Hi {{first_name}} ,
Last time it was the button. This time, the line above it.
There's a test I run before I touch anything else on a landing page. Cover everything with your hand except the headline. Now answer one question: what is this product?
Not what it promises. What it is.
This week I ran it on three companies everyone knows, and one nobody knows yet.
Mailchimp:
"Email & SMS marketing minus the learning curve." Pass.
The category is right there in the first four words, and the promise rides on the back of it. If I had to steal one shape, it's this one.
HubSpot:
"Build demand, win deals, and delight customers — all on one platform."
On its own, that line could belong to twenty different companies. But look just above it, in small caps: "HubSpot agentic customer platform". The label lives in the eyebrow. The headline gets to be ambitious because the small line above it is doing the boring job. Pass, on a technicality.
Webflow:
"Build for what's next." Fail. Four words, no product, no category.
Cover the logo and it could be a VC fund, a construction company, a coding bootcamp. And it doesn't matter at all, because nobody covers the logo. Webflow has spent more than a decade making sure you already know what Webflow is. The brand is the label. The headline is free to be a mood.
Now the startup.
Headline: "First class customer experience. Zero busywork."
Subheadline: "Effortless, self-improving, in control."
Two full lines and I still can't tell you what it is. The only thing on the page that does is the eyebrow: "AI customer experience platform". Same move as Webflow and HubSpot. One difference: nobody knows this company, so there's no logo to lean on.
(I helped Groundswell solve this exact positioning challenge, turning an early concept into a market leader with a high-converting web structure.)
That's the trap.
You study the leaders, you see slogans in the hero, and you write a slogan. But the leaders aren't using the headline to explain the product. Their name already does that. Yours doesn't, not yet. For the first few years, your headline has to work as a label.
The rule I use: headline plus subheadline must add up to "what it is" and "who it's for". If you're big, you can put "what it is" in the logo and play with the rest. If you're not, put it in the headline. Mailchimp still does, and they're big.
Try it on your own page. Cover everything except the headline and show it to someone who has never heard of you. Ask what you sell. If they guess wrong, or take longer than a breath to answer, that's the first thing to fix.
Read my breakdown on the essential conversion rate optimization tools I use to uncover friction points before touching any design.
Next time: what actually belongs above the fold, and what's just decoration.
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