What belongs on the About page of a one-person business

For your trade 5 min read

The About page is where a stranger decides whether to let you into the house, and for a one-person business that takes a name, a face and a few checkable facts.

Somebody found you in a search, read the page about the thing they need, and then clicked About. They are not looking for a story. They are working out whether they want you standing in their kitchen on Thursday. That is a smaller job than most About pages attempt, and a harder one to fake.

Who reads it, and what they are checking

Not everybody clicks About. The ones who do are usually close to calling somebody, and they are checking three things without saying so: who actually turns up, whether that person has done this before, and whether they can get hold of you if something goes wrong afterwards.

Everything useful on the page is an answer to one of those three. Everything else is filler you will have to maintain.

Your name, and a photograph of your face

If the business is you, your own name belongs in the first line, not the trading name.

Then a photograph of you, taken outdoors on an overcast day, looking at the camera, in the clothes you actually work in. It does not need to be a studio portrait, and a phone camera held by somebody else at chest height is fine. A face does more work here than any paragraph, because it turns a website into a person who can be recognized at the door. If you are unsure what makes a usable photo, the photo guide covers it.

If you genuinely cannot stand a picture of yourself, use the van, the tools laid out, or your hands doing the work. That is a distant second, but it beats a stock image of a stranger in a hard hat.

How long you have been doing it, and where you are based

Give the year you started and the town you work out of. Both are facts, and you cannot be caught out by a fact.

If it has been three years, write three years. Vague phrases exist to make a small number sound like a big one, and a reader who has read four of these pages in a row can feel the difference between a year and a phrase. Nobody is owed a decade before they are allowed to be good at something.

Avoid combined experience. It is one person's arithmetic dressed up as a team.

Licenses, insurance and the other checkable things

If your trade is licensed and you hold the license, write the number on the page. If you carry liability insurance, say so, and say you will send the certificate to anybody who asks, then actually send it.

Do not imply a license you do not hold, and do not use the word bonded because it sounds solid. A homeowner who checks and finds nothing has learned something about you that no other page can undo.

What you do not do

The most useful paragraph on most About pages is the short list of work you turn down: no gas, no roofs over two stories, nothing commercial, nothing outside a forty minute drive.

It reads as confidence rather than limitation, and it saves you the call that was never going to become a job. It also spares the caller a wasted afternoon, which is the part they remember.

Who answers the phone, and when

Say plainly what happens when somebody calls. You answer it. Or it goes to voicemail while you are under a sink, and you return calls between five and seven. Or your partner takes the calls during the day.

None of that is an admission. It is the most practical thing on the page, and it is the thing an owner is most likely to leave out.

What to leave off

A mission statement, unless a customer has ever asked you for one. The word passionate, along with every other word you would not say out loud in a van. Stock photographs of people who do not work for you. Awards and badges you cannot explain in one sentence. Family owned since a year that came before you owned it.

And the long founding story about a childhood toolbox. It is usually true and it is almost never the reason somebody calls.

What to put on instead

• Your name, in the first line
• One photograph of you, taken outside, in work clothes
• The year you started and the town you are based in
• The license number, if your trade has one
• Whether you are insured, and that you will send proof
• The work you do not take, in a short list
• What happens when somebody calls, in plain hours
• One sentence about who does the work, if anybody helps you
• Your phone number, again, at the bottom

Where the page should send them next

Most About pages end with a reader who is convinced and has nothing to do. Finish with the phone number and one link, either back to the service they came from or on to the proof, which for a newer business is the work itself rather than a wall of quotes. If you have two reviews rather than twenty, there is a better way to show them.

Questions people ask

How long should an About page be?

Shorter than you think. Three hundred words that answer the three silent questions will do more than a thousand that circle them. If you are padding, stop.

Do I really need a photo of myself?

You do not need one. A page with a real face on it gives a stranger something a page without one cannot, and you are asking that stranger to give you an address and a time. If it makes you uncomfortable, take the picture anyway and look at it in a week.

What if I do not have a story?

Then do not invent one. Most people who start a trade started because they were good at it and tired of working for somebody else. Written plainly in two sentences, that is enough, and it is true.

Should I write I or we?

Write I if it is you. There is nothing small about it, and we from a one-person business is a bluff that collapses the moment you show up alone.

Can I use a photo I found online?

No. Photographs are owned by whoever took them, and stock sites license them for money. Take your own, or pay for one. A phone photo of your actual van is worth more here than a licensed image of somebody else's.

Does the About page help me get found in search?

Nobody can promise you that, and the page is not really built for it. Its job is the last few seconds before somebody dials, which is a different job.