Writing Your About Page: How to Truly Connect With Your Audience

Edible flowers at Red Haven.

It may be surprising to hear, but your About page ideally is not a biography of you and your business. Rather, it should contain information about your business values, history, and expertise but framed in a way that demonstrates that you understand the problems your audience is facing and that you are there to support them.

A “problem” doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong, and can be something that needs improvement or represents a strong value or goal. 

Some examples include:

• Struggling to find affordable, organic produce

• Wanting to support restaurants that purchase from local growers

• Having a dietary restriction so they can only buy baked goods without refined sugar

Your main goal is to let your customers know that you are a real, trustworthy person and that your business has solutions for their problems!

Focus on What Makes Your Business Unique

Separating yourself from your competitors is key! Before you start writing your About page, it can be helpful to brainstorm a list of everything that is unique about your business. 

Include Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

A USP concisely summarizes why your business is perfectly suited to meet customers’ needs. It combines your unique experience and expertise with a clear benefit to the customer. Best kept to 1-2 sentences, your USP is perfectly placed at the top of your About page, but can also be useful on social media profiles, your Google Business profile, grant applications, and more.

As an example, a USP for a local specialty grocer could be:

Sourcing from over 100 local producers, Four Season Shop is your one-stop shop for high-quality, sustainably sourced local foods that your family will love.

Use this as a base structure for your USP: your experience + what you do + how it benefits your customers.

Connect With Your Customers Over Shared Values

Include your mission or values statement to let your customers know your priorities and goals. These can include your key differentiators, which are the main points of difference between you and your competitors.

Topics to address in your mission or values section may include:

• What problem your business is solving

• Production or ingredient-sourcing methods

• Financial accessibility options

• Certifications, such as USDA Organic, MAEAP, B-Corp, etc

Your mission and values expand on your USP and provide more specific details to your customers about how you operate your business, hopefully creating common ground between you and your audience!

Explain How & Why You’re Here

Your USP is a summary that should be placed in an accessible location on your About page, but going into more detail further down the page is a great way to do more brand storytelling. Explain in more detail why you started your business, the road you took to get there, and why your business is important to you. 

Including some of your personal story can be a great way to improve your customer connections by letting them know you are a real person they are supporting, rather than a giant corporation. 

Here are some good pieces of information to include:

• Business accomplishments and milestones

• Years of experience in your field

• Education background (academic or lived experience)

• Personal motivations for starting your business

• Personal goals you want to achieve through your business

Suggestions to Make the Most of Your About Page

Follow the Messaging Hierarchy

Yes, your personal story is important, but it’s not necessarily what will convince people to support your business. Start with the most compelling, differentiating points of your business, and end with personal details. 

Learn more about the messaging hierarchy in our blog post!

Be Personable, But Keep it Professional

Share relevant personal information, but limit the amount of details you share. Your website is a public space anyone can find, so don’t share more than you would with any stranger.

Avoid Corporate Jargon

Storytelling is the best way to connect with people, so write how you speak and avoid using buzzwords and filler text that doesn’t have any real meaning. 

Be especially careful if you use AI writing tools for your website – they often include too many adjectives that make what you’re trying to say confusing. Using AI as a tool for inspiration is great, just be sure to make edits to sound like a real person!

Make the Design Visually Engaging

Sharing business milestones in a graphic is a great way to present this information in a fun, digestible format, but text also works! Avoid writing in long paragraphs and use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to improve readability.

Use our Brand Writing Workbook

We’ve assembled an easy-to-follow workbook to guide you through writing about your brand. With prompts to help you discover keywords and themes, you’ll have a great place to jump off from by completing the workbook.

Download our free workbook to get help writing about your business.

Hire a Team of Professionals!

Don’t have the time or energy to do your website copywriting? The team at TLD would love to help and has plenty of experience getting to know clients and translating their stories into compelling, effective writing. 

Get in touch today to start telling your story!