How to write an about me page that will make your audience obsessed
I am so happy to be writing this post because, in my opinion, an about page is the best page on the website, the most misunderstood page on the website, and the most neglected page on the website.
Most about pages are boring, generic, uninspired, or formulaic, and I love writing them and I love talking about them because I think it is the page with the most potential, where you can have the most fun, and where you can really connect with your audience in a way that you can’t on other pages, and I also feel like people just
I also think that there are so many myths and misconceptions about about pages. I feel like so much of the content about them online is really unhelpful, and if you have tried to write your own about page, wanna know how to write your about page, and you are drowning under all of the information that is constantly, like, contradicting itself, then you’re in the right place because I’m gonna simplify it for you. I’m going to tell you what is bullshit and what is real and exactly how you can do it without making it super hard or stressful or complicated, stressful.
In this post, I’m gonna break down how to write an about page that will actually speak to your audience, that will create an emotional connection with them, and that will make them like you and trust you and want to work with or buy from you, and also not make them bored and send them to sleep.
Hi, I’m Elle…
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
What Is An About Page Actually For?
Your about page is an opportunity for you to talk about you and for them to learn more about your company and your website, and that actually is the purpose of an about page regardless of whether or not people disagree with that, but what it really is is an opportunity for you to get your audience to trust you, to know you, to like you, and for you to stand out from your competitors and prove why.
So on this page, you obviously want to show credibility by sharing social proof, sharing your story, your background, your experience, your expertise, proving that you’re an expert that they can trust, that knows what they’re doing, and basically that you know your shit.
It is also an opportunity for you to relate to your audience and to connect with your readers and make them feel like you are the right person for them, that they would be able to work with you, that you get them, that you understand them, that it would be fun to work with you,
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and my actual job description should really be ‘matchmaker for you and your dream clients“
If you liked reading this blog post – I would love to hang out more with you 🙂
And these, IMO, are the best ways for us to that:
What makes this such an important page on your website?
People buy from people that they know, like, and trust, and this is the real opportunity on your website for you to show your personality, to get creative, to do something different, to grab people’s attention, and to stand out from everyone else.
Unless you’re working in an industry where you have invented something that no one has ever thought of before, -(which, like, if that’s the case, good for you, that’s really cool)- it’s likely that there are lots of other people doing exactly the same thing as you, and your about page is your chance to answer the question: Why you?
It’s also a page on your website where you get to speak to the more emotional people in your audience – readers who need to feel trust and a connection.
It’s your chance to make people like you enough to want to buy.
The biggest misconception about about pages
The biggest misconception about About pages, and one I hate, is this idea that your About page isn’t about you. You hear it everywhere. People say it all the time, and it’s just stupid. It doesn’t make sense.
Your About page is about you. No one is coming to your About page to not read about you.
What people mean when they say this is that you’re not just talking about yourself. They mean your About page should also be about the reader.
The issue is your About page is not about the reader. It’s about you. It’s about what you can do for the reader and what they need to know about you to want to buy from you.
But it’s still about you.
So when you’re writing your About page, I do want you to write about yourself. I want you to talk about yourself because the honest issue is if I go on an About page, and this happens to me sometimes, and someone starts talking about my problems as the reader, it gets on my nerves.
If I’m on your About page, I’m there because I want to know who you are. If the first section is just, “I bet you really struggle with writing your own website copy,” I’m already annoyed because why am I on your About page if you’re not even telling me about you?
That is my hot take on About pages: you 100% can and should talk about yourself for at least part of your About page. Please do not write an About page where you only talk about the reader and never talk about yourself, because you could’ve done that on a different page.
Why Most About Pages Don’t Work
What Your About Page Needs To Do
Okay, so let’s talk about the three things your About page absolutely needs to do.
- One, it needs to build trust.
- Two, it needs to make you likable.
- Three, it needs to make you stand out.
So how do you build trust?
