Here's a pattern that surprises almost every business owner we work with: the About page is one of the most visited pages on a small business website. Not the blog. Not the awards page. About.
It makes sense once you think about how people actually hire a local service business. They're not comparing feature lists. Every plumber's website says roughly the same things about drains. What they're really deciding is: do I trust these people in my house, around my family, with my money? The About page is where they go to answer that question.
And then they land on this:
"Founded on the principles of quality and integrity, ABC Services is a fully licensed and insured provider committed to exceeding customer expectations through excellence in service."
Forty words. Zero information. That paragraph could be photocopied onto ten thousand websites without changing a syllable, and effectively it has been. The visitor's trust question goes unanswered, and they bounce to a competitor whose About page has an actual human on it.
After building 1,500+ small business sites in the last 90 days, here's how we'd tell you to write yours.
Story beats resume
The instinct is to write the About page like a job application: credentials, years of experience, list of capabilities. Credentials matter, and we'll get to where they go. But nobody connects with a resume. People connect with a story, and every business has one, even if the owner swears theirs is boring.
The story doesn't need drama. It needs specifics. The questions that pull it out:
- Why does this business exist? "I spent twelve years working for a big outfit and got tired of watching customers get upsold things they didn't need. So I started my own shop." That's a story, and it's two sentences.
- What do you refuse to do? The things you won't do say more about you than the things you will. "We don't do door-knocking after storms" tells a roofing customer plenty.
- What's the moment you're proudest of? A job you saved, a customer you've kept for fifteen years, the first truck you bought used and ran into the ground.
- Who taught you the trade? Family businesses, mentors, the military, a first boss. Origins humanize.
Write it the way you'd say it out loud. If a sentence wouldn't survive being spoken across a kitchen table to a customer, it doesn't belong on the page. Read it back and delete anything that sounds like a press release.
Length-wise: three to six short paragraphs. Long enough to be a person, short enough to respect a stranger's time.
Faces and names, non-negotiable
If you change only one thing about your About page, make it this: put a real photograph of yourself on it, with your name.
Not the logo again. Not a stock photo of someone else's handsome crew. You, and your actual people if you have them. Job-site photos are great. A slightly awkward photo in front of the truck is great. Professional headshots are nice but optional; authenticity outperforms polish here every time.
Why this matters so much for service businesses specifically: your customer is letting strangers onto their property. Seeing the face of the person who'll show up, before they show up, converts a faceless transaction into something closer to a referral. "Call and ask for Mike" with Mike's photo above it is the single warmest thing a website can do.
If you have a crew, name them. A line or two each: how long they've been with you, what they handle, one human detail. Teams with names feel established. Anonymous "our technicians" feel interchangeable.
The hesitation we hear: "I don't want my face on the internet." Understood, and it's your call. But know that the discomfort is costing you trust you can't easily buy another way. Your competitors who get over it will collect it instead.
Veteran-owned, family-owned: how to do it tastefully
If you're a veteran-owned or family-owned business, say so. It's true, it matters to a lot of customers, and around military towns like ours it's often the deciding factor between two otherwise similar bids. We're veteran-owned ourselves, so this section is us telling on our own playbook.
The tasteful version and the cringey version differ in one way: whether the claim is doing work or asking for work.
- Doing work: "I spent eight years in the Marine Corps, and the way we run jobs comes straight from that: show up on time, do what you said, leave the place cleaner than you found it." The service explains something about how you operate. The customer learns what to expect.
- Asking for work: flag graphics on every page, eagle clip art, "thank you for supporting a veteran" framing that implies hiring you is charity. Customers hire competence, not gratitude. Lean on the identity too hard and it starts to read like the only thing you've got.
Same rule for family-owned. "Third generation, my grandfather started this company in 1968, and his original level hangs in our office" is a story with weight. "Family owned and operated!" as a floating badge with nothing behind it is wallpaper.
One line of identity, woven into a real story, backed by visible quality everywhere else on the site. That's the formula. And if the claim ever stops being true, take it down; in some contexts, "veteran-owned" claims are actual regulated territory, and the FTC's truth-in-advertising rules apply to everything you publish about your business either way.
Why "licensed and insured" isn't a personality
Licensed. Insured. Bonded. Certified. Free estimates. Satisfaction guaranteed.
All real, all worth stating, and none of them is a reason to choose you, because every legitimate competitor claims the identical list. These are table stakes: their absence would disqualify you, but their presence distinguishes nothing. Building your About page around them is like a dating profile that says "employed, has teeth."
Where they belong: a short, scannable block near the bottom of the About page (and in your footer). License number, insurance, certifications, years in business. Stated once, plainly, with the license number actually listed because the specific number reads as more credible than the adjective.
What belongs in the spotlight instead is everything a competitor can't photocopy:
- Your actual story and reasons
- Your face and your crew's faces
- Real reviews from named customers
- Photos of real completed work
- Your specific town, your specific years, your specific people
A useful exercise: take every sentence on your current About page and ask, "Could my competitor across town paste this onto their site without editing it?" If yes, it's filler. Keep the sentences that could only be about you. We see this across every trade we build for, from HVAC to landscaping: the About pages that win are the ones that couldn't belong to anyone else.
The quiet SEO bonus
The About page isn't primarily a search play, but written right, it helps. Google has been explicit for years that it wants content demonstrating real experience and trustworthiness from identifiable people and businesses; their guidance on helpful, people-first content literally asks whether a real person or business stands behind the content. An About page with real names, a real history, a real location, and consistency with your Google Business Profile is exactly that evidence.
So mention your city naturally in the story. Link your About page from your homepage. Keep the names on the page matching the names on your reviews. None of this is a trick; it's just being verifiably who you say you are, in a way machines can also read.
A simple structure to steal
If you want a template, here's the one we use, top to bottom:
- Photo of the owner or team with names, right up top.
- The story, three to six paragraphs: why you started, what you stand for, what you refuse to do.
- The team, if you have one: photo, name, role, one human line each.
- The trust block: license number, insured, certifications, years, service area. Short and factual.
- One review from a named customer that speaks to character rather than price.
- A soft CTA: "Want to talk about your project? Call us or send a note through the contact page." People finishing an About page are warm. Give them a door.
Write the first draft by talking, not typing. Record yourself answering "why did you start this business?" for two minutes, transcribe it, and clean it up. It'll beat anything you compose in marketing voice, because it'll sound like the person who answers the phone.
We'll write it with you, on a call
Pulling someone's real story out of them is half of what our build calls are. Omnyra does done-with-you websites built live on a call: you talk about your business, we build the site, including an About page that actually sounds like you, while you watch. First draft in 24 hours, live in 7 days, guaranteed. The Minimal tier ($500 + $100/mo) is the five core pages, About included, done right; tiers run up to Super Max from $6,000. Pay-in-4 and Klarna available.
We're veteran-owned, out of Wilmington NC, with 1,500+ small business sites built in the last 90 days, and you can judge our own About-page advice against client sites like airsupporthvac.com and ramartrans.com. See /pricing for what's included, or book a call and bring your story.