An About page is the second page most visitors open after a homepage. On a small business site it is where someone decides whether to call you or go back to the search results and try the next name. Most About pages spend that moment on a founding date and a mission statement. Here is how to write one that answers what a customer in San Antonio is actually wondering.
What an About Page Is Actually For
An About page exists to answer one question: can these people be trusted with my money? A visitor who opens your About page has already seen what you sell. That visitor is now checking whether the business behind the offer is real, competent, and still operating. The About page is a trust check, not a history lesson.
Write every line against that question. A sentence telling the reader your company was founded in 2011 only earns its place if being established matters to the decision. A sentence naming the three people who answer the phone earns its place almost always. In practice, the strongest About pages read like a straight answer from a person rather than a brochure approved by a committee. First decide what doubt a customer arrives with. Then write the paragraph that removes that doubt, and cut the rest.
Start With What You Do, Not When You Started
The opening paragraph of an About page should state what the business does and who it does it for, in plain words. A reader who lands on that page straight from Google may never have seen your homepage, so the page has to stand on its own. One or two sentences covers it: the service, the customer, the city.
Origin stories belong further down, and only when they explain something useful. The year you opened matters if longevity is the proof. The reason you opened matters if it explains why you work differently from the shop down the road. Everything else, including the garage and the napkin sketch and the leap of faith, is a story you enjoy more than your customer does. For example, a plumbing company’s second paragraph is better spent on the fact that the owner still runs every service call than on how the first van was bought.
Name the People Who Do the Work
Named people are the strongest trust signal an About page has. A visitor comparing three dentists or three electricians is trying to work out who they will be dealing with. A page that says our team of experienced professionals tells that visitor nothing. A page that says Maria runs the front desk and books every appointment tells them exactly what Tuesday morning will feel like.
List the people a customer will meet, with first names, roles, and one concrete detail each. Then say who to ask for. Avoid inflated titles on a four-person business, because Chief Experience Officer at a neighborhood bakery reads as a joke to the person reading it. If you are a one-person business, say so plainly. Owners who answer their own phone should treat that as a selling point, because for most small jobs it genuinely is one.
Be Specific About Where You Work
A service area belongs on the About page because it saves both sides a wasted phone call. San Antonio is large and traffic-shaped: a customer in Stone Oak and a customer out past Loop 410 can be forty minutes apart on a bad afternoon. Spell out the neighborhoods you cover and the outer edges where you stop, then say what happens past them.
Then be honest about the shape of the business. A shop with a counter should give the address and the hours. A mobile trade should say it travels to the customer and list the areas it reaches. A business that works remotely should say that rather than implying a storefront that does not exist. Overstating your footprint produces inquiries you have to turn down, and every turned-down inquiry is a wasted hour on both sides. Clarity here filters leads before they reach your inbox.
Proof Beats Adjectives
Proof is any statement a reader could check. An adjective is a claim they have to take on faith. Words like trusted, premier, passionate and award-winning appear on so many small business sites that they now carry almost no weight. Replace each one with the fact sitting underneath it, or delete it.
Useful proof is ordinary and verifiable. A license number. A certification with the issuing body named. The number of years in operation, when that number is real. A link to your reviews rather than a hand-picked quote with no source attached. Membership in a trade association. Proof of insurance, for the trades where a careful customer should be asking. First write the adjective you were tempted to use, then ask yourself what makes it true, then publish that instead. If nothing makes it true, the adjective was decoration, and decoration is exactly what readers skim past.
One Real Photo Does More Than Three Paragraphs
Photographs on an About page carry more weight than the copy around them, because a reader takes in a face faster than a sentence. One clear photo of the owner, the team, or the actual workspace does more for trust than any paragraph you could write. A real photo also settles the quiet question behind most About page visits, which is whether the business exists at all.
Use your own photos, even imperfect ones. Stock photography is easy to recognize now, and a reader who spots it starts doubting everything else on the page. A phone camera near a window beats a purchased image of strangers in a conference room. Keep the files a sensible size so the page still loads quickly, because an About page stuffed with full-resolution photos is a slow page, and a slow page loses the visitor before any trust-building gets a chance to work.
What to Leave Off Your About Page
Three things weaken most About pages and should come off. The first is a mission statement written in corporate language that no customer asked to read. The second is a wall of stock adjectives doing the work that facts should be doing. The third is anything not quite true: a team page listing subcontractors as staff, a map pin where no office exists, a founding date that has been stretched a little.
Then cut the dead ends. An About page that finishes with no way to get in touch sends the reader back to the menu to hunt for a phone number, and a share of those readers leave instead. The same thinking shapes how we handle these pages, which we describe on our approach page. Finally, drop the long passage about your values if the behavior it describes shows up nowhere else on the site.
A Structure You Can Fill In Today
A working About page needs six blocks, in this order:
- What you do and for whom — two sentences, naming the service and the city.
- Who does the work — named people, real roles, one human detail each.
- Where you work — neighborhoods, service radius, address and hours if you have a counter.
- Proof — licenses, certifications, insurance, a link to your reviews.
- One photo — the owner, the team, or the workspace, taken by you.
- The next step — a phone number and a form, visible without scrolling back up.
Draft each block in one sitting without editing, then make a second pass and delete every sentence that is not an answer to a real customer question. Most owners cut half of what they wrote and end up with a far better page. If writing it is the part that keeps stalling, that is normal, and it is usually a sign the page needs an interview rather than a blank document.
We build About pages as part of every custom web design project, and the writing usually starts with a video call where we ask the questions a customer would. If your About page is still a founding date and a mission statement, tell us about your business and we will write back within one business day.
