How to Write an About Page That Builds Trust Before Anyone Reads Your Services
Nobody lands on your About page by accident. By the time someone clicks it, they've already looked at your services or your prices, and they've got one lingering question: "can I actually trust these people?" That's the entire job of the page — not to tell your life story, but to answer that one question as convincingly and as quickly as possible. 💖 Most About pages we're handed have the order backwards: a paragraph about the founder's passion, a paragraph about the mission, and only right at the bottom, if at all, anything that actually proves competence. By then the visitor's already gone.
What most businesses get wrong
The biggest mistake is writing the About page like a diary entry. "I started this business because I've always loved helping people" is a lovely sentence and it convinces absolutely nobody. It answers a question the visitor never asked. What they actually want to know is: have you done this before, for someone like me, and did it work?
The second mistake is length without structure. A wall of unbroken paragraphs about your journey, values, and philosophy might feel meaningful to write, but it asks the reader to do all the work of finding the one sentence that matters to them. Trust is built through scannable proof, not through being read in full.
The third, quieter mistake is skipping the doubt entirely. Good About pages name the hesitation a visitor is likely feeling — "worried a business this size can't handle something urgent?" — and answer it directly, instead of hoping the visitor won't think of it.
Write your About page in this order, and keep each section shorter than feels natural — trust is built fast or not at all:
- 1. The problem, named specifically (1-2 sentences). Open with the situation your reader is in, in their own words. "You've got a growing team and a booking system held together with sticky notes" lands harder than "welcome to our story."
- 2. The credibility signal (2-3 sentences). Years in business, number of clients served, a specific result, a qualification, or a recognisable client type. Numbers and specifics beat adjectives every time — "helped 60+ local businesses since 2019" beats "passionate and experienced."
- 3. The human story (3-4 sentences, no more). Why you started, what you noticed was missing in your industry, what you do differently. This is where personality lives, but it earns its place after credibility, not instead of it.
- 4. The next step. A single, clear line pointing to what to do now — view services, book a call, browse the portfolio. Never let the page end on a philosophical note with nowhere to go.
How to actually write it
Start by writing down the three doubts a stranger would reasonably have about your business before they'd hand over money. For most small businesses these are some version of: can they actually do this, will they be reliable, and will I regret choosing the smaller option over a bigger competitor. Write one sentence answering each doubt directly — these sentences become the backbone of your credibility section.
Then draft the problem-naming opener. Read it back and ask: would a stranger recognise themselves in this sentence within two seconds? If not, get more specific about the situation, not more clever with the wording.
Keep the human story section short on purpose. Cut it to four sentences, then read the whole page aloud — if it starts to drag anywhere, that's usually the story section running too long.
Mistakes to avoid
- Leading with feelings instead of proof. Passion is a nice add-on, not a substitute for evidence.
- Letting the page run too long. If it takes more than a minute to read, most visitors won't finish it.
- No next step. A page that ends on "thanks for reading" wastes the trust it just built.
- Stock photography instead of real people. It reads as generic, even when the business isn't.
- Never updating it. An About page frozen from your launch year quietly signals the business hasn't grown.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an About page actually be?
Long enough to answer the three main doubts and short enough to be read in under a minute — usually 250 to 400 words plus a photo. More detail can live on a linked page if you genuinely have it, but the About page itself should stay tight.
Do I need a professional photographer?
It helps, but it isn't essential. A well-lit phone photo of a real person beats a polished stock image every time — authenticity is doing more work here than production quality.
Should I mention competitors or what makes me different?
You can, briefly, but be honest about the trade-off: a page that spends too much time contrasting yourself against others can read as defensive rather than confident. One clear sentence on what you do differently is usually plenty; more than that and it starts to sound like you're arguing with someone who isn't in the room.
What if my business is genuinely new and I don't have years of runs on the board yet?
Lean on specifics you do have — relevant experience before you started the business, the number of projects completed even in a short window, or direct quotes from early clients. Newness isn't disqualifying as long as the page still gives the reader something concrete to hold onto.
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