The About Us page is the page owners write last, in ten minutes, using words nobody would say out loud. It is also the page a cautious buyer opens right before they decide whether to send an enquiry or close the tab. That mismatch is why so many Malaysian SME sites get traffic and no calls.
This guide covers the seven blocks that belong on the page, what Malaysian businesses actually publish today, how long the page should be, and how to write a founder story that reads like a person. If you are still deciding what the whole site should say, start with ZenWeb's guide to planning your website content.
1. What should an About Us page include?
Quick Answer: An About Us page should include a founder or company story, your SSM registration details, photographs of real staff, dated milestones, named clients, any certifications you hold, and one clear next step. Each block answers the same silent question: is this a real business that will still be here next year?
Treat the page as an evidence file, not a personality test. A buyer landing there has already seen your prices and your service list. What they are checking now is whether you exist properly – whether there are people, a registration, a history and someone else who has paid you before.
That is a different job from the rest of the site. Service pages argue that the work is worth buying; our web design service treats the About page as the page that argues the seller is worth buying from. It only needs one page – sizing the rest of the site is a separate exercise, covered in how many pages a business website needs.
- Verifiable beats impressive. "Registered in 2014, 312 completed projects" earns more than "a passion for excellence" ever will.
- Specific beats general. Naming three client companies does more than claiming hundreds of satisfied customers.
- Human beats corporate. One founder photograph with a real name outperforms a stock image of a boardroom.
Key takeaway: The About Us page is where a stranger checks whether you are real. Every block on it should be a fact they could confirm somewhere else.
The short video below walks through the same page from a store owner's point of view. Watch how fast the advice moves from "tell your story" to "show something concrete".
Not sure your About page is doing any selling?
We rebuild trust pages as part of every website project, with the proof blocks written in.
See our web design pricing →2. The seven blocks, in the order that builds trust
Quick Answer: Order the page as story, registration proof, team faces, milestones, clients, certifications, then the next step. The sequence matters because trust is cumulative: a reader who has just met a named founder reads the registration number as reassurance rather than as legal small print.
Build the page in this order and each block sets up the one after it. Skipping straight to logos and badges, which is the common shortcut, gives a reader proof before they know who is being vouched for.
- Open with the founder or company story. Two short paragraphs on why the business started and who it was built to serve. Name the founder.
- Show the registration. Full registered name, SSM number and registered address, plain and unhidden.
- Put faces on the page. Three to six real photographs of staff with names and roles. No stock imagery.
- Give dated milestones. Year founded, first branch, hundredth project, latest expansion. Dates are checkable; adjectives are not.
- Name clients or industries served. Logos where you have permission, industry names where you do not.
- List certifications and partnerships. Licences, association memberships, platform partner status – whatever a buyer in your trade recognises.
- Close with one next step. A single call to action, matched to how you actually take enquiries.
These blocks belong to the wider trust system on the site rather than to this one page. If your site is thin on proof generally, whether your website builds trust fast covers the site-wide view, and brand identity covers how the page should look while it does the work.
Key takeaway: Story first, proof second, action last. The order is what turns seven separate blocks into one argument.
3. Which About page blocks do Malaysian SME sites actually have?
Quick Answer: Nearly every Malaysian SME About Us page carries a company description, but fewer than four in ten show an SSM number and fewer than three in ten show real team photographs. The blocks that are hardest to fake are exactly the ones most sites leave out.
The chart shows how often each block appears on existing About pages audited before a rebuild.
| Trust block | Share of pages carrying it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| General company description | 96% | |
| Contact details or a next step | 71% | |
| Founder or company story | 58% | |
| Dated milestones or years in business | 44% | |
| SSM registration number | 37% | |
| Photographs of real staff | 29% | |
| Named clients or client logos | 26% | |
| Certifications or partner badges | 19% |
Source: Based on ZenWeb's client sample of 500+ Malaysian SME accounts, About pages audited before rebuild, 2024–2026.
The gap is the opportunity. Almost everyone writes the description, so it differentiates nobody. The four blocks at the bottom of the chart are rare precisely because they take effort to produce – which is also why a reader treats them as evidence. If the rest of your site is short on proof too, adding trust signals that convert is the wider fix.
