Conversion Copy April 23, 2026 18 min read

How to Write an About Page That Actually Sells

A practical guide for small service businesses: the founder story, the contrarian point of view, the proof, the CTA — and three full before/after rewrites you can model from.

Ruud ten Have

Ruud ten Have

Marketing & AI Strategy • Searchlab

Why Most About Pages Are Wasted Real Estate

Open a random small service business website and click the About link. You will almost always land on the same page. There's a header that says "About Us." There's a paragraph that begins with "Founded in [year], [Company Name] is a passionate team of dedicated professionals committed to delivering excellence to our valued clients." There's a stock photo of a generic team in a glass-walled meeting room. There's a mission statement that contains the words "innovative," "trusted," "results-driven," and "tailored solutions" in some combination. There's a closing paragraph about how the company "looks forward to partnering with you on your journey." There is no CTA, or there's a tiny "Contact Us" button at the bottom.

This is, statistically, the second most-visited page on the entire site. Google Analytics data across small-business sites consistently puts the About page behind only the homepage in pageviews, and around 52% of B2B buyers visit the About page first when evaluating a company. Visitors land there because they've decided the homepage interests them and now they want to know two things: who is on the other end of this, and can I trust them. The page above answers neither.

The economic cost of getting this wrong is hard to overstate. The visitor who arrives on your About page is, by definition, more qualified than the average traffic source. They've already self-selected past the homepage. They are between 30 seconds and three minutes from either reaching out or leaving and never coming back. 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a page if the message isn't clear, and About pages are particularly vulnerable to this — there's no obvious "next thing" to do besides leave. A wasted About page is the most expensive blank space on a small business's site.

The frustrating part is that none of this is hard to fix. The page is wasted because owners default to a template. They sit down to write About copy, freeze a little — because writing about yourself feels uncomfortable — and reach for the safest, most generic phrasing they can find. The result is a page that could belong to any business in any industry. This guide is the antidote: a concrete, structural way to write the page so that it actually does the conversion work it's supposed to do, with three full rewrites at the end you can use as templates for your own.

What a Small Service Business About Page Actually Has to Do

Before we get into structure, let's get clear on what the page is for. An About page on a small service business website is not a brochure, not a corporate "history of the company" document, and not a place to list your values. It has three concrete jobs, and it has to do them in the order the buyer is asking the questions.

Job 1: Confirm a real human is on the other end of this. The number-one anxiety a buyer has when evaluating a small service business is the fear of being ghosted, ignored, or shuffled around between account managers. They want to see the actual face of the actual person who will be doing the actual work. This is why About pages without a photo, or with stock photography, underperform — they fail to do the most basic credibility job before any other element gets a chance.

Job 2: Prove that this person understands the visitor's problem. Saying "we help businesses grow" is not understanding the problem. Saying "we work with one-to-five-person service businesses who've been burned by an agency that promised leads and delivered reports" is. The proof of understanding is specificity. Visitors are scanning for evidence that you have seen their exact situation before, and the only way to prove that is to describe it in language so specific they can't believe a generic copywriter wrote it.

Job 3: Make the visitor want this person, not the next option. This is where most pages fail entirely. They prove there's a human, sometimes prove the human understands the problem, and then leave the visitor with no reason to choose them over three competitors who could probably do the same work. The differentiation has to be on the page. Not a logo strip. Not a list of services. An actual articulated reason why this person, this approach, this company — and why everyone else is missing something.

Notice what's not on this list. The founding date doesn't matter unless it's a credibility lever (50 years in business is one; "founded in 2023" is not). The team size doesn't matter unless you're using it to signal something specific (small enough to care, big enough to deliver). The mission and vision statements almost never matter — they're internal documents that have somehow ended up on customer-facing pages. The page is for the buyer, not for you. Every word has to be earning its place against those three jobs.

The structural implication: a converting About page is between 600 and 1,200 words. Long enough to do real story work, short enough that the right buyer reads to the bottom. Anything shorter and you can't establish trust; anything longer and you've crossed into autobiography territory. Pages that are 2,500 words or more on small service business sites usually exist because the owner couldn't bring themselves to cut, not because the buyer needed all of it.

The 5 Elements of a High-Converting About Page

Across hundreds of small service business About pages we've audited and rebuilt, the ones that convert have the same five-part structure. The order matters. The proportions matter. The content of each section is where the personality lives.

