to call. That is the whole job, and it is the kind of trust-building work Fonzy helps owner-run businesses get right so the people who land on your page actually pick up the phone.

Sources

Roald

Founder Fonzy. Obsessed with scaling organic traffic. Writing about the intersection of SEO, AI, and product growth.