By sharing social proof, sharing your story, sharing what makes you relatable, or sharing certifications if they’re relevant. It’s about proving that you’re an expert at what you do. Talk about how long you’ve been doing it, share your portfolio, share testimonials and case studies. There are so many ways to do it, but it all comes down to proving that you know what you’re doing and what you’re talking about.
Then in terms of making you likable, ask yourself: are you someone people would actually want to work with? This does depend on your business, because what makes you likable as a service provider is different from what makes you likable as an e-commerce business or a tech company.
If you’re a service provider, a coach, a founder, or anyone working with people one-on-one, it’s important to remember that people need to like you to work with you. If someone works with me as a copywriter, we’re probably going to have a couple of meetings, and some of those are 90-minute calls. You have to like me to trust me with your time and to want to sit in a meeting with me for that long.
The High-Converting About Page Structure
Okay, so now we’ve talked a little bit about what you want your About page to do, I’m gonna give you a structure you can use.
However, I want to stress that I don’t believe there is one correct structure for an About page. You can write an About page however you want.
At the end of this article, I’m gonna link some of my favourite About pages of all time so you can see how different each one is and how many interesting, fun sections you can add, or how you can completely flip it on its head and do something really different.
So use this as a guide if you just want help getting started, but remember that you can add anything you want, you can add any sections you want, and there is no one right way to write an About page.
1. A Hook That Speaks to Your Audience
You need to have a hero section or a hook that grabs attention, speaks directly to your audience, catches their attention, and gets them excited to keep reading the page.
This can be something that speaks directly to them, says something really memorable and unexpected, or shows that you understand them, anything that you think will really speak to your audience.
2. Your Relatable Backstory
The next thing you can share is sort of like your story, or sort of like why you started your business, or kind of like anything that makes you relatable. So if you’re a founder, it could be like why did you start your business? What is the backstory? If you’re a company, why did you start your SaaS company, e-commerce? You know, what was the gap in the market that made you think you needed to start it? This is really important in terms of trying to, like, humanise the brand, so make sure that you talk about, like, the struggles, anything that you know they struggled with, then you can show them, like, hey, I’ve been through that too, and then just adding in any information that kind of counts as that.
The thing I would say with this is keep it short, like do not tell your whole life story, and really cut yourself on this, like read through the copy, be ruthless, cut sections, and just keep thinking like do they care? Do they care? Do they care? Like you don’t have to start and be like I was born and then, like, I got my first pet cat and then, like, if that is relevant to the story, can talk about it, like, you know they don’t need to know every single thing that you’ve ever done, just things that are relevant to your business and, like, relevant for them to know, like how is that relatable to them, but if it’s not relatable to them, don’t put it on the about page.
3. Your Expertise
The next thing I want you to talk about is your expertise and proving that you are an expert in what you do or that you know what you’re doing and talking about.
So this could be sharing your social proof or sharing your credentials, sharing some examples of work that you’ve done, it could be sharing awards that you’ve won, any accreditations that you have, any statistics about how many happy customers that you’ve had.
Anything that is going to prove to them that, like, they can trust you and you are an expert in your field, and it’s also the section where you show why you’re different to competitors, so for a founder you might say, you know, the whatever-your-business-is-called approach and then list off, like, what you do differently or what you do specifically with a checklist or check marks, and if you’re a tech or a SaaS company or an e-commerce company you might have a chart that says, like, other companies and all of the things that they do wrong, and then your company and everything that you are doing right.
4. How You Help
Then you’re gonna talk a little bit about how you help or how you specifically help them. This is the only part that can get a bit tricky because you have to not make it sound salesy and make it flow nicely, while also making it feel like it’s about your company rather than just saying, “I help you do this thing.” But it’s not as hard as it sounds.
So for example, if you’re a service provider or a founder, you’ve told your story, you’ve talked about the fact that you’re experienced, and then you might want to say something like, you know, my mission or my goal is now to help people like you with this problem because… and then lead into the main mission. So using a mission or vision statement here is a really great way to get around that.
