How to write an About Us page, with real examples

An About page tells a visitor what your company does, who is behind it, and how to reach you. It is the page a customer, a reporter or a possible hire opens to decide whether to trust you, and it is one of the first places Google’s own reviewers look to see who runs a site. On October 29, 2026, we read the About page of 15 companies listed in our Index. Almost all had one, 13 of the 15. Far fewer led with the basics: 8 opened by plainly saying what the company does. Only 6 named a founder, and only 6 gave the year the company started.

Has a dedicated About page87%

Gives a way to make contact80%

Says what it does, up top53%

Shows the team or leadership47%

Names the founders40%

Gives a founding year40%

Has a dedicated About page	87%
Gives a way to make contact	80%
Says what it does, up top	53%
Shows the team or leadership	47%
Names the founders	40%
Gives a founding year	40%

Almost every company has an About page, yet fewer than half name a founder or give a founding year.

Source: TheCompanyIndex, reading of 15 company About pages, October 29, 2026

What is an About Us page for?

The job of an About page is to answer who is behind a company and what it does, plainly enough that a stranger believes it. Google puts the same idea in the instructions it gives the people who rate search results. Its Search Quality Rater Guidelines note that “most websites have ‘contact us’ or ‘about us’ or ‘about’ pages that provide information about who owns the site”, and tell raters to “look at the ‘About us’ page on the website … as a starting point” when they judge whether a site is trustworthy.

Google gives site owners the same advice. Its guidance on creating helpful content asks whether readers can tell who wrote a page, and recommends “background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page”.

Readers want the page to be honest. Nielsen Norman Group, a user-research firm, studied About pages across three rounds in 2019 and drew 85 guidelines from the work. Its finding was blunt: “users expect About Us sections to be clear, authentic, and transparent”, and they often compare what a company says about itself with outside reviews. Google’s raters are told to do the same. When a site’s own account and independent sources disagree, the guidelines say to “trust the independent sources”.

What should an About Us page include?

Four answers carry most of the weight. A reader should finish the top of the page knowing what you do, who is behind you, why the company exists, and how to make contact.

The US Small Business Administration describes the same core in its guide to the company description, the About section of a business plan. It tells a founder to “go into detail about the problems your business solves” and to “explain the competitive advantages that will make your business a success”. A website About page is shorter than a business plan, and it carries the same four facts.

What should the first line say?

What the company does, in plain words. Nielsen Norman Group put it this way in 2015: as a reader moves through a site, they “should gain a fuller understanding of who you are, what you do, and why you exist”, and a page should “pass the first impressions test by answering top questions succinctly”.

Most companies we read did not open that way. Of the 15, only 8 led with a plain line about what the company does. The rest opened with a mission, a tagline, an audience, or a short story, and made the reader scroll to learn the basics. The companies that did open plainly needed one sentence. Shopify begins “Shopify is a complete commerce platform to sell online or in person.” Typeform begins “Typeform is a refreshingly different form builder.” Ahrefs begins “Ahrefs is a SaaS marketing platform.” Each names the company and says what it is before anything else.

Open with what the company does. A mission and an origin story read better once a visitor already knows what you make.

Should you name the founders and the founding year?

It helps, and most companies skip it. Only 6 of the 15 pages named a founder, and only 6 gave the year the company started. That is a missed chance, because both Google’s raters and Nielsen Norman Group’s readers look for exactly this: who is behind the company, and how long it has been around.

The companies that do it make the page feel real. Wise runs a page titled “The Story of Wise” that names Taavet and Kristo and dates the company to 2011. Buffer names Joel Gascoigne as its founder and traces itself to November 2010. 1Password names its founder, gives the year 2005, and lists its leadership team. A real name and a date are a cheap signal of trust, and a small or new company gains more from them than a household name does.

How long should an About Us page be?

There is no single answer. Google and Nielsen Norman Group ask only that the top of the page carry the basics, read quickly. The pages we read ran from a single sentence, as at Stripe and Shopify, to long pages with a values section and a full team directory, as at Buffer and Calendly.

