One problem, explained
Visitors but no signups: what to check first.
This week I read the landing pages of about twenty founders who asked for feedback in public. Most of them had the same handful of problems, and all of them are visible from the outside, without your analytics.
The checker reads your page and flags three of the five causes below in a few seconds.
The five causes, most common first
- 01
The traffic is not real
Before touching the page, count people, not hits. Link previews, crawlers and monitoring tools load your page every time a link is shared. My own counter said 420 views on a day that had 58 people. Count only browsers that run your page, and small numbers stop lying.
- 02
The headline does not say what the product is
The most common case this week. The clearest sentence about the product was in the browser tab title or in the third paragraph, and the headline was a slogan that could fit any product. If a stranger cannot name the category in five seconds, they leave.
- 03
There is no price, or the price only exists after JavaScript runs
Several pages I read had a pricing block with a monthly and yearly toggle and no number in the HTML. Visitors who came to compare leave to compare elsewhere. Put one number in plain text next to the main button.
- 04
Too many doors
Seven, eleven, even more different calls to action on one page: start free, book a call, see the demo, get the report, join the waitlist. Every extra door lowers the chance anyone walks through the first one. Pick the one action you want and repeat it.
- 05
Nothing proves anyone else uses it
No customer name, no quote, no number you own, and sometimes a "What people say" heading with nothing under it. An empty proof section is worse than none. One named user, or a real count of something, is enough to start.
Real examples
Three pages read in full after their founders asked for feedback in public: Citex, MomentClip and ForgeVPS. Each one names the cause, the fix, and the rewritten headline.
When the machine is not enough
Causes two and five need a reader, not a script. I read your page and send the three fixes worth most, with rewritten headlines.