Element 1: A specific positioning statement (the first 2-3 sentences)

The first thing on the page, after the heading, is not your founding story. It's a positioning statement that tells the visitor in plain language: who you are, who you serve, and what makes you different. Two or three sentences, maximum. "I'm Ruud. I run Searchlab, a marketing studio for one-to-twenty-person Dutch service businesses who've outgrown DIY but aren't ready to spend €5,000/month with an agency. We do the work, we don't write reports about doing the work." That's the shape. If a visitor reads only those three sentences and leaves, they should know whether they're a fit. For more on getting this part right, see our guide on positioning for small business.

Element 2: The founder origin story (the middle 300-500 words)

This is the part most owners skip or fake. It's also the part that does the heaviest conversion work. The story isn't a CV — it's the specific moment, frustration, or realization that led to this business existing. The customers who buy from you are buying into a worldview, and the origin story is where that worldview gets told. We'll come back to this section in detail in a moment.

Element 3: A clear point of view (1-2 paragraphs)

After the story, the page has to land on what you actually believe — and what you don't. The mistake is being agreeable. The fix is being slightly contrarian: "Most agencies in our space sell reports. We don't believe reports are a deliverable. We believe the deliverable is whether your phone rang more this month than last month." This kind of statement does two things at once. It attracts buyers who agree with the worldview, and it actively repels buyers who don't — which is good, because those buyers were going to be the painful clients anyway.

Element 4: Proof (named clients, numbers, testimonials)

After the story and the worldview, the page needs to show evidence. The hierarchy of proof, in order of weight: named clients (with their permission), specific outcomes with numbers and timeframes, testimonials from people the visitor can plausibly imagine themselves being, and verifiable third-party signals like Google reviews, certifications, or press. We'll cover this section in depth below.

Element 5: A single clear CTA

The page closes with one — exactly one — call to action. The buyer has just read your story, internalized your point of view, and seen the proof. If they're going to act, they need a clear next thing to do. Multiple CTAs at the bottom of an About page is a confidence signal in the wrong direction; it suggests you're not sure what you want. One CTA, phrased in the language of someone who's already half-convinced, with a single button. We'll detail what works below.

That's the architecture. Five elements. Roughly 800 to 1,000 words. The next sections drill into the three sections that make or break the page: the founder story, the point of view, and the proof.

The Founder Origin Story (Without Being Navel-Gazing)

The founder origin story is the most powerful and the most frequently misused section on any small business About page. Done well, it is the single thing that separates you from every other vendor doing the same work. Done badly, it is a self-indulgent paragraph that nobody reads.

The line between the two is specificity, and the rule is simple: the story has to be useful to the buyer, not to you. If a sentence is making you feel good about yourself but not telling the buyer anything about why they should hire you, that sentence has to be cut. If a sentence is showing the buyer something about your worldview, your judgment, or your relationship to their problem, it stays.

The structure that works, every time, is a four-beat narrative.

Beat 1: What you saw broken. Not "I had a passion for marketing." Specifically: what was the situation in your industry, your customer's life, or your own work that you couldn't stop noticing? "I spent six years in agencies watching small businesses pay €2,500 a month for slide decks instead of leads. The same conversation kept happening: the client wanted phones to ring, and we were producing PowerPoints." That's a useful Beat 1. It tells the buyer you've been in the room and you didn't like what you saw.

Beat 2: What you tried, and where it didn't work. The credibility lever here is honesty about the path. "I tried to fix this from the inside for two years. Different process, different reporting structure, different client mix. The model didn't bend." The buyer trusts a story with friction in it. A story where everything went smoothly reads as marketing.

Beat 3: What you decided to do differently. This is where the business gets born. "So I started Searchlab on a different premise: we don't bill for hours, we bill for a working marketing function. We don't sell strategies, we ship copy and campaigns. The deliverable is what's live, not what's in a deck." The specificity is the entire point. "I wanted to build a better agency" is not a Beat 3; "I started billing for output instead of hours" is.

Beat 4: Who you decided to serve, and who you don't. The story closes with a tight statement of who this is for. "We work with one-to-twenty-person service businesses, mostly Dutch, mostly in B2B services, who've already proven they have a market and need someone to run the marketing. We don't take on pre-revenue businesses, and we don't work with companies over 50 people — they need something we don't sell."

