The About page is one of the most-visited pages on a small business website, and one of the most poorly written. It’s usually either completely absent, painfully generic, or so vague that it says nothing a stranger couldn’t have guessed. Given how much weight this page carries in a visitor’s decision to trust you, it’s worth getting right.
Here’s what actually builds trust, and what reads as filler that visitors skim right past.
Why the About Page Matters More Than People Think
Someone lands on your homepage, likes what they see, and before they fill out a contact form or make a purchase, a specific instinct kicks in: who am I actually dealing with here? The About page is where that question gets answered. It’s frequently the second or third most-visited page on a small business site, right behind the homepage and the contact page — people go there specifically to decide whether to trust you.
A weak About page doesn’t just fail to help. It actively raises doubt. If a visitor is already primed to check whether you’re legitimate and your About page is a paragraph of vague corporate language, that doubt gets reinforced rather than resolved.
What Actually Builds Trust
Specific Origin, Not a Generic Mission Statement
“We started because we saw a need in the market for quality service” says nothing. Every business could claim that sentence. What actually lands: the specific, real reason your business exists. Why you started. What problem you kept running into that made you decide to do something about it. The more specific and personal, the more credible.
Real Numbers and Timeframes
“Years of experience” is vague. “Since 1999” is specific and verifiable. Specific numbers — years in business, number of customers served, projects completed — give a visitor something concrete to anchor their trust to, rather than an adjective they have to take on faith.
A Face and a Name (When Appropriate)
For a small business, especially a service business, knowing who’s actually behind the company matters. A real name, a real photo (not a generic stock image of “a professional”), and a sentence or two about who that person actually is goes a long way. People trust people. They’re more skeptical of faceless entities.
What You Actually Do, in Plain Language
This sounds obvious, but a surprising number of About pages describe a company’s values extensively without ever clearly stating what the company actually does. Say it plainly, early, in the first paragraph if possible. Someone should be able to read the first two sentences of your About page and know exactly what you offer.
Something That Differentiates You
Not a superlative claim (“the best in the industry”) — an actual, specific difference. What do you do differently than the obvious alternative? Why would someone choose you over a competitor? If you genuinely don’t know the answer to that, it’s worth figuring out before you write the page, because the visitor is asking that exact question whether you address it or not.
Trust-building vs filler — what to include on your About page
What Reads as Filler
Buzzword-Heavy Values Lists
“We value integrity, innovation, and excellence.” Every business claims these three words, in roughly this order, so consistently that they’ve become invisible. Visitors skip past this kind of content instinctively because it doesn’t tell them anything that would distinguish you from literally any other business making the same claim.
If you genuinely want to communicate values, show them through specifics rather than naming them abstractly. Instead of “we value customer service,” describe an actual policy or practice that demonstrates it — how you handle a mistake, what your response time actually is, a specific thing you do that most competitors don’t.
Unverifiable Superlatives
“The best,” “the leading,” “the most trusted” — these claims are unfalsifiable and, precisely because of that, unpersuasive. A skeptical visitor’s instinct is to discount any claim they can’t verify. Specific, checkable facts do more work than superlatives ever will.
Generic Stock Photography
A photo of an anonymous person in a suit shaking hands, clearly not anyone who works at your business, actively undermines the authenticity the page is trying to establish. If you don’t have a real photo yet, it’s genuinely better to have no photo than an obviously generic one.
A Wall of Text With No Structure
Even a genuinely good About page loses people if it’s a dense, unbroken paragraph. Break it into short sections, use a subheading or two, and get to the point quickly. Visitors are deciding whether to trust you in seconds, not minutes — the page needs to communicate quickly, not eventually.
A Simple Structure That Works for Most Small Businesses
- One sentence stating what you do — right at the top, no preamble.
- A short, specific origin story — why this business exists, in your own words.
- Who’s behind it — a name, a real photo if you have one, a sentence about relevant background.
- What makes you different — the actual, specific answer, not a superlative.
- A clear next step — a link to your services, a contact form, whatever the natural next action is for someone who’s decided they trust you.
This isn’t a rigid template — plenty of good About pages deviate from this order or add more. But if your current About page is missing several of these five elements, that’s worth addressing before anything else about the page’s design or copy polish.
The short version: Your About page exists to answer one specific question a visitor is quietly asking: who am I dealing with here? Specific details — real numbers, a real name, a genuine origin story, an actual point of differentiation — answer that question. Vague values statements, unverifiable superlatives, and generic stock photography don’t. If you’ve never revisited your About page since first launching your site, it’s worth five minutes to check whether it’s doing its job.