Your client's founding year isn't an About page story
A founding year gives you a date, not a reason to choose the business. The About page questions to ask your client should uncover why the company exists, which habits shape its work, and who is responsible for delivering it. Ask for a short story, a visible practice, and the material that supports each claim.
Otherwise, your About draft becomes a timeline with “personal service” attached. You know when the doors opened. You still don’t know what a customer can expect from the people behind them.
What do you need before you send the About page questions?
Start with the visitor’s unresolved question. After reading the service description, what might someone still want to know about the business before making contact? For an unfamiliar workshop, that could be who will handle their item. For a larger supplier, it could be whether the founders still run the operation.
Ask your client to name that uncertainty. It gives you a reason to include a fact beyond “the owner wants it on the website.”
Prefill the business name and offer from your confirmed project brief. You don’t need a second discovery exercise. This questionnaire supplies the About page within an agreed sitemap; it doesn’t settle the company’s positioning or invent a mission.
If your team is writing, request source answers rather than finished paragraphs. The broader reasoning is covered in why clients can’t write website copy. Here, keep the request specific to the story, people, and evidence this page will use.
Copy these questions for your client’s About page
Send the relevant sections below with this introduction:
We’re gathering material for your About page. Bullet points are enough; you don’t need to write a biography. Use the answer guide beside each question, and mark anything you can’t confirm. We’ll use your answers to draft the page, then ask you to check its accuracy.
Replace the final sentence if someone else owns the writing. Keep optional follow-ups out of the first request until you need them.
Why the business began
| Question to ask | Answer guide |
|---|---|
| What was happening when you decided to start this business? | Describe the situation or event in a short paragraph. An ordinary reason is fine. |
| What did you want to do differently from the work you were doing before? | Name one choice you made, rather than a quality you hoped to have. |
| When did the business begin operating under its current name? | Give the year. Separate an earlier career from the company’s own history. |
| Which part of that original reason still affects your work today? | Point to a present-day decision or habit. |
A dramatic origin isn’t required. “The previous owner retired and I took over” gives you a useful starting point. Follow with “What did you keep, and what did you change?” You can write a credible account of continuity without manufacturing a founder’s revelation.
For an established company, ask which milestone changed what customers could receive. A move matters if it created room for a new kind of work. A list of office addresses usually doesn’t.
How the business behaves now
| Question to ask | Answer guide |
|---|---|
| What would a customer see you do that explains how you work? | Describe one action they could observe. |
| Tell us about a recent decision where you chose that approach even though another option was easier. | Explain the choice and its consequence. Leave customer names out unless needed. |
| Which parts of the work do you handle yourselves, and which involve someone outside the business? | Name the responsibilities relevant to customers. |
| What do you deliberately avoid doing? | Give a boundary that helps a visitor judge fit. |
“Care,” “integrity,” and “craftsmanship” are starting points for follow-ups. They aren’t enough to draft the section. Ask what happened when the stated value affected a decision.
Keep the question neutral. “What do you check before returning an item?” leaves room for the actual process. “Do you inspect every detail?” hands the client a claim to agree with.
These answers explain the people behind the service. Save detailed package inclusions, prices, and booking instructions for the service page rather than duplicating them here.
Who the visitor will deal with
| Question to ask | Answer guide |
|---|---|
| Who is responsible for the work customers are buying? | Give public names, roles, and the part each person handles. |
| Which experience prepared those people for this particular work? | Supply a relevant past role, training, or project and its dates where known. |
| Who will a new customer speak with first? | Explain whether that person also does the work or passes it to someone else. |
| Is there anything about ownership or the team that visitors commonly misunderstand? | Correct a specific assumption, or say “Nothing comes to mind.” |
Use these to establish responsibility, not to collect full staff biographies. If the site has a separate team directory, the About page can introduce the people who lead the work and link onward.
For a solo business, ask which parts the owner personally handles. Don’t turn “I” into “we” to make the company appear larger. A founder’s relevant experience and clear responsibilities can carry the page without an invented team.