Four beats. Three to five paragraphs. Roughly 300 to 500 words. The buyer reads it and comes out the other side knowing your worldview, your bias, your taste, and whether they're a fit. That's the founder story doing its job.

The two failure modes to watch for: the navel-gazing version (long passages about your childhood, your career trajectory, your degree, things that have nothing to do with the buyer's problem) and the false-modesty version ("I just love helping clients succeed!"). Both are about you. The good story is about a problem the buyer recognizes — and your specific path to caring enough about that problem to build a business around it.

One last detail: write the story in first person. "I" beats "we" beats "Ruud is a marketer with..." every time. The third-person bio belongs in your LinkedIn profile and at the bottom of guest articles. On your own About page, the buyer wants to hear from you directly. The third-person voice introduces a fictional narrator standing between the founder and the visitor, and that narrator destroys exactly the intimacy the page is trying to build.

Why We Do This: The Contrarian Point of View

After the founder story, the page has to make a claim. Not a vague one. A specific, defensible, slightly uncomfortable claim about how the work should be done — one that some readers will agree with and some readers will reject. The disagreement is the point.

This is the section that almost every small business gets wrong. They write something like: "We believe in honest communication, quality work, and putting the customer first." Every business in every industry believes this. Or they say: "Our values are integrity, innovation, and excellence." Words so devalued by overuse that the buyer's brain skips them entirely. 38% of customers say they're more likely to trust brands that show authentic content, and "we value integrity" is the opposite of authenticity — it's a placeholder where authenticity should be.

The fix is to say something specific that not everyone in your industry would agree with. The test is simple: read the statement out loud and ask yourself, "Would a competitor in my space refuse to say this?" If yes, you have a real point of view. If no, cut it and try again.

Examples of statements that pass the test, from real small business About pages we've worked on:

Notice what these statements share. Each one excludes some buyers — and by doing so, makes the right buyer feel found. The marketing consultant who refuses to write strategies is going to alienate buyers who want strategies. That's fine; those buyers were not going to be happy clients anyway. The buyer who has been burned by strategy decks reads that line and thinks "finally, someone who sees it."

The contrarian point of view is what makes the page memorable. The buyer might not act today. They might leave, think about it, come back next week. The thing they remember from the visit is the line that disagreed with the rest of the industry — because that's the line that gave them a reason to choose you instead of any other option. For more on how this works structurally, see our guide on differentiation for service businesses.

One craft note: the contrarian POV should occupy one or two paragraphs, no more. If the entire page is contrarian, you sound exhausting. The story does the bonding work. The POV is the punctuation mark. Get the proportion wrong — too much disagreement, not enough story — and the page reads as a manifesto rather than an introduction.

Proof on the About Page: Testimonials, Numbers, Named Clients

Story and point of view do the emotional work. Proof closes the deal. Without proof, even a brilliantly-written About page reads as a really well-articulated opinion. With proof, the same page reads as a track record. The order matters: proof goes after the story, not before. The visitor needs the context — who you are, why you do this — before the names and numbers mean anything.

There's a hierarchy of proof for small service business About pages. The higher up the list, the more weight the element carries. Most pages over-invest in the bottom of the list and under-invest in the top.

Tier 1 (highest weight): Named clients with permission. A logo strip of recognizable client names is the single highest-weight proof element on the page. The reason is asymmetric: a fake or implied client list is easy to call out, so when a visitor sees a real one, they assume real clients have signed off on appearing there. If you can name your clients — full company names, ideally with logos — do it. If your clients are confidential (lawyers, healthcare, certain B2B), use industry descriptors that signal scale: "a top-three Dutch retail bank," "a Series-B SaaS company in the fintech vertical." Specificity without a name still carries weight.

Tier 2: Specific outcomes with numbers and timeframes. "Reduced their cost per lead from €82 to €34 in 90 days" is a Tier 2 proof point. "Helped clients improve their marketing performance" is not. The pattern is: starting state, ending state, timeframe, mechanism. Numbers without timeframes are weaker than numbers with timeframes. Outcomes without context (industry, situation, scale) are weaker than outcomes with context. Aim for two to four of these on the page, ideally tied to specific named clients or anonymized cases that link to full case studies.

