People read your about page to decide whether to trust you, not to learn your history. Answer three things: who you are, who you help, and why you can be believed. Put real names and faces on it, and keep the founding story short unless it explains why the product exists.
Almost every weak about page fails because it answers a question nobody asked.
What visitors are actually checking
Someone reaches the about page at a specific moment: they are interested and looking for a reason not to proceed.
So they are checking for signs of a real operation. Are there people here. Where are they. How long have they existed. Do they understand my situation. Is anything obviously hidden.
The page succeeds by answering those quickly. It fails by describing a mission in language that could belong to any company.
The structure that works
Five parts, and the first one is doing most of the work.
- One sentence: what you do and who for, the same claim as your homepage
- The problem you exist to solve, described the way your customers describe it
- Who is here: real names, real photos, real roles
- Proof: how long, how many, what you have done. Only true things
- What to do next, because a page with no exit wastes the interest it just earned
Your origin story is not the point
Founding stories are interesting to founders and rarely to visitors, with one exception.
The exception is when the story explains why the product is the way it is. If you built this because you had the problem yourself and everything available was wrong in a specific way, that is a credibility argument and it belongs near the top.
If the story is that two people met at a company and decided to start something, it is true and it is not evidence, and it belongs in a short paragraph much further down.
Show the people
Real photographs of real people is the single highest-impact change available on most about pages.
Stock photography of a diverse team in a bright office is recognised instantly and costs you exactly the trust the page was meant to build. A slightly awkward genuine photo works better than a polished fake one.
If you are one person, say so. Being small is not a weakness to conceal, and pretending otherwise is discovered at the first support email.
Say what you are not
Naming who you are not for is unusually persuasive on this page, because it is the clearest possible signal that you are describing something real.
It also filters. The customers who disqualify themselves were going to be a poor fit, and losing them on the about page is cheaper than losing them after a sale.
The details that quietly matter
A physical address or at least a city. A way to contact a human. Named team members rather than roles alone. A last-updated date if the page contains anything time-sensitive.
These are the things people check when they are deciding whether a company is real, and their absence is noticed more than their presence.
Common questions
- What should an about page include?
- One sentence on what you do and who for, the problem you exist to solve in your customers' words, real names and photos, honest proof, and a next step. Visitors are deciding whether to trust you, not learning your history.
- Should I include my founding story?
- Only if it explains why the product is the way it is. If you built this because you had the problem and everything available was wrong in a specific way, that is a credibility argument. If it is that two people met at a company, it belongs much further down.
- Do I need photos of the team?
- Real photographs are the single highest-impact change on most about pages. Stock photography of a diverse team in a bright office is recognised instantly and costs exactly the trust the page was meant to build.
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