A landing page either earns the next click or it doesn't. There's no middle. Every checklist that follows is one possible reason your visitors aren't converting yet.
We've shipped 15+ founder sites and audited many more. The same five or six issues come up every time. This list catches them.
Messaging (1–4)
- 1. The five-second test passes. Show the page to someone who's never seen it. Five seconds later, ask: what does this company do, who's it for, and what should I do next? If they can't answer all three, your hero is broken.
- 2. The headline says what the product does, not what it feels like. "Beautiful, modern marketing automation" tells the visitor nothing. "Send 10x more campaigns in half the time" tells them everything. Plain wins flowery, every time.
- 3. The first paragraph names the audience. "For B2B founders raising their seed round." "For solo creators with a course launching." Specificity is conversion. Generic copy reads as broadcast.
- 4. There's exactly one primary CTA. Two CTAs is a choice. Three is paralysis. The site funnels every visitor toward one action above the fold.
Trust (5–8)
- 5. Social proof in the first viewport. Logos, a number, a testimonial, a stat. Something that says "other people like you trust us" before the visitor has to scroll.
- 6. At least two specific testimonials. Not "great product, would recommend." Specific outcomes: "Cut our onboarding time from 3 weeks to 4 days." Real names, real titles, real photos if possible.
- 7. The "about" element is human. Founder photo, founder name, one sentence on why this exists. Even a one-line "Built by [name] in [city]" beats faceless corporate distance.
- 8. Pricing is on the page or one click away. Hiding pricing creates friction and looks evasive. If you can show it, show it.
Conversion mechanics (9–12)
- 9. Primary CTA repeats at least three times. Above fold, mid-page, end of page. Visitors decide at different scroll depths. Catch them all.
- 10. Form has the minimum viable fields. Name + email is enough for most waitlists. Every extra field cuts your conversion rate by ~10%. Don't ask for a phone number unless you'll actually call.
- 11. Form submission has a real success state. Not "Thanks!" — show what happens next. "We'll email you within 12 hours" or "Check your inbox for the next step." Reduce post-submit anxiety.
- 12. Every external link opens in a new tab. If you're sending visitors to social media, demos, or third-party tools, don't let them leave the funnel.
Performance (13–15)
- 13. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5s. Test on a real 4G connection, not your office WiFi. Pages over 3s lose ~32% of mobile visitors before they read the headline.
- 14. No layout shift. Images, fonts, ads, and embeds all need explicit dimensions. CLS over 0.1 is a Google ranking penalty and a UX irritation.
- 15. Mobile is the primary check. 60–70% of your inbound traffic is mobile. If the page works on desktop and breaks on mobile, you've shipped to 30% of your audience.
SEO and analytics (16–18)
- 16. Title and meta description match the search intent. Not your brand name. Search the keyword you're targeting, see what's ranking, write a title that fits the same intent class.
- 17. Schema.org markup for the page type. Article, Product, FAQPage, LocalBusiness. Google rewards structured data with richer results.
- 18. GA4 + a conversion goal. If you're not tracking the primary CTA click as a key event, you're flying blind. Set this up before traffic lands, not after.
The order matters
Run this checklist top to bottom, in order. Messaging is upstream of trust, trust is upstream of mechanics, mechanics are upstream of performance. Fixing layout shift on a page that doesn't have a clear value proposition is just polishing a broken funnel.
If you're working with an agency or freelancer, this is also the QA list to run through before signing off on the launch. Most of the issues here are cheap to fix in the first week and expensive to fix three months in.
What's not on the list (intentionally)
Animations. Scroll effects. Custom cursors. Liquid hover states. We love this stuff at studio10days, we ship it on most projects. But none of it is on the conversion checklist, because none of it converts. Build your landing page on the 18 points above first. Then add craft.
The pages that win aren't the ones with the best motion design. They're the ones where a stranger lands, understands the offer in 5 seconds, and clicks the only button on the screen. That's the bar.