Tier 3: Testimonials with full attribution. A good testimonial has: full name, role title, company name, photo of the person, and a quote that says something specific. "Great work, would recommend!" is not a Tier 3 testimonial; it's noise. "We hired Searchlab after firing two agencies. Three months in, our cost per lead is down 60% and we finally know what's working" — attributed to a real person at a real company — is. Two to three of these on the page is enough. More than four and the page starts to feel like a sales letter.

Tier 4: Verifiable third-party signals. Google review counts (with the actual rating), industry certifications, press mentions, podcast appearances, awards from credible sources. These work as supporting proof — they're not enough on their own, but they raise the floor of credibility. The trick is restraint: a row of six "as featured in" logos works; a row of fifteen looks desperate.

What doesn't count as proof: stock testimonial blocks with first names only ("Sarah K." is not a real person to a skeptical reader), vague volume claims ("100+ projects delivered" with no year, industry, or outcome), and "trusted by businesses across Europe" boilerplate. These elements actively hurt the page — they signal that the owner reached for the safest, vaguest credibility patterns instead of doing the harder work of getting specific.

One often-overlooked proof element: the "boring" credentials. Years in business, total revenue managed, total clients served, total projects shipped — when the numbers are real and big, they belong on the page. "Since 2017, we've managed €18M in cumulative ad spend across 47 client accounts" is a high-weight proof statement that takes one sentence. Most owners are too modest to write it. They shouldn't be.

For data on which proof elements convert best across industries, our 2026 conversion optimization statistics page has the benchmarks. The headline finding from CRO research: pages with named, attributed testimonials convert 34% better than pages with anonymous quotes, and pages with specific numbers convert 27-104% better than pages with general claims. The proof section is not optional decoration; it's a measurable conversion lever.

The CTA: What People Should Do After Reading About

The About page has done its work. The visitor knows who you are, what you believe, who you serve, and that you've done it for real clients before. Now what?

The mistake almost everyone makes is too many CTAs, too early, in too many directions. A sticky "book a call" button at the top. A "subscribe to our newsletter" form in the middle. A "see our services" link at the bottom. A footer with eight more links. By the time the visitor reaches the end of the page, they don't have one clear next action — they have eight half-formed options, and the brain's response to too many options is to pick none of them.

The fix is structural restraint: one main CTA, placed at the bottom of the page, after the proof. The visitor has spent two to three minutes investing in your story. The close is the moment that investment pays out. A single, confident CTA at that moment converts at much higher rates than three CTAs scattered through the page.

What the CTA actually says matters. Generic CTAs ("Contact Us," "Get Started") perform worse than specific ones. The pattern that works on small service business About pages is: acknowledge what the visitor just read, name the next action in concrete terms, set an expectation. "If this sounds like the kind of help you've been looking for, here's how to start: book a 30-minute strategy call. We'll look at your current marketing, tell you what we'd do differently, and you'll know whether we're a fit. No deck, no follow-up sequence." Compare that to "Get In Touch."

The CTA should ask for a single thing. Not a phone call OR an email OR a form fill. One action. The most common shapes that work for small service businesses:

What does not work: "Contact Us." It's the universal sign that the page didn't think about what the visitor should do. Replace it on every page you control.

One more structural detail: a long About page (1,000+ words) can support a single secondary CTA two-thirds of the way down — usually after the proof section, in the same shape as the main one. Two CTAs is the maximum. Three or more starts to feel pushy and breaks the trust the rest of the page has built. If you've ever read an About page and felt vaguely sold-to, this is almost always why.

For the broader argument about how positioning, copy and CTAs interact across a small business website, see our guide to AI-assisted website copy for small business.

3 Before-and-After Rewrites

Here are three real-shaped About page openings — the first 200-300 words of the page — rewritten from "default template" to "actually converts." The originals are paraphrased composites of dozens of pages we've audited; the rewrites are the kind of copy we'd ship.

Rewrite 1: Independent strategy consultant

Before — generic template

About Hartmann Consulting

Founded in 2019, Hartmann Consulting is a leading strategic advisory firm dedicated to helping forward-thinking organizations achieve sustainable growth. Our team of experienced consultants brings together decades of expertise across multiple industries to deliver tailored solutions that drive real results.

