Hello again.

One of the most frequent questions early-stage founders ask is how to create a website / landing page for your business.  

It’s an important question, because for most internet businesses your landing page is generally your most precious inbound sales/marketing asset. I have some strong opinions so I figured let’s write about it. Call this part 1, maybe I’ll elaborate in the future.

Over the past decade+ I’ve taught myself how to build good landing pages. I’ve built dozens of them since I was a kid. Below I’ll outline the approach we used to achieve a 25.6% conversion rate from landing page visits to signups on Uptrends.ai last year.

Before that, let me address a few things many webdev newbies and first-time founders get wrong about landing pages:

First, the #1 goal of a landing page is to convince visitors to take a singular action, whether that be creating an account on your platform, booking a demo, or simply entering their email. Pick one and optimize everything around that one action. Your landing page is not an art exhibit, it’s not an autobiography, it is a tractorbeam, meant to focus interested visitors from various sources — social media, google search, word or mouth — and convey sufficient context / credibility to funnel them towards clicking the most important button, with as little friction as possible.

Second, a great landing page does not have to be expensive, you can generally build a great one all by yourself. Many people assume they aren’t qualified to create their own landing page, that you must hire some spendy agency to do it for you. In reality the founder is the most qualified person, because they should have the most context about the business, the customer, the problem they are solving, and the action they want a visitor to take. Of course an agency can help you implement this, but if you don’t understand these things deeply yourself it doesn’t matter how good an agency you hire. Plus there are many free/cheap tools these days to make doing it yourself easy, some of my favorites:

1. Carrd.co (the simplest way to create a 1-page website, great for getting started, not ideal long-term for more complex products/solutions)

2. Unicorn Platform (very easy to start, has many good out of the box templates)

3. Framer or Webflow (a bit more involved, but great for creating professional-looking page. I have used these tools to create most of my websites)

4. Wordpress and Shopify are other extremely popular tools used by millions. The learning curve is steeper, but there are plenty of online resources to help you get started.

Key Elements of A Landing Page

I’ve built many landing pages, and studied hundreds of great ones. I have an entire folder on my computer of my favorite landing page case-studies, happy to share them. Generally, each of them will more or less have these 5 simple sections: 1) Hero 2) Features 3) Credibility 4) Primary CTA and 5) Safety Net. Allow me to explain:

1. Hero Section

This is by far the most important real-estate on your landing page, the part visitors see before scrolling (above the fold).

That’s why they call it a Hero Section — it’s probably 90% responsible for whether or not the user takes action. Key elements:

• A clear, compelling headline speaking directly to your target customer's pain point. It must be bold and strong, it should pop off the page and into their soul.

• A subheader explaining your solution. Tell them exactly what you do, no fluff.

• A singular, primary CTA button. I like to have it route to my pricing section lower in the page for more detail.

• Social proof, as much as possible. You can see from my example above that we have social proof in 3 spots: a “badge” above the title, images of our happy users (ex “used by 21,000+ investors!”), and logos of publications we cover.

Again your goal here is to convey sufficient context and credibility to get them to click the button without adding friction.

The key is to have ONE call-to-action button. The landing page for Uptrends used to look a lot different — I assumed more call-to-action (CTA) buttons was better, but we realized that more buttons actually brought less clarity and more confusion. See the difference we made above, the original landing page had 15 CTA buttons above the fold, the revised version has only one. By making that change we more than doubled our conversion rate on signups from 11% to 26%. (I wrote more about that here)

2. How It Works + Features

In the Hero, your goal is qualify the visitor by presenting them with enough context & credibility for them to click your CTA button. If done correctly, there should only be 3 outcomes: 1) they click the CTA because they’re convinced of the value, 2) they leaves because it’s not for them, or 3) they keeps scrolling.