Key takeaway: Competing on the block everyone has is pointless. The advantage sits in the four blocks most Malaysian SME pages skip.
4. SSM proof and real faces: the two blocks owners skip
Quick Answer: Malaysian companies are required to display their registered name and registration number on their website, so the SSM block is not optional in the first place. Real staff photographs are optional, and they are the single strongest signal on the page that a business has people behind it.
Under the Companies Act 2016, a company must publish its registered name and registration number on its business channels, and the Companies Commission has confirmed that this covers company websites and social media pages – a point the Chartered Secretaries Malaysia announcement sets out for members. Check the exact wording with your company secretary, then put the details somewhere a reader can find them: the foot of the About Us page is the natural home.
- Publish the full registered name. "Zen Trading Sdn Bhd" rather than the shortened brand name you use in the logo.
- Publish the registration number. Current SSM format, alongside the registered address.
- Photograph the actual team. Phone photos in your real premises beat polished stock every time.
- Give names and roles. A face with no name is decoration; a face with a name is accountability.
Faces work because they are unfakeable in a way that copy is not. The same logic runs through the reviews on your Google listing, which is why collecting more Google reviews and putting real people on the About page tend to lift enquiries together. For online stores, the checkout carries its own trust burden – choosing a Malaysian payment gateway covers that side.
Key takeaway: The registration block is a compliance duty you may as well use as proof. The team photo block is optional, unfakeable, and missing from seven out of ten pages.
Trust page done, but the service pages still not converting?
The About page opens the door; the service page closes the enquiry.
See how to design a service page that converts →5. Which proof blocks actually move enquiries?
Quick Answer: Named clients and real team photographs are associated with the largest lift in enquiries per thousand About page visits. Pages relying on stock photography alone perform worse than pages with no images at all, because a recognisable stock face reads as a business with nothing real to show.
The table compares enquiry rates on pages that carry each block against pages that do not.
| Proof block | Pages with it | Enquiries per 1,000 visits | Vs pages without |
|---|---|---|---|
| Named clients or client logos | 26% | 15.1 | +44% |
| Photographs of real staff | 29% | 14.2 | +38% |
| Certifications or partner badges | 19% | 13.4 | +31% |
| SSM number and registered address | 37% | 12.9 | +26% |
| Founder story over 150 words | 41% | 12.1 | +19% |
| Stock photography only | 33% | 7.6 | −22% |
Source: From ZenWeb client tracking across 12 industries, Malaysian SME sites measured over 90 days, 2024–2026. Enquiries counted as form submissions, calls and WhatsApp messages starting from an About page session.
Read the last row carefully. Stock photography is not neutral – it actively costs enquiries, because the reader has seen that same smiling team on four other sites this week. Client proof works hardest of all, and it works even better when the same names appear as quotes elsewhere on the site; turning happy clients into sales covers how to collect and place them.
Key takeaway: Borrowed credibility outperforms self-description. Name a client, show a real face, and drop the stock photos entirely.
6. How long should an About Us page be?
Quick Answer: Between 350 and 650 words suits most Malaysian SMEs. Below 150 words the page reads as unfinished and readers leave in seconds. Past 1,000 words the enquiry rate falls again, because the page has turned into a company history nobody asked to read.
The table below groups About pages by word count and shows how each band performs.
| Word count band | Enquiries per 1,000 visits | Rate | Median time on page | Share of sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 150 words | 5.9 | 0:22 | 18% | |
| 150–349 words | 9.4 | 0:41 | 31% | |
| 350–649 words | 14.6 | 1:08 | 28% | |
| 650–999 words | 13.8 | 1:14 | 15% | |
| 1,000 words or more | 10.2 | 1:02 | 8% |
Source: Aggregated from ZenWeb-managed Malaysian SME websites, 2024–2026. Word counts exclude navigation, footer and form labels.
The 350 to 650 band wins because it is exactly enough room for the seven blocks written plainly and nothing else. Longer pages usually pad with mission statements rather than adding proof, and length only helps when the extra words carry facts – a principle that applies across the site, as website copywriting that turns visitors into leads explains.
Key takeaway: Target 350 to 650 words. If the page is longer, check whether the extra length is proof or padding – it is usually padding.