At Hartmann, we believe in the power of strategic thinking, data-driven decision-making, and long-term partnerships. Our mission is to empower our clients to unlock their full potential and navigate the complexities of today's business landscape with confidence.

Whether you're a startup looking to scale or an established enterprise seeking transformation, we have the expertise and passion to help you succeed. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your journey.

After — converts

I'm Lukas Hartmann. I do strategy work for one specific kind of company.

Founders of €5M-€30M B2B services businesses who've grown organically, hit a wall, and realized they need to make decisions about pricing, positioning and channel mix that the team can't make for them. Usually I'm the second or third strategy person they've talked to, and the first two were McKinsey alumni who quoted €120,000 for a deck.

I left a Big Four consulting partnership in 2019 because I'd watched too many of those decks land on a shelf. The ones that worked weren't the ones with the best slides — they were the ones where someone stayed in the room long enough to argue with the founder about the real decision. So I started Hartmann to do exactly that work, in eight-week engagements, in writing, for a flat fee. No army of analysts. No deck for the board. Just the call, the document, and a list of decisions to make this quarter.

I take six clients a year. Below is the work, what it costs, and the kinds of companies I say yes and no to.

What changed: the rewrite leads with a person and a specific buyer. It tells a compressed origin story (left the partnership, watched the decks fail, started doing the work differently) in two sentences. It states the contrarian POV — eight-week engagements, written deliverables, flat fee — without using the word "value" or "results." It closes with scarcity ("six clients a year") and a forward pointer to the proof, instead of a vague "contact us." Total word count is similar to the original. The conversion rate is not.

Rewrite 2: Small marketing agency (3-5 people)

Before — generic template

About BrightWave Marketing

BrightWave Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency dedicated to helping businesses thrive in the digital age. Our talented team of marketers, designers, and strategists work collaboratively to deliver innovative campaigns that drive measurable results for our clients.

Since our founding, we've partnered with brands across a wide range of industries, from local businesses to international enterprises. We pride ourselves on our data-driven approach, our commitment to creativity, and our unwavering focus on ROI. We don't just run campaigns — we build long-term success.

Our values: Innovation. Integrity. Impact. Together, these values guide everything we do. Get in touch to start your journey with BrightWave today.

After — converts

BrightWave is a four-person marketing agency for Dutch B2B services companies between 10 and 50 people.

We were started in 2021 by Anna and Pieter, who'd both spent five years at larger agencies — me running paid media, Anna running content — and kept ending up frustrated by the same pattern. Clients with €30,000-€100,000 annual marketing budgets were being treated like enterprise accounts: full pitch decks, account managers, slide-heavy reviews, and outputs that took three weeks to ship. The math didn't work. They needed less ceremony and more work shipped.

So we built BrightWave to fit that gap exactly. Four people, no account managers, two-week sprints, every client works directly with the senior who is doing their work. We don't pitch. We don't take on businesses below €1M revenue. We refuse retainers under €3,500/month — not to be precious, but because below that we can't do the work properly and you'd be better off hiring a freelancer.

We've been running this model for five years. Below: the clients we've done it with, what we shipped, and the kinds of engagements we say yes to.

What changed: the rewrite drops "full-service" entirely, names a specific size of agency (four people) as a feature rather than apologizing for it, gives a concrete origin story tied to a specific frustration, and lists exclusion rules ("no businesses below €1M," "no retainers under €3,500") that signal both confidence and the ability to deliver. The exclusion is what makes the right-fit buyer feel found. For agencies, this kind of tight messaging framework is the highest-leverage change you can make.

Rewrite 3: Solo freelancer (designer / developer / specialist)

Before — generic template

About Sophie

Hi, I'm Sophie! I'm a passionate freelance web designer based in Rotterdam. I love creating beautiful, user-friendly websites that help my clients tell their story and grow their businesses.

With over five years of experience in the field, I've worked with a diverse range of clients, from small startups to established brands. My approach is collaborative, creative, and always focused on delivering the best possible results for my clients.

When I'm not designing, you can find me hiking, cooking, or exploring new coffee spots around the city. Let's create something amazing together — I'd love to hear about your project!

After — converts

I design and build small business websites in Webflow. Specifically, I do one thing: I take a service business that has decent positioning but a website that doesn't reflect it, and I ship them a Webflow site in 2-3 weeks for €4,500-€8,500.

