Rethinking Landing Pages

I’m currently remaking our landing page, and as I was doing it, I started documenting the process for my team so they can repeat it in the future.

What surprised me is that I couldn’t find a genuinely good guide on how to think about landing pages.

There’s plenty of content on:

• Copy formulas

• Conversion rate optimization tricks

• Button colors and hero layouts

But very little on the underlying mental model. The part that actually determines whether a page works or not. So this is my attempt at a different kind of guide. Less about tactics. More about reasoning.

Step 1: Start With Belief, Not Layout

Before I touch Figma, copy, or components, I ask a single question:

When someone leaves this page, what do we want them to believe?

Not what they should click.
Not what feature they should remember.
What belief should be installed in their head.

Every section either reinforces the belief or dilutes it.

Below is the framework I now use when designing or reviewing landing pages. I think of each page as choosing a belief archetype and committing to it.

You can have multiple landing pages across a site.
But each page should usually anchor on one dominant belief.

Step 2: Bottom Up Reality

Once you have a belief hypothesis, you validate it with behavior. Look at the data like a detective, not a validator.

Things I always check:

• Click maps: what do people instinctively click?

• Scroll depth: where is the big drop-off?

• Attention leaks: what pulls focus without explanation?

• Hesitation points: where do people slow down or abandon?

• CTR to secondary pages: what curiosity paths exist naturally?

Good landing pages are not opinionated guesses. They are conversations with revealed behavior.

Ajay’s Quest is finally taking sponsors for 2026!

$ ajaysquest --sponsors

> Checking alignment...
> Audience quality: high
> Attention span: long
> Trust level: earned

> Only a few sponsors approved per year.
> If this is you, you already know. Email back.

Step 3: The Psychological Sequence

Regardless of industry, most great pages follow the same mental flow. You can break the rules. Novelty works. But you should know what you’re breaking.

The sequence:

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│   Curiosity-Invoking Hero    │
│                              │
│  earns the next sentence     │
└───────────────┬──────────────┘
                │
                ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│     Problem Agitation        │
│                              │
│  name the frustration        │
│  normalize it                │
│  make them feel seen         │
└───────────────┬──────────────┘
                │
                ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│       Clear Solution         │
│                              │
│  product = obvious answer    │
│  to the surfaced problem     │
└───────────────┬──────────────┘
                │
                ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│        How It Works          │
│                              │
│  reduce uncertainty          │
│  replace mystery with clarity│
└───────────────┬──────────────┘
                │
                ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│          Evidence            │
│                              │
│  proof                       │
│  social signal               │
│  results                     │
│  credibility                 │
│                              │
│  (then more evidence)        │
│  (then more again)           │
└──────────────────────────────┘

This is a simple but effective formula for a great landing page.

Closing Thoughts

Landing pages are not about persuasion tricks. They are about installing a belief so cleanly that the action feels inevitable.

If you’re arguing with the user, you’ve already lost. If you’re clarifying a belief they already want to hold, you’re winning.

That’s how I think about landing pages.

Until next time,

Ajay

🧠 Ajay’s Resource Bank

A few tools and collections I’ve built (or obsessively curated) over the years:

• 100+ Mental Models
  Mental shortcuts and thinking tools I’ve refined over the past decade. These have evolved as I’ve gained experience — pruned, updated, and battle-tested.

• 100+ Questions
  If you want better answers, ask better questions. These are the ones I keep returning to — for strategy, reflection, and unlocking stuck conversations.

• Startup OS
  A lightweight operating system I built for running startups. I’m currently adapting it for growth teams as I scale Superpower — thinking about publishing it soon.

• Remote Games & Activities
  Fun team-building exercises and games (many made in Canva) that actually work. Good for offsites, Zoom fatigue, or breaking the ice with distributed teams.

✅ Ajay’s “would recommend” List

These are tools and services I use personally and professionally — and recommend without hesitation:

• Athyna – Offshore Hiring Done Right
  I personally have worked with assistants overseas and built offshore teams. Most people get this wrong by assuming you have to go the lowest cost for automated work. Try hiring high quality, strategic people for a fraction of the cost instead.

• Superpower – It starts with a 100+ lab tests
  I joined Superpower as Head of Growth, but I originally came on to fix my health. In return, I got a full diagnostic panel, a tailored action plan, and ongoing support that finally gave me clarity after years of flying blind.