Look at the analytics for almost any small business website and the same thing shows up. The home page is first. The about page is second or third, usually ahead of most of the services.
Then look at when it was written. It was written last, at eleven at night, after everything else was done, and it opens with the year the company was founded.
That gap is worth closing, because the people reading it are further along than anyone else on the site. They have already decided you might be able to do the job. They are on the about page checking whether they want you in their house, or trusted with their money, or turning up at their business on a Tuesday.
What they are actually checking
Nobody reads an about page out of curiosity about your founding. They are looking for a small number of specific things.
Are these real people. Names and faces of the people who will actually turn up. Not a stock photograph of a boardroom nobody in your company has ever sat in.
How big are you. This decides whether they will get the owner or a call centre, and whether you can handle their job. Both answers are fine. Being vague about it is not, because a customer who imagines the wrong one is going to be disappointed either way.
Have you done this before. Not an award. The kind of work, the kind of client, how long.
Will you still be here. A business with no visible history reads as a business that might not answer the phone next spring.
Everything on the page should be serving one of those four. A paragraph about your commitment to excellence serves none of them.
Say the size out loud
This is the single change that improves most about pages.
“We are four people. You will deal with Dan, who will also be doing the work.” That sentence answers more customer anxiety than three paragraphs of values. It sets the expectation correctly, it explains why you are cheaper than the firm with an office tower, and it is the thing a large competitor cannot say.
If you are twenty people with a proper scheduling office, say that instead, and let it explain why you can start next week when the two-person outfit cannot.
Either is a selling point. Pretending to be a size you are not is what costs you the job, usually at the moment the customer works it out.
Use a real photograph
The stock photograph of four people around a laptop is doing active harm. Everyone has seen it. It says the business either could not be bothered or has something to hide.
A slightly awkward photograph of the actual team outside the actual unit beats it comfortably. So does one person at their bench. The bar is not photographic quality, it is that the person in the picture is somebody the customer might meet.
The origin story, if you must
There is a version of the founding story that earns its place, and it is short. It is the one that explains something about how you work now.
“I spent eleven years working for a firm that quoted low and billed high, and I got tired of apologizing for it.” That is one sentence, it is a claim about your invoicing, and it does more work than a timeline of your first premises.
If the story does not explain something the customer cares about today, cut it. The year you were founded can live in one line at the bottom.
What to cut
The mission statement. Nobody has ever chosen a contractor on the basis of one.
The values list. Integrity, quality, customer focus. Your competitor has the same three. If a value is real it will show up as a specific policy somewhere else on the site, which is worth more than the word.
“We are passionate about.” It is the phrase that most reliably signals nothing follows.
The corporate we, if you are two people. It fools nobody and it costs you the warmth that is your advantage.
Give it an ending
The about page is where somebody decides. Do not leave them on the last paragraph with nowhere to go.
Finish with the same thing the service pages finish with: what happens if they get in touch, how quickly you reply, and a link that starts it. A page that convinces someone and then abandons them has wasted the convincing.
The test
Read the page and ask whether a competitor down the road could publish it word for word with their name swapped in.
On most about pages the answer is yes, and that is the whole problem. The fix is not better writing. It is putting things on the page that are only true of you.