I started doing this in 2020 after three years at a design agency where I watched the same problem on repeat: a small business owner would pay €15,000 for a redesign, get a beautiful prototype six months later, and then never get the actual site launched because the implementation cost as much again. The work that mattered — the live, fast, editable site — kept being the part that fell through.

So I went solo with one rule: I only take projects I can finish in three weeks, and I only build in Webflow because the client can edit it themselves the day after launch. No custom CMS. No "phase two" promises. No retainer. The site goes live, you own it, you can update it yourself, and we're done.

I take 12 projects a year. Below is the work, the prices, and the booking calendar — usually 6-10 weeks out.

What changed: the freelancer rewrite kills "passionate," "beautiful," and "let's create something amazing" — three of the most over-used phrases on the freelance internet. It replaces them with a specific service, a specific tool (Webflow), a specific timeframe (2-3 weeks), a specific price band (€4,500-€8,500), and a specific exclusion (no custom CMS, no phase two). The hiking and coffee details are removed entirely. They were never relevant to the buyer's decision; they belonged on the personal blog, not the business About page.

Notice the pattern across all three rewrites: less aspirational language, more specifics; less "what we do" and more "who we don't work with"; less "values," more "rules." That pattern is the entire game. If you only take one thing from this guide, take that.

About Page Mistakes That Kill Conversion

The patterns we see most often when auditing small business About pages, in rough order of frequency:

Mistake 1: Starting in third person. "Hartmann Consulting was founded in 2019..." The page is supposed to introduce a person; introducing a corporate entity instead destroys the entire premise. Switch to "I" or "we" in the first sentence and watch the page get warmer immediately.

Mistake 2: Stock photography of generic teams. The most damaging single element on most About pages. Visitors recognize stock photos in milliseconds, and the entire page loses credibility from that point on. A real photo of you in your actual workspace — even if the lighting isn't perfect — outperforms a perfect stock photo every time.

Mistake 3: Mission/vision/values as the main content. The mission and vision documents you wrote in a strategy session are internal artifacts. They tell the buyer nothing they can't infer from your work. Cut the entire "Our Values: Integrity, Innovation, Excellence" section and replace it with one specific contrarian belief.

Mistake 4: No proof at all. Pages that tell a great story but provide no evidence of having delivered the promise. The buyer reads the story, agrees with the worldview, scrolls to find the proof, finds nothing, and leaves. Even a single named client and a single specific outcome is enough to anchor the page; zero proof leaves the visitor dependent on the story alone, which isn't enough for a high-ticket service decision.

Mistake 5: Multiple CTAs, no single close. Sticky button at the top, contact form in the middle, services link in the footer. By the end of the page, the visitor doesn't have one clear next thing — they have eight half-options. Strip all but one. The single CTA at the bottom converts better than the three scattered through the page combined.

Mistake 6: Writing it once and never updating. An About page that hasn't been touched in three years reads as a business that hasn't grown in three years. Quarterly review, yearly meaningful update. Replace one client name, refresh one number, re-read the whole page out loud and cut anything that no longer feels true.

Mistake 7: Cute personal details that don't earn their place. "When I'm not designing, you'll find me hiking and exploring coffee shops." Maybe true. Not relevant to the buyer's decision. The hiking detail belongs on a personal blog or LinkedIn — on the business About page, it dilutes the buying signal. The exception: a personal detail that genuinely connects to the work ("I built this business after running my own e-commerce store for four years and watching three different agencies fail to fix it") is fair game.

Mistake 8: Treating the About page as the place for legal/admin information. Founding date, KvK number, BTW ID, registered office. All of this belongs in the footer or a separate /imprint page. Putting it on the About page interrupts the trust narrative. The visitor isn't there for compliance information.

AI-Assist on the About Page (Where It Works, Where It Doesn't)

The About page is the one page on a small business website where AI is most likely to make the work worse, not better. The reason is structural: AI generates an average of every other page it has been trained on, and the average About page is exactly the kind of generic, template-driven content this guide is trying to fix. Ask ChatGPT for an About page and you will get back the "Founded in 2019, [Company Name] is a passionate team..." template, polished. Polished generic is still generic.

That said, AI is genuinely useful at specific parts of the process — just not the parts most owners use it for.