5. A Personal Touch
The next thing is adding a personal touch. This is the most fun part of your About page and you can add as many of these as you want to. It really depends, but this is where you can add a fun fact section, a quirky section, you can share something interesting about yourself, and you can really have fun with these sections.
So you might have a meet-the-team section if you’re an e-commerce brand, or if you’re a founder you might share some fun facts about yourself. If you are a small business or a solopreneur, this is a great place for that.
The easiest way to do this if you want to keep it really simple is just have a few fun facts, or an “this not that” section, or, you know, fun facts about the team if you are a bigger tech company.
But you can 100% have fun and do something really different with this, so you could add your favourite playlists and have people click and listen to them directly.
You could share a “day in the life” style diary about what you do in a day in your business.
This is a section where you really get to show what makes you different and what makes you human. It also makes you memorable—this is where you get the chance to really stand out in people’s minds and connect with them on a non-business level. So like, you know, maybe you say what your favourite band is and somebody hires you because you like that band.
Do not underestimate how much this matters, especially if you’re a founder-led brand or a solopreneur, because people will work with you based on vibes.
There are some people who 100% hire you or work with you just because they like your vibes and you said something on your About page like, “My favourite dog is this type of dog,” and they will look at everything else, but that will be the reason they hire you. So do not be scared to show your personality, share your values, show what makes you different, and really lean into that in your business.
6. A Clear Next Step
The last thing I want you to do is leave a CTA telling them what to do next because they’ve just gotten to know you, they like you, they know you, they trust you, and now they’re just on your website. So end your page with a CTA, whether or not that is asking them to hire you, enquire to work with you, go and check out your services, go and read your blog, subscribe to your newsletter—whatever you choose it to be.
Make sure that you give them something to do once they finish your page so you don’t just leave them hanging not knowing what to do next.
Writing Techniques That Build Connection
OK, so now do you have a few ideas for your about page or a basic structure that you can use as a jumping off point?
Let’s talk about things that you need to do when you actually write your about page to make it sound good.
Write Like You Speak
So the first thing is you need to write like you speak. It has to sound personal and you need to use your brand voice. You can use your brand voice the most aggressively on your About page compared to any other page on your website, and what I mean by this is you can have so much fun with your headlines, you can really show your personality in your body copy more, and you really do not need to worry about being professional on this page unless your brand voice is very professional because this is where people come to, like, get to know you and have fun.
So make sure that you are speaking conversationally, you’re writing like a human, everything sounds like it was written by a human when you read it back, that it feels conversational and feels like you’re talking to a human.
Use Specific Details
Use specificity and specific details.
Do not add vague, boring details because you’re not gonna build trust or become likable with boring details.
So don’t just say that in your fun fact section your favorite drink is coffee, say what type of coffee you drink.
For me, for example, my favourite drink is a double espresso, so much so that my newsletter is called Oat Over Ice. I could add that as a fun fact on my About page. That’s so much more memorable than just saying “I like coffee.”
So make sure you use specificity when you’re telling your story or your origin story. Be really specific, and look for those details that make it more memorable and sticky.
Mirror Your Audience’s Language
If you know what your audience is struggling with, the things that they care about, the kind of language that they use, and the kind of problems that they’re talking about, try and mirror that language—especially when you’re sharing your story or your mission statement.
Make sure that you are talking about yourself and showing your personality, but you are also speaking about the things that you know your audience cares about, and speaking to them in their language.
As always with copy, even if you are very technically knowledgeable about your subject, if your audience isn’t, you need to meet them on their level.
So for example, if we go back to my dietician example, if you are very educated about nutrition but you’re working with people who are not educated on nutrition, make sure that you’re using words they can understand. Don’t use very technical, scientific, medical terms that are going to leave people confused. You want to make sure that you are meeting people on their level.
Does It Really Need to Be “Personal”?
The last thing I want to talk about is how different About pages are depending on what kind of business you’re running and your business model.
