Nobody Reads Your ‘About’ Page — Except the Customers Who Are About to Hire You

Check your website statistics and the About page looks like an afterthought. A trickle of visits, far behind the homepage and the service pages. So owners treat it like an afterthought: a paragraph of boilerplate written years ago, maybe a stock photo, done.

But look at who is in that trickle. Nobody browses an About page for fun. The people who click it are doing one specific thing: deciding whether to trust you with their money, their home, or their business. It is the last stop before the phone call. The most-skipped page on your site is read almost exclusively by people about to hire you — which makes its words worth more per reader than anything else you have written.

What the Almost-Customer Is Actually Looking For

Put yourself in their spot. They found you on Google, read a service page, skimmed your reviews. The practical boxes are checked. What is left is a human question: who are these people? Will someone real show up? Do they seem like the kind of outfit that returns calls and stands behind work?

That is the whole assignment. The About page exists to turn your business from a listing into people. Everything that belongs on it serves that, and everything that does not — the mission statements, the “commitment to excellence,” the paragraph that could be pasted onto any competitor’s site unchanged — is in the way.

What Belongs on the Page

Real names and real faces. The owner’s name and photo, and the crew if they are willing. People trust people. A clear phone photo of the actual team beats a polished stock image of models in hard hats — customers can tell the difference in half a second, and only one of the two builds trust.

Your actual story, briefly. How the business started, how long you have been at it, what you did before. Not a saga — three or four sentences with real details. “Started out of a garage after twelve years working for someone else” tells a customer more than any slogan, because it is checkable, human, and yours alone.

The trust facts, stated plainly. Licensed, insured, bonded — whichever are true for your trade. Where you are based and where you work. Certifications that a customer would recognize. These are the boxes the almost-customer is quietly ticking; make them easy to find.

Why you run the business the way you do. One honest paragraph about what you care about — answering the phone, leaving job sites clean, doing it right the first time — in your own words. This is where E-E-A-T, the quality signal search engines talk about, gets real for a small business: demonstrated experience and trustworthiness, written by an identifiable human, on a page about who you are.

A next step. The reader is nearly convinced — do not strand them. End with the same clear action your other pages use: call, book, request a quote. The About page should hand the reader to the phone, not to a dead end.

What to Cut

Read your current page and delete every sentence that any competitor could also truthfully publish. “We are committed to quality and customer satisfaction” survives on thousands of sites precisely because it says nothing. Cut the third-person voice about yourself — “John founded the company with a vision” reads like a press release; “I started this company because” reads like a person. Cut the stock photos. Cut anything out of date: the crew member who left, the old logo, the “family owned since” line if the details have changed. An About page that is visibly stale tells the almost-customer the rest of the site might be too — the same mismatch problem we flagged in Your Homepage Is Not for You.

The Page Practically Writes Itself Out Loud

If writing about yourself feels impossible, do not write — talk. Answer three questions out loud and record it on your phone: how did this business start, what do you want customers to experience, what are you proudest of. Clean up the transcript, cut it to a few paragraphs, add photos and the trust facts, done. The result sounds like you, because it is you — and sounding like a specific human is the entire point of the page.

This is also the standard we hold ourselves to when we build sites: in our website design work the About page is written from a real conversation with the owner, never from a template, because it is the page where template writing costs the most.

Common Questions

How long should an About page be?

Shorter than you fear and more specific than you have. A few honest paragraphs, real photos, and the trust facts cover it — most readers spend under a minute there. Length is not the goal; specificity is. One checkable detail about how you started is worth three paragraphs of values language nobody finishes reading.

Should the page be about me or about the customer?

It is the one page that gets to be about you — that is why the customer clicked it. The trick is that “about you” still serves them: your story answers their trust question. Write in first person, share real details, and connect each one to what the customer experiences. “I answer my own phone” is about you and for them at the same time.

Do I really need my photo on there?

It helps more than almost anything else on the page. Customers hire the person they can picture, and a face makes your business feel accountable in a way a logo cannot. It does not need to be professional — a clear, friendly photo in your work setting is ideal. If you truly hate being photographed, a real crew or shop photo is the next best thing. Just not stock.

Does the About page matter for Google?

Indirectly but genuinely. Search engines look for signals that a real, experienced, trustworthy business stands behind a site — an identifiable owner, real credentials, a consistent name and location. Your About page is where those signals naturally live. It will rarely rank for anything itself; it makes the pages that do rank more credible.

What if my story is ordinary?

Ordinary is what customers are looking for. “Worked in the trade for years, went out on my own, built the business job by job” is exactly the story that says steady, experienced, real. Customers are not shopping for drama — they are checking that a competent human runs the place. Tell the ordinary story with real details and it does its job perfectly.

Should I list the whole crew?

If they are comfortable with it, yes — especially in trades where your people enter homes. Customers relax when the person at the door matches a face they saw online. Keep it maintainable: first names and photos are enough, and take people down promptly when they leave. A team section that is two years out of date undercuts the trust it was built to create.

How often should I update it?

Skim it twice a year and after any real change — new crew, new certification, new location, new services. The check takes five minutes: is everything on this page still true, and does it still sound like us? Most About pages were written once and never touched; being the business whose page is visibly current is a quiet advantage.

Where should the About page send people next?

To the action, with the reader’s momentum intact: call, book, or request a quote — the same primary action as the rest of your site. A reviews link is a good secondary stop for the still-deciding. What it should never do is end cold. The About reader is your warmest visitor; hand them the phone number while the trust is fresh.

Want Honest Eyes on Yours?

We are MCM Digital Products, a digital marketing and AI agency serving Manitowoc and the Lakeshore — and yes, our own About page follows every rule in this article. Book a free audit and we will read your site the way an almost-customer does, About page included, and tell you plainly what is building trust and what is burning it. Or call (920) 383-3387.