Does Your About Page Convert? (Yes — Here Is How)

Your About page rarely closes a sale on its own, but people visit it to check that you're real and capable before they contact you or buy. If it doesn't reassure them, they leave to Google you instead and end up on competitors' sites and reviews you don't control (NNGroup).

The page's job is to remove the doubt that stops someone acting on your other pages.

Is the About page a sales page or a trust page?

It's a trust page. NNGroup ran behavioural studies across 70+ users and 165 websites and found that the About page works as a credibility check. People read it to confirm a company is genuine and competent before they act (NNGroup).

When the page is missing or thin, users in those studies said they would "just Google it". That moves the evaluation off your site, to where competitors and third-party reviews are waiting (NNGroup).

For solo founders and small teams, we'd rank it second only to the homepage for credibility.

Do real founder photos matter?

Yes. NNGroup's eyetracking work found that people spend 10% more time looking at real team photos than reading the bios next to them, even though the bios take up 316% more space on the page (NNGroup).

Decorative or filler images got zero fixations in the same studies. Even real photos were ignored when used as padding. NNGroup calls this banner blindness (NNGroup). Stock photography is worse: NNGroup's About Us research found it damages how authentic a company feels (NNGroup).

Real team photos hold 10% more viewing time than the bios beside them, despite taking up far less space (NNGroup eyetracking).

Use one genuine photo of the actual person or team, professional but natural, and skip the stock library.

How long should the origin story be?

Short. NNGroup's scroll-depth research, built on more than 130,000 eyetracking fixations across 120 participants, shows where attention goes (NNGroup):

• 57% of viewing time stays above the fold
• 74% lands within the first two screenfuls
• 81% within the first three

Past three screens, little attention is left. A founding timeline placed that far down will mostly go unseen.

NNGroup's About Us study also flagged "walls of text" and "content that lacked substance" as top negative signals, and genuine storytelling as a top positive one (NNGroup).

A good origin story is two to four sentences: the problem you hit yourself, the turning point, and what you do now because of it. Skip the chronological biography. The story builds trust at the moment your reader thinks, "these people understand my problem."

How do you show credentials without bragging?

Put them in a list people can scan. Stanford's Web Credibility Project, drawing on 4,500+ participants across three years of research, lists "highlight the expertise in your organisation" as a core guideline and recommends showing credentials, authority and affiliations explicitly (Stanford).

A short bullet list or a row of badges does more work than a paragraph with the same facts in it: years in practice, clients served, certifications, a recognisable client logo. Stanford also lists showing the real people behind a site as a credibility guideline of its own, and suggests a human detail such as a hobby or a value (Stanford).

Where should the About page live in your navigation?

In the main navigation. NNGroup describes the footer as "last resort" navigation, where people look only when the primary menu fails them (NNGroup). For most small businesses with a handful of pages, About should be a top-level item. Add a footer link as a second route to it. A visitor who can't find it goes off to Google instead (NNGroup).

FAQ

Should a solo founder use "I" or "we"? "I", in most cases. For a solo practitioner, the personal connection is the advantage. NNGroup found people often prefer small businesses precisely for "direct contact with a person" (NNGroup). A corporate "we" hides that.

Are illustrations or avatars a safe substitute for photos? No controlled study shows illustrated avatars building trust the way real photos do. The evidence for genuine photography is strong, so default to a real photo. If you use illustrations, treat them as a brand choice with no proven effect on trust.

Does every business need an About page? Nearly every business does. The common exception is a single-product landing page that already carries a short founder section.

Will a great About page increase my conversion rate directly? Usually not on its own. There's no controlled A/B data showing that having an About page lifts site-wide conversion. Its value is indirect: it removes the doubt that stops people acting on your other pages.

When we build an About page, it gets a real photo, a short origin story, credentials people can scan and a link in the main menu. Book a call if your current About page is still a wall of text next to a stock photo.