An About page should let a cautious buyer establish who is behind the website, who is accountable for the work and which authority claims can be checked. If the page supplies only a founding story, team photograph and polished adjectives, it has outsourced verification to the reader.
Warmth is useful. Identity is essential.
TL;DR
- An About page is identity and accountability infrastructure. The story earns its place only when it helps, not when it delays the answers.
- Run the Identity Handshake: recognised name, accountable entity, their relationship, what it owns, where to verify it.
- Responsibility before biography. Every authority adjective creates a proof debt; pay it or remove the word.
- Give every changing fact an owner and an event trigger, not a calendar reminder.
My position is that an About page is not primarily a company autobiography. It is identity and accountability infrastructure. The story earns its place when it helps a reader understand the organisation, people, responsibilities and basis of authority, not when it delays those answers.
Start with the organisation making the promise
The first question is embarrassingly basic: which organisation is offering the service?
A brand, trading name and registered company can be related without being interchangeable. The page should explain that relationship plainly enough that a buyer does not need to compare the footer, privacy notice, invoice terms and Companies House record merely to discover who receives the money and accepts responsibility.
For UK limited companies, GOV.UK says company websites must show the registered number, registered office address, place of registration and the fact that the company is limited (GOV.UK: company signs, stationery and promotional material). That is a disclosure baseline for that legal form. It is not a complete About page and not a rule for every organisation.
I separate two jobs. Disclosure is information required for the entity’s legal form and circumstances. Explanation is how the public brand, accountable organisation, people and services relate. A footer may carry disclosure. The About page should remove ambiguity.
Use the Identity Handshake
I use a compact Identity Handshake to test whether the public brand and accountable organisation have actually been introduced. The page should answer:
- What name does the customer recognise?
The brand or trading name a buyer would search for and repeat.
- Which legal or accountable entity operates behind that name?
The organisation that will appear on the contract and the invoice.
- What is the relationship between them?
Trading name, subsidiary, partnership, sole trader: say which.
- Which services or commitments does that entity own?
The work the accountable entity actually provides and stands behind.
- Where can a buyer verify or contact it?
The record, register or contact route that lets the reader check.
A useful sentence might say that a named brand is the trading name of a named limited company, which provides the described services. The exact wording depends on the facts. What matters is that the relationship stops being a puzzle.
I would reject a grand “our story” opening if the page still makes the buyer hunt for the organisation that will appear on the contract.
Put accountability beside the work
Team pages often answer what everybody looks like before explaining what anybody is responsible for. The useful questions are harder: Who leads the business? Who owns the service described elsewhere? Who reviews specialist or consequential material? Which person or organisation holds a stated qualification? Who can make a decision when delivery goes wrong? Who maintains the public fact when it changes?
Do not manufacture authority by giving every employee a heroic biography. Name the role, responsibility and relevant basis of experience. Attach credentials to the person or organisation that actually holds them. State the scope instead of allowing a badge to imply universal competence.
Google’s people-first guidance asks whether a site provides clear sourcing, evidence of expertise and background about an author or publisher. It also explains that E-E-A-T is not one single ranking factor (Google Search Central: helpful content). An About page can support understanding and trust. It cannot purchase rankings by looking respectable.
Responsibility before biography. One bounded sentence explaining who owns the work can do more for a buyer than four paragraphs of anonymous expertise.
Make authority adjectives earn their place
The standard About page vocabulary creates atmosphere without creating knowledge: trusted, leading, expert, award-winning, accredited, established, decades of experience. Each phrase can conceal several different propositions.
| Vague claim | Evidence-bearing version needs |
|---|---|
| Experienced team | Relevant people, roles, experience type and honest scope |
| Accredited company | Scheme, holder, issuer, current status and coverage |
| Established for 20 years | Person or entity owning the period and its start date |
| Award-winning service | Award, issuer, recipient, category and date |
| Local business | A real operating relationship with the place |
| Trusted by thousands | Defined population, source, period and method |
The About page does not need to reproduce every certificate or project record. It must make the claim precise enough that the correct evidence could verify it.
The Adjective Invoice: every authority adjective creates a proof debt. Pay it with an inspectable proposition or remove the word.
Tell the history without borrowing age
Company histories often become a quiet form of claim inflation. A founder may have worked in the field before the present company existed. A trading name may have changed. A team may have acquired another business. None of that is inherently misleading, but the subject must remain attached to the date.
