The Small Business About Page Mistake (And the Fix)

The page nobody plans, the page everyone visits

Your home page got a designer. Your services pages got a copywriter. Your About page got… whatever you typed into a Google Doc one Sunday afternoon in 2019.

That’s the small business about page in most cases — the page nobody planned. The one that quietly carries more weight than anyone gives it credit for.

Here’s what gets missed: visitors who click “About” are usually further along in the buying journey than visitors who don’t. They’ve already decided your services are interesting. Now they’re checking whether you’re the kind of business they want to give money to. That’s the decision that lives on this page. And in most cases, the page is doing the opposite of what it should.

What an About page is really for

An About page is not a résumé.

It’s not a press release. It’s not a list of awards. It’s not your origin story written in third person like you’re applying for a Wikipedia article.

An About page exists to answer one question your buyer is silently asking: Are these the people I want to work with?

Everything on the page should be in service of that question. Background, story, photos, values — none of it matters except as evidence for the answer your reader is looking for.

A Stanford study on web credibility found that visitors form opinions about a site’s trustworthiness in milliseconds, and those judgments stick. Their guidelines are old now but the principle hasn’t moved: people decide whether to trust you based on cues they barely register consciously. Your About page is a long, sustained version of that first-impression test.

The four mistakes most small business About pages make

Most pages I read fall into one or more of these.

Mistake 1: Talking about yourself in third person when nobody’s there

“Acme Plumbing was founded in 2007 by a passionate plumber dedicated to bringing quality service to South Florida homes.”

Read it out loud. That’s not a person talking. That’s a brochure pretending to be a person. The reader can feel it instantly. The result is the opposite of trust — it reads like a corporation hiding behind itself.

Mistake 2: Listing facts that don’t earn a place

Founding date. Number of employees. Square footage of your office. Awards from organizations the reader has never heard of. None of these answer the question your reader is actually asking. Some of them might be useful. Most of them are filler.

Mistake 3: Using the page to talk about you

This is the one Jessica wrote a whole post about — how to make your website speak to customers instead of about yourself. The pattern repeats here. An About page that’s all about your journey, your values, your mission with no thread back to the reader is a closed door. The reader doesn’t see themselves in it. So they leave.

Mistake 4: Mistaking professional for human

Many small business owners think professional means stiff. Carefully buttoned. Distant. The opposite is true. The brands people trust online are the ones that sound like a person. Mailchimp built an empire on a brand voice that felt like a cheerful friend. Patagonia’s About content reads like the founder is sitting across the table from you. Liquid Death turned a beverage company into a cult by sounding like an actual human with a sense of humor.

Professional and human aren’t on opposite ends of a spectrum. They’re the same thing.

What buyers actually want to see there

Strip away the convention and most buyers are looking for four things on an About page:

1. A face. A photo of the actual person or team. Not a stock photo. Not a logo. A person. Trust starts with the visual reminder that someone real is behind the work.
2. A reason you’re doing this. Not a mission statement — a reason. Why this work, and not something else? The answer doesn’t need to be inspiring. It needs to be true.
3. Evidence you’ve done the work. Years in business, customers served, the kinds of problems you’ve solved. Specific. Not “decades of experience” — actual numbers, actual examples.
4. A signal that you understand them. A line, a paragraph, a sentence — somewhere on the page — that shows you know what your buyer is actually dealing with. This is what separates an About page that feels human from one that feels like marketing.

That’s it. Four things. The rest is decoration.

A simple structure that works

Here’s a pattern we’ve seen work repeatedly. Use it as scaffolding, not a template — your voice should still come through.

• Opening line: A sentence that places your buyer in the picture. Not “We are a…” — something that connects to who’s reading.
• The work: What you actually do, in plain language. One paragraph, max.
• The why: What got you into this and what keeps you in it. Honest. Not aspirational copy.
• The proof: Numbers, names, years. Specific evidence, briefly stated.
• The team or face: Photos of the actual humans, with names, with a sentence each that sounds like them.
• The next step: A clear, single CTA — the one thing you’d love a reader to do next.

Six elements. No filler. The whole page should fit on a phone screen with maybe one scroll.

The voice test — read it out loud

Here’s the rewrite tool I’d use before any structural change:

Open your About page in a new tab. Read the first paragraph out loud. Then ask:

• Does this sound like me, or like a press release?
• Could this paragraph appear on twenty other websites with the names changed?
• Would I say this in a real conversation?

If any answer is “no” or “yes, kind of generic,” the page hasn’t earned your byline yet. Rewrite the paragraph the way you’d say it if a customer asked you over coffee in Pembroke Pines. Then read that out loud. You’ll hear the difference.

Notice how the published About pages of brands you trust feel like a person talking. Trust is built quietly, before a single click — and the About page is one of the loudest places that quiet work shows up.

Final Thoughts

The small business about page is the most underestimated page on most websites. It’s also one of the easiest to fix. You don’t need a designer or a copywriter. You need an hour, your honest voice, and the willingness to delete the parts that sound like a brochure.

Open the page this week. Read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound like you, it isn’t yet.