Hero clarity on landing pages
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The first screen has one job: tell a cold visitor what you sell, who it is for, and what to do next — in about five seconds. Paid traffic dies when the hero is a slogan, a carousel, or a product name with no outcome. A clear hero is a concrete promise plus one primary action (NN/g homepage principles). Walk the checklist Hero items, then score the live fold with a free grade.
What good looks like
- One promise, one audience. A visitor can say “this is for me” without opening a nav mega-menu.
- Outcome or mechanism is concrete — time-to-value, artifact, or next step — not only “better results.”
- Headline > subhead > one primary CTA. Supporting proof is a single line, not a feature grid fighting the fold.
- Static first paint. The offer is readable if video, carousel, or a third-party script never loads.
- Eyebrow, H1, and CTA describe the same job. If the eyebrow says “Free grade,” the H1 is not a brand manifesto.
On the sample report, the hero is readable — the leak is dual equal CTAs, not a missing category.
Common gotchas
- Category-only H1s (“The AI platform for modern teams”) name a market and skip the job the click was bought for.
- Slogan + product name as two H1s so crawlers and humans disagree about the promise.
- Carousel or autoplay hero that spends the first eight seconds on a second slide the ad never mentioned.
- “We” story before “you” outcome — founding myth above the fold, offer below the first scroll.
- Feature soup in the first 140 characters so no single claim can be tested or rewritten.
- Nav, announcement bar, and chatbot stacking until the real headline starts under the fold on a phone.
- Eyebrow / H1 mismatch — “New: SOC 2” over a headline about a free audit the page does not offer.
How SiteRevenue scores it
New full jobs emit Hero on the dimension scorecard (0–10, higher = healthier). Hero is the fold/promise; Offer is who/price/path. Both map to engine key offer_clarity for letter-grade math — weights are unchanged. Older jobs stay omit-safe and may say Offer Clarity.
The sample scores Hero 6/10: the promise is readable; outcome and time-to-value stay vague. Dual equal CTAs are scored on CTA, not Hero. The free teaser shows a letter grade and leak titles only — no dimension scorecard. Unlocking the $19 page file starts a new full job that captures the public page again. If the fold is fine and step 3 is not, paste that next public URL on the home form.
Page captures (fail-open) are how you sanity-check the fold the model actually saw. Dollar bands on findings are prioritization estimates, not revenue guarantees.
Ship this week
| Change | Effort | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Rewrite H1 to audience + outcome + time or mechanism | S (~30 min) | Makes the bought job obvious in five seconds |
| One concrete subhead; cut the feature list from the first screen | S | Stops the fold from arguing with itself |
| Freeze carousel to the first static frame | S–M | Offer survives if motion never plays |
| Align eyebrow, H1, and primary CTA to the same verb | S | Prevents a bait-and-switch inside one screen |
Ship the fold before you restyle the rest of the page. Then re-audit the live URL.
Related guides
- Conversion leak checklist — Hero items 1–3
- CTA hierarchy — one filled primary on that fold
- Message match — ad/search promise vs H1
- Copy rewrites that ship — before→after as tickets
- What is a website revenue audit?
- How to read a revenue audit
- All guides
Start with a free grade
Paste the public URL visitors actually land on (not only the homepage) at siterevenue.ai. No card. If the fold is the leak, the $19 page file ranks it with evidence — see the sample and Pricing. Cash path: free grade → $19 page file.