Compare “The company has traded since 2004” with “The founder has worked in the field since 2004. The present company was incorporated in 2018.” The second statement may be less compact, but it carries more information and assigns each part of the history to its correct owner.
Use the same discipline for client counts, project totals, geographic reach and team size. A number requires a subject, period, method and review date. If nobody can maintain it, omission may be more honest than impressive-looking decay. My rule is that continuity can be explained without transferring one person’s age, another company’s work or a predecessor’s history to the current entity.
Audit in two tabs and one conversation
The most useful About-page audit does not begin with a tone workshop. It begins with the public claim, the source suited to that claim and the person accountable for it.
Tab one: the public website
Record the brand, legal identity, roles, locations, credentials, history and material experience claims. Check the footer, contact page, policies and service pages for contradictions.
Tab two: the appropriate record
Use the source capable of checking the exact proposition. Companies House can help inspect filed company details, but its service warns that it does not verify the accuracy of information filed (Companies House). A public record has its own scope; it is not a halo around every marketing sentence. Use credential issuers for credential status. Use the relevant register for regulated status. Use the organisation’s current approved records for present responsibilities.
The conversation: the fact owner
Ask what the site may state, what supports the wording and what event should trigger review. This is where ambiguous inheritance appears: an old company name, departed specialist, expired membership, renamed service or office that is no longer customer-facing. End every claim with one decision:
The output is a decision list, not a folder of screenshots.
Would a cautious buyer still need to play detective on your About page? We audit it in two tabs and one conversation and hand back a keep / qualify / update / remove list.
Build an accountability map
An About page becomes useful when the reader can see how people connect to decisions. Use this working map:
| Public question | Page answer | Evidence or owner |
|---|---|---|
| Who operates the brand? | Brand-to-entity relationship | Corporate record and approved business statement |
| Who owns the service? | Named role or accountable function | Current organisational record |
| Who holds the qualification? | Exact holder and scope | Issuer-controlled record |
| Who reviews this advice? | Named reviewer and responsibility | Editorial or professional process |
| Who handles failure? | Escalation route and responsible function | Current operating procedure |
| Who updates changing facts? | Fact owner and trigger | Maintenance register |
This does not require publishing an internal organisation chart. It requires enough public accountability for the buyer to understand who stands behind consequential claims.
I would not force names onto roles where privacy, security or staff turnover makes that inappropriate. A named accountable function can sometimes be the honest answer. The page should not invent intimacy to look human.
Give changing facts a trigger
About pages decay differently from ordinary articles. People leave. Responsibilities change. Credentials expire. Offices move. Services disappear. A founding story stays emotionally true while the operating facts around it quietly rot. Assign an owner and trigger:
Do not solve staleness by deleting every useful detail. Solve it by knowing which facts can change and who must correct them. I call this event-driven freshness. The page is reviewed when reality changes, not merely when the calendar tells marketing to update the copyright year.
Stop before the page becomes a filing cabinet
The About page should not reproduce every service description, certificate, case study, policy and employee profile. Its job is identity and accountability. It should help the reader answer:
- Which organisation is behind this website?
- How does the public brand relate to it?
- Who is accountable for the work or advice?
- Which relevant authority or experience can be checked?
- Which important limits should remain visible?
- Where can a material claim be verified?
It cannot prove service quality by assertion. It cannot convert incorporation into expertise. It cannot guarantee rankings, citations or enquiries.
Audit the page backwards from buyer uncertainty. Expose the brand-to-entity relationship. Attach authority to its holder. Assign history to the correct subject. Give unstable facts an owner.
The best About page is not the grandest biography. It is the moment the buyer can stop being the company’s detective.
Good to know
FAQs
Enough for a cautious buyer to establish who is behind the website, who is accountable for the work and which authority claims can be checked. The founding story is welcome only once those answers are in place.
GOV.UK says a limited company’s website must show the registered number, registered office address, place of registration and that the company is limited. That is a disclosure baseline for that legal form; the About page should still explain how the brand and entity relate.
Google’s people-first guidance asks about clear sourcing, evidence of expertise and background on the author or publisher, and says E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor. An About page supports understanding and trust; it cannot buy rankings by looking respectable.
Only by assigning each fact to its correct owner: the founder has worked in the field since 2004; the present company was incorporated on its actual date. Continuity can be explained without transferring one person’s age to the current entity.
Next step
Is your About page still making buyers do the detective work?
We run the Identity Handshake, price the Adjective Invoice and build the accountability map, then hand back a keep / qualify / update / remove list.