Most About pages waste the second-highest-traffic page on the site. Here's the 5-section structure that fixes it.
Open Google Analytics for almost any small-business website and you’ll find the same pattern. The homepage is page one. And page two, ninety percent of the time, is the About page.
Not the services page. Not the pricing page. Not the case studies. The About page.
And yet, when I audit websites, the About page is almost always the worst-performing piece of copy on the site. It’s a wall of “we were founded in 2014” filler, a smiling team photo, and a mission statement no one believes. It treats the second-highest-traffic page as a formality, when it should be doing some of the heaviest conversion work on the whole site.
Here’s why the About page converts, and the five-section structure that turns it from a tombstone into a closer.
Why the About page converts (more than you think)
Think about who clicks “About”. They’re not casual readers. They’ve already seen the homepage, decided you might be relevant, and now they want to know one thing: can I trust you?
That’s a high-intent click. It’s the digital equivalent of a prospect walking into your office and asking the receptionist, “So, tell me a bit about the people who run this place.” They’re not browsing. They’re qualifying.
And the kicker: visitors who view the About page convert at roughly five to ten times the rate of visitors who don’t. That’s not because the About page is magic. It’s because trust is the bottleneck, and the About page is where trust gets built or destroyed.
Most About pages destroy it. They sound like a press release written by a committee. They talk about the company in the third person. They list values (“integrity, excellence, innovation”) that every competitor also lists. They miss the fact that the person reading is trying to decide whether to give you money.
The fix is structural. Here’s the five-section layout that works.
Section 1: The problem you solve, in their words
Open the page with the visitor’s problem, not your origin story. Two or three sentences max. Use the language your customers actually use, not your industry’s jargon.
If you’re a tattoo studio, don’t open with “Established 2008, providing premium body art experiences.” Open with: “You’ve been thinking about getting your first tattoo for two years, and every time you walk past a studio you chicken out.”
This does two things. It tells the reader they’re in the right place, and it proves you understand them. That’s worth more than any award you could list.
Section 2: Your unfair advantage (not your features)
Now, and only now, talk about you. But don’t talk about what you do. Talk about why you’re the right people to solve that problem.
This is where most About pages collapse into platitudes. “We have over twenty years of experience.” Everyone says that. “We’re passionate about results.” Everyone says that too.
Your unfair advantage is the thing your competitors can’t honestly claim. Maybe you only work with one industry. Maybe your founder spent ten years inside the problem before starting the company. Maybe you do something none of your rivals will (return calls within an hour, offer a real guarantee, refuse to take on bad-fit clients).
One sharp, specific differentiator beats a list of five soft ones. If you can’t think of one, that’s the actual problem your About page needs to solve.
Section 3: The story, but only the useful bits
Yes, include a story. Humans buy from humans, and stories build trust. But cut every word that doesn’t earn its place.
The useful story isn’t “we were founded in 2014 by John and Jane.” The useful story is: what did you see in the world that made you start this? What did you have to learn the hard way? What did you stop doing because you realised it didn’t work?
Three short paragraphs. Lead with the moment that mattered. End with what changed because of it. If your story reads like a Wikipedia entry, rewrite it until it reads like something you’d actually tell a friend in a pub.
Section 4: Proof, stacked deep
By this point in the page, the reader is warming up. They like you. They believe you. Now they want to know if other people have liked you and believed you too.
Stack the proof. Not one quote in a fancy box. Three or four, with names and faces. Logos of clients or publications. A specific number (years in business, customers served, projects shipped). A short case-study link or two. Awards only if they’re recognised; otherwise they look like participation trophies.
The mistake here is being too tasteful. About pages are not Vogue. Cram the social proof in. Make it impossible to scroll past without absorbing at least three “other people trusted them, and it worked out” signals.
Section 5: A specific next step
This is the section every About page misses. After the story, the proof, and the connection, what do you want them to do next?
Not “contact us”. That’s a non-instruction. Not a generic “get in touch” button at the bottom of a footer.
Give them a specific, low-commitment next step that matches the trust they’ve just built. Book a fifteen-minute call. Download the pricing guide. Read the case study from the client most like them. Reply to a welcome email with one sentence about their situation.
The best About pages end with a CTA that feels like a natural continuation of the conversation, not a sales pitch. If the page were a coffee meeting, this is the bit where you’d say “so, what would be useful to you next?”, and mean it.
Two examples that get it right
Basecamp’s About page opens with what they believe about work, not when they were founded. It reads like a manifesto, and you finish it knowing exactly who they are and who they’re not for. The “not for” part is the masterstroke, it makes the “for” part believable.
Mailchimp’s “Our Story” spends almost no time on chronology. It spends its time on the problem the founders saw (small businesses being ignored by enterprise software) and the choices they made because of that. Every paragraph is doing trust-building work.
The pattern: lead with the reader, prove you understand them, show you’re qualified, prove other people have trusted you, give them somewhere to go next. Five sections, in that order.
The takeaway
Your About page is already getting traffic from people who are trying to give you money. The only question is whether the page is helping them do that, or quietly talking them out of it.
Audit yours this week. Read it as a stranger would. If it sounds like a press release, rewrite it as a conversation. If it leads with you, rewrite it to lead with them. If it ends with “contact us”, rewrite it with a specific next step.
The second-most-visited page on your site deserves more than fifteen minutes and a stock photo.