A good About page should make a potential customer more comfortable choosing the business. It should explain who is behind it, which experience matters, what the business believes about the work and why that is relevant to the customer.
It is not an autobiography.
It is also not a corporate history exercise.
The customer is reading because they want context.
Who am I dealing with?
Do these people seem credible?
Do they understand my kind of problem?
Will I feel comfortable working with them?
The best About pages answer those questions without pretending the customer came primarily to read your life story.
Start with the reason the person is reading
This changes how you write.
Instead of beginning:
Gavin was born in...
begin closer to:
I work directly with small businesses that need a strong website without the usual agency layers and ongoing complexity.
Now the visitor understands how the person relates to the service.
The background can follow.
Relevance first.
Biography second. The same principle applies to what belongs on the homepage: each page should do its own job rather than repeating the whole company story.
Gavin's take
I do not see an About page as a vanity page. For an owner-led business it is often a risk-reduction page. The visitor is asking whether there is a real, credible person behind the service and whether their background gives them a reason to trust the work. That is why specific experience beats lines such as “passionate about excellence” almost every time.
Your real experience is more useful than generic adjectives
About pages often contain phrases such as:
passionate about delivering excellence
or:
committed to exceeding expectations.
Those statements are difficult to evaluate.
Real experience is more credible.
What did you do before this business?
What kinds of customers have you worked with?
What expertise shapes the service?
How long have you been doing relevant work?
What have you learned that affects how you approach clients now?
Specific history helps the reader understand where the judgement comes from.
Real-world example
A useful business story does not have to read like a CV. Someone who moved from finance into process work, bookkeeping, data or web design can explain the parts of that background that now help clients — attention to detail, commercial understanding, systems thinking or direct small-business experience. The point is not to justify every career move. It is to show the experience that makes the current service more believable.
You do not need a perfectly linear career story
This matters especially for independent professionals.
Real careers change.
Someone may move from finance into operations, consulting, technology and then web development.
That can be more interesting and more credible than trying to pretend every previous job was secretly part of a master plan.
The useful question is:
Which parts of that experience help the customer now?
For me, working in finance, small-business consultancy and data/software work affects how I think about websites.
I am interested in the business system behind the page, not only the visual layer.
That belongs on an About page because it helps explain the service.
Personality belongs there too
A small business often benefits from feeling like a real person or team.
You can mention where you are based.
How you like to work.
What you value.
A small personal detail can make the page more memorable.
The important thing is proportion.
If the customer is considering hiring you for a professional service, the page should still give them useful professional context.
Personality should strengthen the relationship, not replace credibility.
Photographs matter more on About pages
A real photograph can do a lot of trust-building work.
The visitor sees who they will deal with.
For owner-led businesses, that can be particularly valuable.
It does not need to be an enormous formal corporate portrait.
A good, believable image is enough.
The future guide on professional photography will go deeper into when paying for a shoot is actually worthwhile.
Explain how you work
This is often more commercially useful than another paragraph about company history.
Do clients deal directly with you?
Do you prefer straightforward communication?
Do you write content collaboratively?
Do you publish pricing?
Do you avoid unnecessary technical complexity?
Those working principles help someone imagine what the relationship will feel like.
That makes the About page part of the buying decision.
Your values should be demonstrated
If you say transparency matters, show something transparent.
Published pricing.
Clear ownership.
Plain explanations.
If you say you care about simplicity, explain what that changes in the work.
If you say the business is personal, show the person.
Values are strongest when the reader can see evidence of them across the site.
A paragraph titled "Our Values" does not make them true.
Should the About page be written in first person?
For an independent or owner-led business, first person often works extremely well.
"I" is clear.
It makes the relationship direct.
For a larger team, "we" may be more natural.
There is no SEO advantage to sounding like a corporation when you are one person.
I would rather the writing match the actual business.
Built by Gavin is an independent studio, so I am comfortable saying "I".
That is more honest than manufacturing a fictional agency voice. It is also part of the wider job of making a small business look trustworthy online.
Do customers care about awards and qualifications?
When they are relevant, yes.
A regulated profession may need credentials.
A specialist trade may benefit from certifications.
An experienced consultant may have qualifications worth mentioning.
Do not turn the About page into a CV dump.
Explain the things that help the customer understand competence.
If a credential has no relevance to the service or trust decision, it probably does not need the same prominence.
What about the company origin story?
Use it when it explains something meaningful.
Why was the business started?
What problem did you see?
Why is the service structured differently?
Those stories can be powerful because they explain the present.
What is less useful is a long chronology of events with no connection to the customer's decision.
The About page is still part of the website.
It needs an editorial purpose.
The About page can differentiate a small business
Large companies often struggle to feel personal.
A smaller business has an advantage.
The visitor can understand exactly who they are dealing with.
That matters for services where trust and communication are important.
Web design is one of those services.
A client may work with the developer for weeks and then rely on them around domains, hosting and launch.
Knowing who that person is reduces uncertainty.
What should not be on the About page?
Do not use it as the place to hide important service information.
The customer should not need to read your biography to discover what the business sells.
Do not use it as a dumping ground for every staff profile and historical milestone unless those genuinely matter.
And do not fill it with vague statements that could belong to any company.
Specificity is the whole advantage of an About page.
How my own About page fits Built by Gavin
My About page needs to explain more than:
I make websites.
The useful story is that I have worked in areas where business processes, data and systems matter, and that I now bring that way of thinking into web development.
It also helps to say I am Scottish and based in Longford because Built by Gavin is personal and local rather than a faceless agency brand.
The purpose is not to prove I have an interesting biography.
It is to give a potential client enough context to trust the person behind the service.
You can read About Gavin if you want a first-party example of that approach.
The bottom line
A good About page should make the business more believable.
Explain who is behind it.
Use relevant experience rather than adjectives.
Show some personality.
Describe how you work.
Connect the story back to why the customer should feel comfortable choosing you.
That is much more useful than writing a corporate autobiography.
Want a website that sounds like the actual business?
See my work and website options, or tell me about the business.
A good About page usually starts with a conversation, not a blank Word document.
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