How to Write an About Page Worth Reading

If you run a business, your About page is probably the most ignored page on your site. That's a shame, because it's usually the second most visited one.

Think about it. Somebody finds you, likes what they see, and wants to know if they can trust you. They click About. They find a paragraph about when you were founded and how "passionate" you are. And they leave.

That's not a failure of effort. It's a failure of framing. Most About pages are about the wrong person.

The Narcissism Paradox

Here's the uncomfortable part: even though it's labeled "About Us," the About pages that actually work are almost entirely about the customer.

When you write an About page that's only about your history, your awards, and your credentials, you're competing for the spotlight with the person reading it. They came to answer one question: Can this person help me? Not to hear your life story.

I think of it as the Narcissism Paradox. The page that sounds the most like it's about you is usually the one that does the least work. The page that puts your customer first is the one that actually sells.

There's an old line that fits here: the greatest among you will be your servant. The best leaders are the ones who serve. The best About pages are the ones that serve the reader. That's not a coincidence.

Cast the reader as the hero

The single biggest shift you can make is a change of subject. In screenwriting, and in the StoryBrand marketing framework, the hero of a story is rarely the most powerful character. The hero is the one with something to overcome. The guide (think Yoda, think Mr. Miyagi) is the one with the wisdom and the tools.

When you make your business the hero of the About page, you push your customer into the audience. They get to watch. When you make your customer the hero and your business the guide, they get to act.

So run the Hero Test. Read every sentence on your page. If the subject is mostly "I," "we," or your business name, you're competing with the reader. If the subject is "you" (your customer, your goals, your frustration), then the reader stays the protagonist.

That's not a writing trick. It's the difference between a page that talks at somebody and one that talks to somebody.

Agitate the problem before you offer the solution

A good About page doesn't start with your credentials. It starts with the reader's discomfort.

The conversion-copywriting formula is Problem, Agitation, Solution. On an About page that looks like this:

1. Name the problem. "Your website isn't bringing you the customers it should." That's the visible, external problem.
2. Agitate it. "And underneath that is the real frustration: you've spent money and you still have to explain your business to every new customer by hand." That's the emotional, internal problem.
3. Offer the solution. "That's exactly what I fix." That's the bridge to what you do.

You can go one level deeper and name a philosophical problem too: "A good website shouldn't require a technical degree." The businesses that resonate most are the ones that speak to all three layers at once.

Values belong in the story, not in a bullet list

Let's talk about values for a second. Most businesses list them like a menu: Integrity. Innovation. Quality. And that's about how much they mean to the reader, which is not much at all.

The fix is to embed your values in your actions. The best prompt I know for surfacing real values is this one:

"We refuse to [the thing everyone else does], because our clients deserve [the thing that actually matters]."

That sentence forces you to name what you won't do, which is far more revealing than what you claim to be. A restaurant shows you its open kitchen to prove the food is clean. Your About page should do the same thing: show the standards behind your work, stated as trade-offs you actually made.

And here's where the servant idea shows up again. The businesses that put service first are the ones that treat values as operational decisions, not slogans. Serving your customer means refusing the shortcut that's easier for you.

The origin story: keep it to four beats

If you're a solo operator or a small studio, you probably think your origin story is too mundane to share. It's not. But you do need to keep it tight.

Use the Inciting Incident formula. Four beats, no more:

1. The inciting incident. The moment you saw something broken. ("I watched good businesses get invisible behind bad websites.")
2. The frustration. Your own experience with that problem. ("I saw the same story repeat, over and over.")
3. The epiphany. The realization that a better way was possible. ("The fix wasn't a better template. It was a better standard.")
4. The client solution. How that became what you offer today.

That's it. Four beats. No exhaustive biography, no childhood backstory. It's a story about a decision, not a resume.

The strategic edit

Now for the hard part. Almost every draft is too long. So run these four sweeps:

1. Read the subheadings only. If they don't tell a complete story by themselves, a skim-reader is gone.
2. Cut half the words. Remove passive phrasing, corporate filler, and every adjective that isn't doing real work.
3. Check the first person. If you're a solo operator, write in the honest "I," not a fake corporate "we" to sound bigger. Customers can tell.
4. End on one clear next step. Don't let the page fizzle. Give the reader one high-contrast button.

What this looks like in practice

The whole framework comes down to a simple inversion: the About page is the page that most proves you serve someone. It's the place where you show, not tell, that your customer is the point.

You can see a version of this approach on the live page I built for my own studio. It's written the way this post describes: the reader set up as the hero, the process shown as the guide, the values spoken as refusals, and one clear button at the end. If you're curious, here's the About page.

The About page you have right now has more potential than you think. Stop using it to tell people who you are. Use it to serve the person deciding whether to trust you. That's the page worth reading.

And if you'd rather not build it yourself, this is the kind of thing I do.