About us: trust.

The "About us" page is often filled in at the last minute before a website launch: a couple of paragraphs about a "dynamically developing team" and a photo of the office. Yet it's opened by exactly those visitors who are almost ready to get in touch but want to make sure the company can be trusted.

We'll explain what people actually read on this page, which sections it needs, how to write about your company without clichés, and why it affects not only conversion but also how search engines treat the website.

Why you need an "About us" page

It's there to remove the last doubts before a purchase. The visitor has already looked at the services and prices; now they're checking who is behind the website: whether it's a real company, how long it has been operating, whether there's an office and real employees. If they can't find the answers, they go back to search and to your competitors.

This page is especially important for expensive services and long projects: construction, healthcare, legal services, equipment. The higher the price and the risk, the more carefully the client studies the contractor.

What visitors look for on this page

Visitors look for proof, not nice words. In our experience, people most often want to see:

• how many years the company has been on the market and what it does;
• who specifically will do the work;
• where the office or production facility is;
• legal details that let them check the company;
• work samples and client reviews;
• certificates and licenses, if the business requires them.

Everything else is secondary. A company mission and values are appropriate only if they explain how you work in practice rather than sound like a slogan.

Page structure

A convenient structure goes from general to specific: who you are, who's on the team, how you can back up your words and how to contact you. Each section answers one client question.

A short company overview

Start with two or three sentences: what you do, for whom and what makes you different. For example: "We design and build frame houses for year-round living. We've worked on fixed-price estimates since 2012." That's clearer than a paragraph about striving for perfection.

The team and staff photos

Real photos of employees work better than any stock images. The head of the company and key specialists are enough: name, position, experience, what the person does on projects. A company team in real photos shows that behind the website there are people you can actually visit.

Numbers and facts

Year founded, number of completed projects, number of employees, warehouse floor space: anything that can be verified. Don't round up or write "thousands of satisfied customers" if you don't know the exact number. One verifiable figure is worth a dozen bold claims.

Documents and company details

Company details aren't only for the client's accounting department. They let a person check the firm in public registers, and search engines take them into account as a sign of a real business.

What you must publish

The full name of the legal entity, the TIN (INN) and OGRN (primary state registration number), the registered and actual addresses, phone number and email. If the work requires a license or permit, add a scan of the document with its number. Certificates for materials and staff training certificates are also appropriate, but without turning the page into an archive.

How to write about your company

Write the way you'd describe yourself to a client at a first meeting: simply, specifically and without exaggeration. The text should take a couple of minutes to read.

No bureaucratic language or clichés

Phrases like "highly qualified specialists," "a wide range of services" and "a flexible discount system" appear on thousands of websites. Replace each one with a fact. Instead of "experienced craftsmen," write that your foremen have at least eight years of experience; instead of "flexible discounts," say under what conditions the price goes down.

Company history, briefly

A company history is interesting if it means something to the client: why you started, what changed, what you learned. A three-screen timeline with the dates of office moves is of no use to anyone. Three or four key milestones that explain why you can be trusted today are enough.

Reviews and proof

Reviews on the "About us" page should be verifiable: with a name, the organization's name, sometimes a link to a listing on a maps service or a photo of a letter. Anonymous praise without details has the opposite effect. We wrote more about how reviews affect reputation in our piece on user reviews.

Besides reviews, client trust is strengthened by work samples, partner logos (if you have permission to display them) and mentions in industry media. You don't have to publish all of this in full; a short selection with a link to the case studies section will do.

Common mistakes

Most mistakes come from making the page just to tick a box. Here's what comes up most often:

1. The text is copied from another website or written by AI without proofreading.
2. There isn't a single photo of people, only the interior or stock images.
3. Company details are hidden in a downloadable document or missing altogether.
4. The numbers contradict other pages of the website.
5. The page has no contact details or contact button, even though the visitor is ready to write.

The last mistake is especially frustrating. A person has read the page to the end, is convinced the company is reliable, and simply has nowhere to click. Add a form or a phone number at the bottom. If other pages bring few leads too, the cause may be broader; typical situations are covered in our article on why a website brings no leads.

How the "About us" page affects search

It affects it directly: Yandex takes into account commercial factors, including contact details, company details and reviews. If this information isn't on the website, it loses to competitors even with good copy on the service pages. We covered what else the search engine checks in our article on the commercial factors Yandex checks.

The other side is Yandex's EPOS principles: expertise, usefulness, originality and substance. A page with real people, experience and documents confirms the expertise of the whole website. Yandex considers AI-generated text without expert review to be of little use, so a template story about the company won't help here. We collected the general requirements for a website that inspires trust in our overview of what a company website should be like.

When it's easier to rebuild the page

If an old template doesn't let you add team photos, a table of company details and a contact form, reworking a single page drags on for months. In that case, it makes more sense to update the whole website. Website creation and website development today include the "About us" page as a required part, not an add-on.

When developing websites, we build this page into the prototype from day one, along with the services and contacts. Building a website from scratch lets you think through where to put documents, how to link the team to case studies and where to place the button. Building a website from a ready-made template doesn't: a template is designed for everyone at once and hardly takes into account what makes you different. Experience in website development shows that in a template, the about page most often turns into a single paragraph with no photos. Custom website development, on the other hand, lets you account for the specifics of a particular business.

People often ask what building a website costs and what the price of the work is. The cost of a turnkey website depends on the number of pages, the complexity of the design and the integrations, so an honest estimate is given after the brief. If you want to order a turnkey website or turnkey website development together with copywriting and a team photo shoot, it's better to discuss everything at once rather than add it piece by piece. You can buy website creation or website development as an off-the-shelf package, but the about page in it will be as faceless as hundreds of others.

The epic name. team builds and develops turnkey websites in Moscow and across Russia. See how turnkey website creation and development work on our website development page, and we'll tell you how to make an about page people will believe.