The issue that I have with a lot of posts that talk about an About page and, like, “you’re doing this wrong and this is how you should do it,” is that how you write your About page is completely dependent not just on your brand and how you do things, but on what kind of industry you are in.
How you write an About page as an e-commerce business is not the same as how you would write an About page as a tech company, or a big corporation versus a solopreneur or a small business.
If you are a personal brand, a service provider, or a founder where you are working one on one with people, you do need to make sure that your About page talks about you because people need to know whether or not they can trust you, like you, or want to spend time with you based on what they’re learning on your About page.
So you really do need to share facts about yourself, you need to have pictures of yourself on your About page, you need to make it personal, you need to have a personal touch.
You need to prove that there is a human and give them an idea of who that human is when they work with them.
But if you are a SaaS company, you need to just ask yourself: what do people care about when they get to an About page?
What would you want to know about Apple if you were on their About page?
And so Apple does share the origin story, it shares some information about its employees, but it’s also going to talk about what Apple does, what it specialises in, what makes it different, what kind of products it has, what its mission statement is, and ethical information.
And that’s something to really keep in mind if you are an e-commerce company or tech company – like Apple is both – where you are selling a product or a service.
People are going to want to know the details of your products, your process, how you make things, but also your ethics, like are you sustainable?
So an example I would give for an e-commerce company or a SaaS company, something like Flodesk: if I was going to go on Flodesk’s About page and learn about them, of course I might be a little bit interested to know about the person behind the brand, but really what I want to know is what is Flodesk, why did it get created, what are they doing differently to other email service providers, is it the right business for me, what kind of features and offers do they have, what is their pricing like, things like that.
That’s what I really want to know about Flodesk.
And if I wanted to learn about a beauty company, I might want to know are all their products sustainable, are they acne friendly, are they vegan, are they locally sourced, do they use animal cruelty-free processes.
Those are the kinds of things I would want to know about makeup products.
I might be interested to know a little bit about the founder and why they created it, but at the end of the day what I really want to know is what makes them different to other people and how does that affect me as the consumer.
And that is kind of what you’re looking at.
So just keep that in mind when you are thinking what kind of business are you, and what questions would somebody have about you.
And if you’re really unsure of this, ask a friend or a family member.
Ask somebody you know and just be like, “Hey, this is my business – if you were just learning about it, what questions would you have?”
Get them to write all of that stuff down and make sure that you’re answering those questions on your webpage.
In Conclusion: Write Something People Would Miss
As always, do not overthink it.
Have fun writing your About page because it should be a fun page on your site.
Your audience should have fun when they read your About page.
They should, you know, if they have fun, they’re gonna like you. If you have fun writing it, then they’re gonna trust you more, and there is no right way to do it.
You don’t have to follow all of these formulas or frameworks that people are giving you.
You just need to make sure that you are answering the right question and some of that is just gonna come from gut instinct, so don’t be scared to follow your gut instincts of thinking like what would somebody wanna know?
Make sure that you do have an About page and that it is, like, you know, sharing what makes you likable and what makes people trust you, but more than anything make sure your About page gives people a reason to choose you over somebody else.
And as always, I’m gonna leave you with this: I’m a website copywriter, so if you do not want to write your About page, or you’ve tried to write it, and you are struggling, you can always hire me to write your About page or you can hire me to audit your website or rewrite your About page.
The Hot Gossip, The 411
More from The Blog
If you loved this post, and you want to get the 411 on more things copy and marketing – here’s your next read, all lined up.
Hi, I’m Elle
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and voted most likely to over-deliver and overshare.
But — you know what else I am?
A girl who’s tired of seeing talented, creative women settling for mediocre copy and generic branding because they think they have to do it all themselves, or they’re waiting for permission to step into their It Girl era and become the hot brand they’re supposed to be.
Which is why I’d love for you to finally get copy that reflects your full potential — even if you can’t quite yet put that into words.