Where AI helps: getting the raw material out of your head. The hardest part of writing your own About page isn't the writing — it's the introspection. Most owners have never sat down and articulated, in plain language, what they actually saw broken in their industry, why they decided to build this business, and who they refuse to work with. A 30-minute conversation with Claude or ChatGPT — where the AI asks structured questions and you ramble in voice notes — produces 2,000 words of raw, unedited founder thinking that you can then shape into the four-beat narrative. The AI is acting as a journalist, not as a writer.

Where AI helps: editing for tightness. Once you have a draft, ask the AI to cut it by 30% without losing the specifics. It will reliably remove the connective tissue, the throat-clearing, and the redundant phrases. This is editing labor that takes a human writer an hour and the AI does in seconds.

Where AI helps: spotting clichés. Ask the AI to flag every generic phrase ("results-driven," "tailored solutions," "innovative approach," "unwavering commitment") in the draft. It will find them. You replace them with specifics. This is the single highest-leverage AI use on an About page — it's a clichés detector, not a writer.

Where AI hurts: writing the founder story. Every AI-written origin story we've seen reads as a competent generic. The specifics that make a real story compelling — the actual frustration, the actual decision, the actual company in the actual year — have to come from the founder. AI cannot invent the contrarian point of view either, because by definition that point of view is one that the average article on the internet would not make. AI is trained on the average article on the internet.

Where AI hurts: generating proof. Don't ask AI for testimonials, case study numbers, or client names. This should be obvious — fabricated proof is worse than no proof — but in the volume of AI content getting published, real-looking but fictional proof is showing up regularly. If a number isn't in your real CRM or your real bank account, it does not go on the About page.

A shortcut if you'd rather not stitch the workflow yourself

The "AI as journalist plus AI as cliché detector" workflow above is what we use with our own clients, and it works — but it assumes you're willing to run two or three separate sessions and shape the output yourself. If you'd rather have the structured intake, the draft, the proof framework and a positioned About page produced inside one coherent flow, we've been using Rudys.AI with our SMB clients for exactly this kind of work. It runs the structured discovery interview, holds context across sessions, and turns the raw material into a positioned, proof-aware page draft you can edit and publish. Starts at $19/month, remembers your business and your ICP across sessions. Not a writer-replacement — it still needs your story and your proof — but for solo service businesses it collapses what's normally a week of false-starts into an afternoon of useful work.

See Rudys.AI

The general rule: AI is a tool for getting raw material out of you and tightening the prose afterwards. The middle — what the page actually says, what you actually believe, who you actually serve — has to come from you. Pages where the entire thing was AI-generated read as forgettable, even when the prose is grammatically perfect, because they're an average of every other About page online. The point of an About page is to be the opposite of an average.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes an About page actually sell for a small business?

An About page sells when it answers three silent questions visitors arrive with: can I trust this person, do they understand my problem, and are they the right fit for me? In a small service business, the page sells by leading with a specific founder story (why you started, what you saw broken, who you decided to help), backing it with concrete proof (named clients, numbers, dated case studies), stating a clear point of view that polarizes the wrong-fit buyers out, and ending with a single confident CTA. The pages that fail try to sound corporate and end up sounding like every other agency. Selling is being specific about who you are and who you're not for.

How long should an About page be for a small service business?

Long enough to do the job, short enough that the right buyer reads it. For most solo consultants and small service teams, a strong About page lives between 600 and 1,200 words — enough room for a real story, a few proof points, and a clear close, without becoming an autobiography. The bigger mistake is not length but density: a 1,500-word page with no specifics reads worse than a 400-word page that says exactly who you are, who you serve, and why. If you can't fill 600 words with non-generic content, the problem is not the page — it's the positioning.

Should an About page be in first person or third person?

First person, almost always, for a small service business. Third person ("Ruud is a marketer with...") borrows authority from the format and signals "this is what we think we're supposed to sound like." First person ("I started Searchlab because...") signals "a real human is on the other end of this." Visitors to small-business About pages are explicitly looking for the person, not a brand. The exception is when there's a genuine team and you want each member to have a third-person bio block underneath the founder story. But the founder section itself should be first person — that's where trust gets built.

Do I really need a photo on my About page?

