How to Write an About Page That Doesn't Read Like a Résumé

I’ll admit it: the About page is where I’ve watched more business owners stall than any other page on their site.

The homepage? They’ll knock that out. Services? Easy, it’s a list. Contact page? Phone number, done.

But ask someone to write three paragraphs about themselves and suddenly it’s like I asked them to give a toast at a wedding they weren’t invited to.

So they freeze. Or worse, they write this:

“Founded in 2009, we are a client-focused team dedicated to delivering excellence through innovative solutions and a passion for quality.”

Ugh. I’ve read some version of that sentence more times than I’ve seen the Dolphins miss the playoffs. (Okay, maybe not that many. But it’s close.)

Here’s the thing: your About page isn’t really about you. And once you get that, it gets a whole lot easier to write.

Why Every About Page Sounds the Same

Part of my job at DoorLoop is helping business owners get their sites built and live, and that means I’ve seen a lot of About page copy come through. The same phrases show up over and over:

• “Passionate about what we do”
• “Customer-focused” (as opposed to… customer-avoidant?)
• “A one-stop shop”
• “Committed to excellence”
• “We go above and beyond”

None of those are lies. That’s the problem. They’re true about everybody, so they say nothing about you. If you can swap your company name for your competitor’s and the sentence still works, it isn’t doing its job.

I wrote a while back about how your value prop isn’t broken, you just don’t know your own story. The About page is where that problem shows up the loudest. It’s the one page that’s supposed to be the story, and most of us fill it with a mission statement instead.

Your About Page Is a “Can I Trust You?” Page

Think about why someone clicks “About” in the first place.

They’re not bored. They’re deciding. They’ve probably got your site open in one tab and two competitors in the others, and they’re trying to figure out which one of you won’t burn them.

They’re asking: Who are these people? Are they real? Do they get someone like me?

I’ve written before that people think they’re buying a website, but they’re really buying emotional security. Same thing happens here, one page down. Your visitor isn’t reading your About page to learn your founding year. They’re reading it to feel safe saying yes.

Nobody reads your About page to learn about you. They read it to find out if you get them.

That one shift changes everything about how you write it. You stop listing credentials and start answering the questions in your visitor’s head.

How Do You Write an About Page for Your Website?

Write it for the visitor: say who you help and what problem you solve, tell the short real story of why you do it, back it up with proof, show a real face, and end with one clear next step.

That’s the whole recipe. Here’s the structure I’d hand any small business owner staring at a blank page. Most About pages only need these five things, in roughly this order:

1. Open with them, not you. First line names who you help and what you help them with. “We help Miami landlords who are tired of chasing rent every month.” Your visitor should see themselves before they see you.
2. Tell the real “why,” in three sentences max. Why’d you start this? Not the polished version. The real one. Got fed up with how the industry treated people? Saw a gap nobody filled? That’s your story, and it’s yours alone.
3. Prove it. Reviews from real customers, how long you’ve been doing it, a number you can stand behind, a photo of actual work. One specific proof point beats ten adjectives. (And please, never invent a stat. People can smell it.)
4. Show a real face. A photo of you or your team, not stock models laughing at a salad. People trust people. A slightly awkward real photo beats a perfect fake one every time.
5. Give one next step. End with a single clear button: book a call, get a quote, see the work. Not five options. One.

Want a starter sentence for part one? Fill this in:

“We help [who you serve] [do what] so they can [what they really want].”

Say you run a small cleaning company in Kendall. “We provide professional cleaning solutions” becomes “We clean homes for busy Kendall families so their weekends go back to being weekends.” Same business. One of those sentences sounds like a person.

Keep going with that same made-up cleaning company and the whole top of the page might read like this: “We clean homes for busy Kendall families so their weekends go back to being weekends. I started this after ten years of watching big companies send a different stranger every visit, so we send the same two people every time. Our reviews say it better than I can.” Then a real photo, three real reviews, and one button that says “Get a quote.”

That’s a page someone can trust. Took three sentences.

What to Cut (Yes, the Mission Statement)

Now the fun part: deleting stuff. Here’s what I’d take out of most About pages:

• The mission statement. If it has “innovative,” “solutions,” or “excellence” in it, nobody’s reading it. Put the idea into a normal sentence or let it go.
• Your full résumé. Your visitor doesn’t need your college GPA. They need to know why you’re good at this.
• The company timeline. “2011: Moved to a bigger office” is exciting for you and your landlord. For everyone else, skip it.
• “We” with no humans in sight. If you’re a team of one, say “I.” It’s more trustworthy, not less. I built a whole division as a team of one, and pretending to be a big faceless “we” would’ve helped nobody.

If a sentence could live on your competitor’s site, it doesn’t belong on yours.

The Playground Test

You know who’s weirdly great at About pages? Five-year-olds.

When I encourage Yael to go introduce herself to a kid playing alone at the park (a thing I wrote about in teaching my girls chutzpah), nobody’s opening with credentials. Nobody at the swings cares about anyone’s résumé. Kids lead with “Want to play?” They start with the other person.

That’s the energy your About page needs. Less “Founded in 2009.” More “Hey, I think I can help you with that.”

[AJ: optional, one line on how you’d sum up your own About page, or Zossoz’s, in a sentence]

And look, writing about yourself is uncomfortable for almost everyone. I’ve been building personal brands for years and I still squirm doing my own. The trick is to stop writing about yourself and start writing to the one person on the other side of the screen who’s trying to decide if you’re the one.

So here’s your homework (and yes, I’m a dad, homework is my love language): open your About page right now. Run the swap test. Cut every line your competitor could post. Then rewrite the top sentence so it starts with who you help.

That’s maybe twenty minutes. And it might be the most valuable twenty minutes you spend on your website this year, because the people reading that page are the ones who are this close to picking up the phone.

If you get stuck, that’s literally what I do over at Zossoz. I promise I won’t use the word “excellence” once.

Send me your About page’s first line on LinkedIn. I’ll tell you if it passes the swap test.