If they scroll that means they need more, and it’s most likely they want to learn more about how your product works and what you offer. That’s where this section comes in:

The goal of your How It Works + Features section is to explain in more detail what your product actually does. Here you need to convince the target user that you product will sufficiently solve the problem you’ve proposed to address for them in the Hero. I like to accomplish this with the following components:

• An easy demo with compelling title. You may choose to put the video directly on the page (which is best) or link to it on a different page, depending how it important it is to you. Videos should ideally be a product walkthru of you explaining how it works, somewhere between 1-6 minutes

• Highlight your Top 3-4 key features (max). For each one:

  • Use one clear visual screenshot or illustration

  • Write a punchy feature title

  • Add a single sentence explanation

  • Keep it focused on benefits, not technical details

  • Include the same CTA button on each, this is the ‘easy button’ to get them to continue

3. Credibility Layer

If the user is still scrolling further down the page after the Hero and the How It Works + Features section without having clicked the CTA buttons, they likely understand what you do but still need more convincing. This is where you need to bombard them with as much credibility and social proof as possible:

Convince them that everyone else in the world agrees that your product is worth using. There are many ways to do this, but here’s the key elements I use:

• Fixed Key Metrics Banner. I like to fix a banner at the top of the page while scrolling with key metrics about my website. For Uptrends is 1) how many stocks we cover, 2) how many news articles we process, and 3) how many alerts we send. I include this as a dedication section as well to really hit it home.

• Testimonials. This probably the most important form of credibility you can achieve, because they are hardest to come by. Keep a folder or slack channel to easily document any testimonials you receive, and put them here. Include faces and names if you can to add authenticity.

• Featured In’s. If you’ve been featured in any major publications or websites or directories, list those as well. People love seeing recognizable logos, but anything is better than nothing.

Remember you're not just selling a product, you're selling confidence in your solution. Now I’m sure you’re wondering — what if I just launched my website, or what if I don’t have any of this social proof collateral?? The short answer is: find it. Here’s one of my fav Twitter threads on how to find social proof for your business and other alternate ways of displaying it.

4. Primary CTA (Pricing Section)

Now, where the magic happens: your Primary Call-To-Action

This is where all roads should lead on your landing page — every button and link should funnel here. I’ve found this is just more effective, because it simplifies and centralized user paths on your page (it also makes it easier to track conversions if there’s only one place for them to click “sign up”)

For Uptrends this primary CTA section is our Pricing Section (it is a b2c SaaS), but for your business this could be a “book a demo” section or a simple intake form. The goal is the give the user all the context and credibility need to take action when they get here. When designing your pricing section:

• Keep it simple with 2-3 tiers maximum (we used Limited, Essentials, and Pro)

• Make it obvious which plan you want most people to choose (highlight visually)

• List core features under each tier, but don't overwhelm with details

• Each pricing button should trigger a signup/conversion action

• Consider adding an "Enterprise" option, even if you're early stage

I could do an entire blog post about Pricing Strategy, but we’ll save that for later.

5. The Safety Net (FAQs + CTA #2)

This section serves as your final conversion opportunity for visitors who've scrolled all the way down but haven't taken action yet. I like to include two things here: an FAQs portion, and a backup call-to-action:

FAQs — include a list of frequently asked questions right below the Primary CTA (Pricing) section. If a user is highly considering taking action but still questioning, this is your best chance to answer whatever’s in the way. Curate FAQs by tracking what people ask about in support emails, or simply use ChatGPT to help you get started.

Newsletter (CTA #2) — treat this as a "soft conversion" for visitors not ready to commit, your goal is to capture their email before they leave. I like to do this by offering a free weekly newsletter. A low risk for them, and a great way to continue targeting them once they leave your page. Some advice:

• Keep the form simple (just email address)

• Add a clear value proposition for subscribing

• Consider offering something in return (market insights, updates, etc.)

Remember: while these sections come last, they're not afterthoughts. They often catch the more analytical visitors who need that extra bit of information or reassurance before converting.

Other Notes

This is just my two-cents from my own personal experience running a business-to-consumer (B2C) software-as-a-service (SaaS) business. When you are first starting out you can accomplish A LOT with a singular landing page, and I’d argue all of this applies to other types of businesses too — B2B, physical products, services, etc.

Beyond this there are certainly other things you can begin to add to your site. I think the next set of important pages are:

1. A blog directory (especially for SEO, I’ve written more about that here)

2. Dedicated pages for specific customers / use cases / features

3. An About page to explain more about yourself and your WHY

For now that’s all I will say this feels like it’s getting a bit long.

Hope that helps, down the road maybe I’ll share a list of some of my favorite websites or speak more about credibility. Let me know what you think!

Peace,
Ramsey ✌️