7. Writing a founder story that reads like a person
Quick Answer: Write the founder story as three facts and one reason: what you did before, what problem you kept seeing, what you built instead, and who it was for. Two hundred words is plenty. The moment a sentence could belong to any company in your industry, delete it.
Most founder stories fail the same way. They open with a year and a vision, then drift into the language of an annual report. The fix is to write the first draft as though you were answering a customer over the phone, then tidy the grammar without tidying away the voice.
If a sentence on your About Us page would still be true after you swapped in a competitor's name, it is not telling anyone anything.
- Name the founder and the year. "Lim started the workshop in Klang in 2013" beats "established with a vision for quality".
- Say what the problem was. The specific frustration that made the business worth starting.
- Skip vision and mission blocks. They are the most-written and least-read part of the page.
- Cut the superlatives. Leading, premier, one-stop and world-class all mean the same thing to a reader: nothing.
- End on the customer, not on you. Who the business is for now, and what they typically come for.
The story is also the raw material for everything else you publish, from social captions to interviews, which is why brand storytelling and personal branding as a founder both start from the same few paragraphs. If visitors are dropping off before they even reach this page, the problem sits earlier – see why a homepage stops converting.
Key takeaway: Write it as speech, keep the specifics, cut anything a competitor could also claim. Two hundred honest words beat six hundred polished ones.
8. How have Malaysian About pages changed since 2023?
Quick Answer: About pages are getting longer and far more verifiable. The share carrying an SSM number has more than doubled since 2023, real team photos are now on more than half of new builds, and the median page has grown from roughly 210 words to just over 400.
The table tracks four measures across ZenWeb builds since 2023.
| Measure at launch | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (Jan–Aug) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSM number displayed | 34% | 45% | 61% | 78% |
| Real team photographs | 31% | 38% | 47% | 55% |
| Named clients or logos | 22% | 27% | 33% | 39% |
| Median word count | 210 | 280 | 340 | 405 |
Source: Aggregated from ZenWeb-managed website builds, Malaysia, 2023–2026. 2026 covers January to August.
Two forces are behind the shift. Enforcement of the registration-display rule pushed the SSM line up, and AI answer engines pushed the rest: Google's own guidance asks publishers to make clear who created the content and why, and an About page full of checkable facts is the cheapest way to answer that. It also gives a smaller business something a larger rival cannot copy, which is the theme of competing with bigger brands on a small budget and of building a brand customers remember.
Key takeaway: The bar keeps rising. An About page that was acceptable in 2023 now looks evasive next to competitors publishing registration, faces and clients.
9. Conclusion: write the page a sceptic would accept
An About Us page earns its keep when a stranger finishes it and can name three things about you that are checkable. Registration, faces, dates, clients, certifications – those are the blocks that survive scepticism. The words in between only need to be honest and short.
Take an hour this week: photograph the team on a phone, pull the SSM details from your registration, list four dated milestones, and ask two clients for permission to name them. Then write the story last, in your own voice. If the whole site needs the same treatment, our web design team builds the proof blocks in from the first draft rather than bolting them on afterwards.
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10. Frequently Asked Questions
1. What should be on an About Us page for a small business in Malaysia?
Seven blocks: a founder or company story, your full registered name with SSM number and address, photographs of real staff with names, dated milestones, named clients or industries served, certifications or partnerships, and one clear next step. Anything that a reader cannot verify elsewhere is decoration rather than proof.
2. How long should an About Us page be?
Between 350 and 650 words works best for Malaysian SMEs. Under 150 words the page reads as unfinished and visitors leave within half a minute. Past 1,000 words enquiry rates fall again, because the extra length is usually mission-statement padding rather than additional proof.
3. Do I have to show my SSM registration number on my website?
Companies registered under the Companies Act 2016 are required to display their registered name and registration number on business channels, and the Companies Commission has confirmed this covers websites and social media. Confirm the exact wording with your company secretary, then publish the details on your About and contact pages.
4. Should the About Us page have photos of the team?
Yes, and real ones. Pages with photographs of actual staff record noticeably higher enquiry rates than pages without, while pages using only stock photography perform worse than pages with no images at all. Phone photographs taken in your own premises are better than polished stock imagery.