The useful rule sits in the first screen. In our earlier reading of 34 company homepages, the short description ran a median of 144 characters. An About page is longer than that, and the first screen should still answer what you do and who you are. Let the depth follow underneath.

Does an About Us page help SEO?

Indirectly. Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines use the About page to work out who is responsible for a site and to judge its trust, part of what Google calls experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. There is no documented direct ranking boost from simply having the page. Because raters are told to trust independent sources over a site’s own words, an honest About page is worth more than a flattering one.

A link is a separate matter. A followed link from a page that a search engine trusts passes a signal that a nofollow link does not, which is why what a link says to Google is worth understanding before you chase listings. A reviewed directory that gives a followed link is one honest way to earn that signal.

About Us page examples: three patterns

Across the 15 pages, three shapes repeated.

• The one-liner. Stripe, Shopify and Typeform each open with a single sentence that names the company and says what it does, then let the detail follow.
• The origin story. Wise, Buffer and Mailchimp tell how and when the company started, and name the people who started it. Mailchimp dates itself to 2001 in Atlanta.
• The leadership page. 1Password, Calendly and Ahrefs lead with the people running the company today, with names, titles and photos.

None of the three is wrong. A new company earns trust fastest from the origin story and the names behind it; a larger one can lean on the one-liner and its reputation.

A short About page you can copy

A plain structure beats a clever one. Five lines, in this order, answer what a reader and a search engine want to know:

1. What you do:      "<Company> is a <what> for <who>."
2. Who, and since:   "<Company> was founded in <year> by <names>."
3. Why it exists:    one sentence on the problem you solve.
4. Proof:            the team, the customers, or numbers you stand behind.
5. Contact:          an email, a form, or an address.

Fill the first line before you write a word of the rest. If a stranger reads only that line, they should already know what your company is.

Common mistakes

• Opening with a mission or a tagline. Say what the company does first. Only 8 of the 15 pages we read did.
• Hiding who is behind the company. Google’s raters open the About page to find exactly that, and 9 of the 15 pages we read named no founder.
• No way to make contact. Honest companies give one. 12 of the 15 did.
• Copying another company’s story. Nielsen Norman Group found that readers check a company’s claims against outside reviews.
• Writing for search engines. Google’s guidance says the reason to publish “should be that you’re creating content primarily to help people”, and warns that writing mainly to attract search visits is not what its systems reward.

Add your company to the Index

If you want the same facts, what you do, who is behind you, and a way to reach you, on a page that other people and search engines can trust, you can add your company to TheCompanyIndex for free. A person reads every entry before it goes live, and an approved entry gets its own page with a followed link.

What this page could not check

• The sample is 15 mostly software and consumer companies listed in our Index. A local shop, an agency, a restaurant or a nonprofit would write a different About page.
• Whether a page opens by saying what the company does is our reading, and a borderline mission line could be counted either way.
• Some pages served us a regional version, so Stripe and Mailchimp answered us in German. We judged the structure of each page, not its translation.
• About pages change often. Several of the roundups we read showed screenshots that were already out of date.
• We recorded what each page contained, not its length in characters, so no word count appears here.
• Each finding is due for a check after April 29, 2027.

Sources

• US Small Business Administration, “Write your business plan”, company description section, read October 29, 2026.
• Google Search Central, “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content”, self-assessment on who, how and why, read October 29, 2026.
• Google, “Search Quality Rater Guidelines”, sections 2.5 on finding who is responsible for a website and 3.4 on experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, 2025 edition, read October 29, 2026.
• Anna Kaley and Jakob Nielsen, “‘About Us’ Information on Websites”, Nielsen Norman Group, May 26, 2019.
• Hoa Loranger, “Great Summaries on ‘About Us’ Pages”, Nielsen Norman Group, June 21, 2015.
• TheCompanyIndex, our own reading of the About or company page of 15 listed companies, October 29, 2026.