If you are working out how to write an about us page for a small business, start here: stop writing about your business. Write about the person reading.
That sounds backwards. It is the whole method. Here are the steps, in order, with two Forzur projects to show what they look like in practice.
Why does your about page matter more than you think?
Because it is where doubt goes to get answered.
A new customer lands on your homepage and sees what you sell. Then they wonder who you are. They click About. If that page is a wall of dates or a vague line about "passion and excellence," they leave with the doubt intact.
Think about who visits that page. People who are close to deciding, but not there yet. They want one more reason.
Your about page is that reason. Treat it like your best salesperson, not like a filing cabinet.
Start with who the visitor is deciding to trust
Before you write a word, answer one question. What is this person afraid of?
A few examples:
- A family choosing a doula is afraid of handing the delivery room to a stranger.
- A diner on a downtown sidewalk is afraid of a slow, confusing site and a bad dinner.
- A homeowner hiring a contractor is afraid of being ignored after the deposit.
Write the fear down. Then write one sentence that answers it directly.
BodyWise Birth Co. is a good case. A doula sells trust at one of the most vulnerable moments of someone's life, and she sells it before they have ever met. The site had to answer "can I let this person into the room?" That question shaped everything.
Lead with your voice and your point of view
Here is a rule we hold firmly. If your manner is the product, your voice goes first.
For BodyWise, we led the site with the founder's voice and educational philosophy, not a services list. Her manner is what an expecting parent is actually evaluating. So the site needed to feel like Tara in the room: calm, direct, and unafraid to say plainly what a body is doing.
You can do the same:
- Write the way you talk to a client in person.
- State one belief about your work that not everyone in your field shares.
- Say it plainly, even if it narrows your audience.
A point of view repels a few people. It also makes the right ones feel they have found you. Beige copy does neither.
Should the history live on the about page or across the site?
Across the site. Mostly.
Las Mas Mexican Kitchen & Bar has been in downtown Wake Forest for twenty-five years. That is a real story, and the easy move is to give it one long page. We did not do that. The brief was clear that the site had to carry the family history without turning into an about page nobody reads.
So we wove the story through the site instead of quarantining it. A diner looking for the menu or the hours still meets the history on the way.
Why this works: a hungry visitor on a phone is not going to hunt for your origin story. Put it where they already are.
Keep a short version on the about page. Spread the rest around.
Turn experience into visible proof
"Ten years of experience" is a claim. A claim is cheap.
Proof is something the visitor can check or picture. For BodyWise, a decade of experience became visible in two ways:
- Real client birth stories, told on the site.
- The full roster of Triangle hospitals and birth centres she has attended.
A new parent reading that list can see she has worked in the room they are worried about. No adjective does that.
Ask yourself what your version is. Maybe it is a list of places you have worked, a few customer stories, or the specific things you have done hundreds of times. Show them. Do not summarize them.
Add the human details: faces, places and the Triangle towns you serve
People trust people. So put one in the picture.
Add a real photo of you and your team, taken somewhere real. Name the towns you serve. If you work in Raleigh, Cary, Durham or Wake Forest, say so in plain sentences, not in a hidden footer list.
This does two jobs. A visitor sees you are local and reachable. Search engines see the same thing.
BodyWise names the Raleigh and Triangle towns and birth venues she serves, so local search can find her for the places families actually give birth. That is the same instinct as a good handshake, written for Google.
If you want the broader picture on local pages, our restaurant website design and medical website design pages show how we think about it by industry.
End every about page with one clear next step
An about page that trails off wastes the trust it just built.
Pick one action. Only one. Make it small and low-risk.
For BodyWise, every section routes toward a single action: the free 30-minute discovery call. Scheduling is built into the site, so booking never has to leave it. The site also publishes starting-point pricing for each package, which removes the uncertainty that keeps families from reaching out at all.
Good next steps for your page:
- Book a short call.
- Request a quote.
- Download something useful.
Bad next steps: five buttons, a newsletter popup and a "contact us" link buried in the footer.
A one-hour exercise to rewrite yours this week
Block an hour. Here is the plan.
- Ten minutes: Write the visitor's biggest fear in one sentence.
- Ten minutes: Write your point of view in three sentences. Read them aloud. If you would not say it to a client, rewrite it.
- Ten minutes: List your proof. Stories, places, numbers you can honestly stand behind.
- Ten minutes: Pick one photo of a real person in a real place.
- Ten minutes: List the towns you serve and work them into the copy.
- Ten minutes: Choose one next step and put it at the bottom.
- Ten minutes: Cut every sentence that would fit on a competitor's page.
That last step hurts. Do it anyway.
If you want to see how these ideas play out in full, read the BodyWise Birth Co. case study and the Las Mas Mexican Kitchen case study. Then open your own about page and run the seven steps before Friday.