How to Write an About Page for your Small Business
The About page on your website lets you reveal the human side of your business. By showing people who you are, you have the opportunity to make a meaningful connection with your audience.
Why have an About page?
Your About page is where you tell your audience who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
The ‘About’ section is one of the four most important pages on your website. No small business’s website is complete without an about section.
Why?
Because before deciding to do business with you, most people want to know whether you have the qualifications, skills, and experience to deliver what you say you will.
But, mostly, they want to know whether or not they like you.
As you’ve probably figured out already, an ‘About’ page is more than simply tooting your own horn. The old saying is true: people do business with people. They want to see the personality behind the product or service. Let’s face it, we’re all nosy, and getting the chance to take a peek behind the scenes is tantalising.
What key information do you need to include?
This isn’t just a resume of your qualifications and achievements. It’s also the story of how you got to this point. This is the time to get specific about who you are and why you do what you do.
Depending on what you do, you'll focus on showcasing different aspects of who you are. While every business’s About page will differ in tone, style, and what information is put front and centre, most About pages include the following elements:
State your company’s mission
Communicate your values
Outline your story
Pinpoint relevant milestones
Highlight how you’ve evolved
Identify who you help
Explain what you do for them
Give examples of successes
Help your audience envision a successful future with you.
I’ll outline these points in more detail. I’ve chosen some examples from About pages to illustrate some of them. All my examples come from local small businesses in the Scottish Borders, which is where I live. You can check them out and get inspiration for your own website.
Your mission:
Your mission statement is identified as who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and why.
Think about what’s the most important aspect of your business. Why is your mission meaningful to your audience?
Sarah Cowan runs the freelance graphic design business Lettica. On its About page she says: “Lettica is a specialist design service providing clear and effective marketing and communications materials in print and accessible PDF formats.”
She helps customers make their brochures and leaflets as easy to read as possible. This appeals to businesses that rely heavily on print collateral to market to customers or inform service users. The keyword is ‘accessible.’ Sarah helps a lot of clients in the public sector who may prioritise ease of use over style. Lucky for them, Lettica offers both.
Having a clear mission like this also helps to differentiate her business from competitors.
Your Values:
A 2020 survey showed that people are more likely to engage with brands that share their personal core values.
Values are the moral principles you stand by that inform your actions. They are personal to you. Everyone follows a ‘code’ - whether they’re aware of it or not. What are the values that underpin your business?
Castlegate Nursery states on its website: “We’re passionate about play and believe that play and the natural environment are essential elements of children’s learning and development.”
The nursery makes it clear that they value play, the natural world, and nurturing a child’s development. This will resonate with parents who share these values.
Your Story
To help visitors get a deeper understanding of your brand your About page should include information about how your business came to be, the people behind it, and your goals for the future.
If you like, you can simply cover the basic details, dates, and events, but this is an opportunity to use storytelling to bring the bare facts about your business to life.
Stories give meaning to events. We’re hard-wired to connect emotionally to stories so if you can shape your business history into a narrative that resonates with people they are more likely to connect with your brand.
Although this is your story, you want visitors to identify with it in some way, i.e. put themselves in the picture. Make them feel inspired. The subtext is - ‘I’ve had success, so can you.
Clothing company Findra explains how the founder, Alex Feechan, set up her business as the solution to her particular problem of finding comfortable, sustainable outerwear that still looked good.
From their website: ‘An avid cyclist and outdoor enthusiast, Alex noticed a lack of the kind of comfortable, versatile and stylish outdoor clothing she wanted to wear.’
The brand appeals to people like her with a love of the outdoors and a conscience around sustainable fashion: ‘FINDRA Clothing is ready to accompany you on your next adventure.’
Pinpoint relevant milestones
Each event in your story should be another turning point in your evolution.
Give your visitor the lowdown on your track record including customer successes, company milestones, and even failures if you overcame them.
You’re demonstrating how far you’ve come, how much you’ve progressed, and that you are still growing.
Ahume.com, the website of a high street store in Kelso, has a good example of using an infographic timeline to illustrate the history of the company.
Visitors get a clear history of the company from its early origins through pivotal moments and its evolution.
Evolution
People want to see how far you’ve come, but they want to know you’re still evolving. After all, the only evidence of life is growth and you want to show you are a thriving business.
What’s your vision for the future? Let people know what you’re working towards. By sharing your goals you show that you are a business going places that will inspire your audience.
Identify who you serve
If you want to make one thing clear, it’s your ‘who.’ If you’re at the stage of writing your web copy, you should already know your audience inside out.
Border Embroideries (they sell uniforms) clearly state their audience and how they’re best positioned to serve them: ‘With 28 years of experience supplying schools, businesses and clubs across the UK and beyond.’