Yes. A real photo of a real human face is one of the highest-leverage trust elements on the page, especially for small service businesses where the buyer is paying for someone's judgment. The photo doesn't have to be a corporate portrait — and arguably shouldn't be. A natural, well-lit shot of you doing the work, in your actual office, or just looking at the camera like a person, outperforms a stiff studio headshot. The thing that always underperforms: stock photography of "diverse business teams in a meeting room." Visitors recognize stock photos in milliseconds, and the page loses credibility from that point on.

What proof elements actually move the needle on an About page?

In rough order of impact: named clients (logos with permission, or full company names in case study links), specific numbers from real engagements ("reduced their cost per lead from €82 to €34 in 90 days"), testimonials with full name, role, company, and ideally a photo of the person quoted, dated case studies that show recency, and verifiable third-party signals (Google reviews count, certifications, press mentions). What does not move the needle: vague statements like "trusted by clients across Europe," stock testimonial blocks with first names only, and anything that uses a number without context ("100+ projects" means nothing without a year, an industry, and an outcome).

Where should the call-to-action go on an About page?

One main CTA, placed at the bottom of the page after the visitor has read the story and the proof. The page is doing emotional and credibility work — the CTA closes that work. A common mistake is putting a sticky "book a call" button at the top, which short-circuits the trust the page is supposed to build. Better: one clear close at the end ("If this sounds like the kind of help you've been looking for, here's how to start") with a single action — usually a strategy call, a discovery form, or a specific next page. For longer About pages, a single secondary CTA two-thirds of the way down (after the proof section) is fine. Three CTAs scattered through the page is too many.

Should I use AI to write my About page?

Use AI for the structure, the editing, and the polish — not for the story itself. The founder story is the one part of your website where the source material has to come from inside your head: why you started, what you saw broken, who you decided to help, what you believe that your competitors don't. AI can ask you good questions to get this out, organize it once you've dictated the raw version, and tighten the language afterwards. What AI can't do is invent the contrarian point of view that makes your page different. Pages where the entire About section was AI-generated read as corporate and forgettable, even when the prose is grammatically perfect — because they're an average of every other About page on the internet.

How often should I update my About page?

Review it quarterly, refresh meaningfully once a year. The founder story doesn't change, but everything around it does: client logos, specific numbers (revenue, team size, years in business), case study highlights, certifications, and any positioning that's drifted. An About page that hasn't been touched in three years reads as a business that hasn't grown in three years, which is exactly the wrong signal. The cheapest quarterly update is replacing one old client name with one new one and updating any "X years of experience" or "Y projects shipped" numbers. The yearly refresh is bigger: re-read the whole page out loud, cut anything that no longer feels true, and add what you've learned in the past 12 months.

Conclusion: The About Page Is Not a Brochure

The most useful reframe for the entire page is this: an About page is a sales asset, not a corporate document. It exists to convert a visitor who is mid-decision, not to satisfy a checklist of "things every website needs." Once you accept that frame, every choice gets simpler. Stock photography of generic teams is out, because it doesn't help the visitor decide. Mission statements are out. Lists of values are out. Long histories of the company are out. What goes in: a real person, a specific worldview, a clear story, named clients, specific numbers, and a single confident close.

The pages that follow the structure in this guide — positioning statement up top, founder story in four beats, contrarian point of view in one or two paragraphs, tiered proof, single CTA at the bottom — outperform default-template pages by margins large enough that the rewrite is almost always worth doing before any other marketing project. You can run more ads, publish more SEO content, send more cold emails. None of that compensates for an About page that loses 50% of qualified visitors at exactly the moment they decided to take you seriously.

If you'd rather not figure out the founder story alone, or if you've already tried and ended up with a page you don't love: Searchlab works with small Dutch service businesses on exactly this problem. We bring the structured intake, the writing, and the proof framework. But honestly, even if you do this yourself with the structure above and a free afternoon, you'll end up with a page that does more conversion work than 90% of what's currently live in your space. The bar is that low. The opportunity is that big. Start with the founder story, end with one clear CTA, and the page will start carrying its weight.

NEED HELP REWRITING YOUR ABOUT PAGE?

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Ruud ten Have

Written by

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and conversion copy. At Searchlab he combines strategic positioning with hands-on execution. He helps small and mid-sized service businesses rewrite the pages that actually sell.

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