Why your "About" page might be your most important page (and what most businesses get wrong)
Ask most business owners which is their most important website page, and they'll say the home page. Fair enough — it's the front door, the first thing people see, the place where first impressions are made.
But there's another page that often works even harder, and is almost always overlooked.
The About page.
Here's why it matters so much. By the time someone clicks on your About page, they're already interested. They've seen enough on your home page to want to know more. They're no longer just browsing — they're considering. That single click is a meaningful signal, and what they find next will very likely decide whether they pick up the phone or quietly move on to a competitor.
So what do most About pages actually say?
Usually something like: "We are a family-run business established in [year]. Our mission is to deliver exceptional service to all our clients. We pride ourselves on quality and customer satisfaction."
Well-meaning, yes. Forgettable, absolutely. And here's the real problem: it's all about the business — not the customer. A potential client reading that could be forgiven for thinking, "that's nice, but what does any of this mean for me?"
What a great About page actually does
The best About pages work very differently. They tell a real story. They explain why the business exists — the moment or the realisation that led someone to take the leap and do this for a living. They share what the person behind the business genuinely cares about, what drives them, what makes them different from every other business doing the same thing.
And — this is the crucial bit — they connect all of that back to the customer. Not just "here's my story" but "here's my story, and here's why that makes me the right person to help you."
Done well, a great About page builds trust faster than almost anything else on your website. And trust, as we all know, is what converts a curious visitor into an enquiry.
Think about it from your own experience. When you're choosing someone to hire or buy from, don't you want to feel like you know them a little? You want a sense of who they are, what they stand for, whether you'd get along. You're not just buying a product or service — you're choosing a person, or a team of people, to put your faith in. Your About page is your chance to make that connection before you've even spoken.
The most common mistakes
Beyond the "mission statement" problem, there are a few other things that crop up again and again.
Writing in corporate-speak. Phrases like "leveraging our expertise to deliver value-added solutions" tell a reader absolutely nothing. Write the way you'd speak to someone face to face. Warm, clear, human.
Burying the good stuff. The most interesting thing about your business — the thing that makes you truly different — is often mentioned briefly near the bottom, if at all. Maybe you've been doing this for 25 years. Maybe you set up the business after a personal experience that changed your outlook entirely. Maybe you have a very specific area of expertise that nobody else in your market has. Whatever it is, don't hide it.
Forgetting to say who you work with. An About page that says nothing about your ideal customer misses a trick. If someone reads your page and thinks "that's exactly the kind of business I'm looking for" — you've just done something very powerful. You've made them feel like you get them.
No photograph. People do business with people. A decent, approachable photo of yourself — not a corporate headshot that looks like a passport photo, just something genuine — makes an enormous difference to how quickly someone warms to you.
A useful test
If you want to know how well your About page is doing its job, try this: ask someone who knows nothing about your business to read it. Then ask them to tell you, in their own words, what you do, why you do it, and why they might choose you over someone else.
If they struggle to answer, or if their summary sounds vague and generic, that's your answer. The page isn't doing enough.
I work with small businesses across Mid Wales — from Newtown and Llanidloes to clients right across Powys and the wider UK — and reviewing the About page is one of the first things I do when I look at a website. It's rarely the page owners invest the most time in, and yet it's often the one with the most untapped potential.
Your home page gets people through the door. Your About page is where they decide whether to stay.
