What to write in your About section when you are the whole business

Nobody opens your About section to hear your life story. They open it because they are one click away from getting in touch, and they want to know who they would be dealing with. Is this one person who does the work, or an office that passes it on? Do they know my kind of job? What happens after I say hello?

Those three questions are the whole job of the page, and most About sections answer none of them, because they were written as a biography instead of a reply.

Write it as an answer, not a history

The version that works reads like the paragraph you would send someone who emailed to ask about the job. It has a person in it, it names the work, and it ends where the next step is.

If you have ever replied to an enquiry, you already have most of the raw material:

Thanks for getting in touch. I do kitchens and bathrooms around Ashford, mostly refits. I work on my own, so the person who quotes is the person who turns up. Send me a couple of photos and I will tell you whether it is a job I can take and roughly what it costs.

That is an About section. It does not need a mission statement on top of it.

Five questions to answer out loud

Writing about yourself on a blank screen is hard. Talking about yourself is easy. Record a voice note on your phone answering these, then type the answers up and tidy them:

1. What do you actually do, in the words a customer would use?
2. Where do you work, and how far will you travel?
3. What kind of job do you say yes to, and what do you turn down?
4. Who will they deal with: you, or someone else?
5. What happens after they get in touch, and how quickly?

Five spoken answers is about three minutes of audio, and roughly three short paragraphs. Notice where you hesitated. A question you cannot answer out loud is usually one you would avoid on the page too, and it is often the fact the visitor came for.

Cut the lines that say nothing

Some sentences look like content but carry no information. If a line survives only because every business site has one, it is spending your reader's attention and paying nothing back. The usual offenders:

• "We are passionate about quality and customer service."
• "In today's fast-paced world…"
• Any review count, award or founding year that is not true yet.
• A paragraph about your industry rather than about you.
• Your whole job history, including the parts unrelated to the work you want.

Photos of your actual work belong here. One clear photo of you beats a stock image of a smiling stranger in an office you have never been in. And if you are new, say what you do to earn trust instead of claiming a reputation: "you meet me before the first job" is true on day one.

Keep the scanned facts in a short block

Under the paragraphs, a small block handles what people scan for: the areas you cover, your hours, how work is taken on, and how far ahead you are booked. Five lines is enough. It exists so nobody has to email you to find out whether you are even in their town.

Test it on two people

Send the paragraph to two people who do not know your trade. Ask them to say back what you do, where you do it, and what the next step is. If they cannot, the writing is the problem, not them — usually too many claims and not enough specifics.

Then read it once more with one question in mind: can you point at every sentence and say where it came from? A phone call, a quote, a customer's email. A line you cannot source is usually one you wrote to sound bigger, and those are the lines a customer catches.

A short version you can start tonight

• One line: what you do, for whom, and where.
• Two or three short paragraphs in your own voice.
• One photo of you or your work.
• A five-line facts block.
• One clear way to get in touch.

Sitewright is still being built. Nothing is for sale, there is no date being promised, and the waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open. Writing this now means it is ready whenever you decide how the site gets made — and it is the part no builder can write for you. Join the waitlist if you want the one email when there is something to try.