What supports the story
| Question to ask | Answer guide |
|---|---|
| Which fact or object could help us show the story you’ve described? | Link a dated record, an example of work, or an original photograph. Explain what it establishes. |
| Are there credentials or memberships directly relevant to this work? | Give the exact name, holder, and a source where we can check current status. Skip this if none applies. |
| Which existing description of the company is inaccurate or out of date? | Link it and identify the correction. |
| Which story details should stay out of public copy? | Mark private names, personal history, or business details that aren’t for the website. |
Request supporting material for the claims you plan to use. Check dates, credential status, and publication permission together before drafting those claims; record image credits and any restrictions beside the file. You don’t need an archive of everything the business has ever produced.
Which follow-up turns a generic answer into useful material?
Match the follow-up to the missing fact. Repeating the original question with “more detail” leaves the client to decide what you meant.
| Initial answer | Follow-up to send |
|---|---|
| “We’re a family business.” | Who in the family works here now, and what does each person handle? |
| “We have decades of experience.” | Whose experience is that, when did it begin, and how long has this business operated? |
| “We care about quality.” | What did you reject, redo, or change on a recent piece of work, and why? |
| “Our customers trust us.” | What responsibility do customers hand over to you, and how do you handle it? |
| “We offer a personal service.” | Who stays in contact with the customer, and does that person remain involved through delivery? |
Don’t send the whole table as another questionnaire. Pick the row that resolves the vague answer in front of you.
Sometimes the answer weakens the planned headline. A business may be family-owned while no family member handles customer work. That’s still usable information. Describe ownership accurately instead of promising a family member at every appointment.
What could the answers look like in a finished About section?
Consider a fictional bookbinding workshop, Alder Bindery. Its owner initially supplies “Established in 2016. Traditional craftsmanship and personal attention.” You have a date and two claims, but little you can show.
The focused questions produce this source material:
I used to bind presentation copies for publishers. People also kept asking whether I could repair a book they wanted to keep using, so I opened Alder Bindery in 2016. I still handle the first assessment. Before we agree on a new cover, I show the owner a cloth sample and explain which original parts we can retain. My colleague makes the new cases. We don’t provide conservation treatment for museum collections; we refer those inquiries elsewhere.
Now you can select a story with a present-day consequence. A draft might read:
Alder Bindery began in 2016 after its founder’s publishing work brought a different kind of inquiry: people wanted help with books they still used and wanted to keep.
The founder still handles your first assessment. You’ll discuss what can be retained and see a cloth sample before agreeing on a replacement cover. A second binder makes the new cases in the workshop.
For museum conservation work, we’ll point you toward a specialist.
The boundary helps readers judge fit. The cloth sample makes “personal attention” visible without adding an adjective. You haven’t claimed that every book can be repaired or that the workshop holds a credential the owner never mentioned.
Pair that section with an original photograph of the assessment or sample discussion. A portrait shows who the founder is; a working photograph can also show the habit the copy describes.
Which photos and files should you request with the answers?
Choose files around the sections you expect to draft. For Alder Bindery, the useful request is a founder portrait, a sample discussion photograph, and an early workshop image only if it adds something to the origin story.
For each image, ask who or what it shows and which part of the story it supports. Match public names to faces. An unlabeled group photo won’t tell you who still works there.
Keep those files with the About answers when you collect them through a shared document or a content collection brief for the About page. This page-specific structure is the approach behind PageIntake, which currently offers a waitlist. You can apply the same structure in your existing project tools.
Avoid requesting a founder portrait, an entire company archive, and every employee’s biography under one mandatory upload. Request the particular material you’ll use. If there’s no suitable historical image, the origin paragraph can stand on its own.
How do you know you have enough to write?
Check whether you can explain the business’s beginning, connect it to a current working practice, identify the responsible people, and support the facts you intend to publish. Missing a relevant detail calls for one follow-up. It doesn’t require restarting the questionnaire.
Arrange the selected answers into an introduction, a short origin section, a present-day practice, and the relevant people. End with a route to the service or inquiry page the reader needs next. Change that order when the visitor’s main uncertainty calls for it.
Before handing the draft back, point out interpretations that need a decision. In the bindery example, “before agreeing on a replacement cover” describes a specific sequence. Ask the owner to confirm that sequence rather than approving a broad statement about excellent service.
Keep a detail when it helps someone understand who they’re hiring or what working with the business involves. Keep the remaining history in your notes. Your questions have done their job when the About page can describe a recognizable business without leaning on its founding year and a string of values.