Be clear about who you serve and direct your copy squarely at them.
How do you help them?
Think of the features of your product or service and explain the benefits. What’s the biggest outcome for your customer? What would be the promised land for them within the context of your product or business?
Andwedothis.com is explicit about how they help their customers: ‘We help businesses thrive by developing all-in-one marketing strategies that increase sales.’
The best copy is clear and unambiguous. This statement taps into the desire all businesses have.
Give examples of successes
Now’s the time to toot your own horn! You can outline the types of customers you’ve helped and the results they’ve experienced.
If relevant, this is where figures and stats are great to put front and centre. You can also put the logos of companies you’ve worked with and share any glowing testimonials. This gives that all-important social proof that others have experienced the outcome your audience desires.
Help your audience envision a successful future with you
These elements should be incorporated in such a way that leads your audience to come to the understanding that you offer the answer to their problems.
Customer success stories are obviously persuasive, but your specific success as a business has a similar effect indirectly.
Your experiences show you’re qualified to help them with their goals: you’ve faced challenges head-on and overcome them. It plants the seed in their mind that grows into the understanding that they can trust you to give them a good experience and the desired outcome.
How to put it all together
Before you begin writing your About page it’s a good idea to have a structure in mind. Don’t underestimate the role that layout plays in conveying your message.
Basic outline
Decide how many paragraphs, sections, and photos you want to include. No one wants to read a wall of text, so make judicious use of headings and subheadings to organise your information.
Images
Whether you want to use graphics, illustrations or video depends on what works best for your brand or audience.
When it comes to photos - choose real photos of you or your team - not glossy stock images which lack any authenticity.
Tell a story.
Done well, a story is the best way to convey information. While you’ll still use the rules of conversational copywriting - addressing your audience ‘you’ and directing the copy at them, you’ll be putting you or your business as the protagonist. Talk about yourself in a way that’s relevant to the audience.
Use customer-centric copy
Although ostensibly this is the place to talk about you, you still have to put your audience front and centre. When talking about yourself, reframe the sentence so you’re showing how that thing you do solves your audience’s problem.
IT company So Connect has a clear About page that speaks solely to their customer. They clearly state their unique selling proposition - customer-focused, fully managed IT but frame it around the customer’s needs in an empathetic way.
Get personal - Write your copy in the first person using ‘I’ if you are an individual or ‘we’ if it’s a company with more employees. Unless you are a big-name famous person, avoid using the 3rd person.
Use a friendly tone as far as it’s in line with your brand. The audience wants to see the human side of your business.
Be interesting.
Your audience is curious and wants to check out what’s going on behind the scenes. Is there a cool story about how you got your name? Did you come from humble beginnings? Was there a challenge that pushed you to start the business? Did you have to struggle to get here?
Or maybe there are other facets of you outside of work like an interesting hobby. This is the place people come to get to know the real you.
However, be selective and only highlight important parts. This is not a place to air all your mistakes.
Blend story with data
Your About page should be a blend of storytelling to garner an emotional response and analytical facts and data to back up your expertise.
Make use of testimonials, reviews, and relevant data. Format any data into an infographic to make it more engaging.
Highlight your experience and be specific about years in business and how many people you’ve helped. This is tricky if you’re starting out, so you can focus more on your goals and how you want to help people.
In time you’ll be able to come back and add more as you gain experience. The About page is one that should be revisited regularly anyway to make sure it’s up to date and relevant.
Show wider social presence.
Link to your social media from your About page and people can go and discover even more about you. It also gives them a chance to verify that you are legit. This is why you should be incorporating social media as part of your content marketing strategy.
Social Proof
You want to inspire trust and credibility, so if you have any kind of social proof such as awards or accreditations, use them. It’s not enough to tell your story, even if it’s a good one. Back it up with some concrete evidence that other people think you’re awesome and they’ll feel good about trusting you.
And let's not forget though that the mainstream media still has clout. If you’ve appeared in the press here is the place to mention it.
Optimize for SEO
This wouldn’t be an article on website copywriting without mentioning search engine optimization. Search engines crawl web pages individually, so for best practices, each web page on your site should be optimized for a unique keyword. Research and choose a relevant keyword to incorporate in your headings and copy. Don’t get too hung up on this though, and always put your user experience first.
Conclusion
The About page is your opportunity to showcase your strengths, provide information on your business activities, give your audience a look behind the scenes, show your human side and summarise your unique identity.
Unique is the keyword here: while you don’t want any of your copy to be generic this is the place where you actively want to stand out.
Your About section should incorporate the basic elements of who you are, what you do, and why but there is scope to be creative so that you can make an authentic connection with your audience.