# Landing Page Review Framework: 10 Questions in 10 Minutes A fast, no-audit-required framework: ten questions that surface the most common landing page conversion problems in about ten minutes, ranked by where they sit in the visitor's journey. You don't need a three-week audit to know whether a landing page is working. Most of the problems that kill conversion are visible within minutes, if you know what to look for. This framework gives you ten questions to run through on any landing page, yours or a client's. Each one targets a specific failure mode. The whole thing takes about ten minutes, and by the end you'll have a clear picture of where the page is strong, where it's leaking, and what to fix first. Grab the page on both desktop and mobile before you start. Some of these only show up on one or the other. ## 1. Can a stranger tell what this page is about in five seconds? Open the page. Start a timer. Look away after five seconds. Can you answer three things: what the company does, who it's for, and what it wants you to do next? If any of those three is unclear, the hero section isn't doing its job. This is the single highest-impact problem a landing page can have, because every visitor who can't parse your value proposition in seconds is making their decision based on confusion, not on your offer. The fix is almost never "add more information." It's usually "remove everything that isn't the answer to those three questions." ## 2. Is there one clear primary action, or are you asking visitors to choose? Count the number of distinct actions the page asks for. "Start free trial," "Book a demo," "Watch the video," "Download the guide," "Read the case study." Every option you add feels like you're giving the visitor more ways to engage. In practice, you're giving them more reasons to hesitate. A strong landing page has one primary call to action. Everything else is either removed or visually subordinate enough that it doesn't compete. If your CTA section looks like a menu, you have a prioritisation problem. ## 3. Does the headline speak to a problem the visitor actually has? Read the headline out loud. Is it about the visitor's situation, or about your product? "AI-Powered Analytics Platform" describes what you built. "See why your signups drop off before checkout" describes what the visitor is trying to solve. The best-performing headlines connect to a specific frustration, goal, or situation the visitor recognises immediately. Product descriptions belong further down the page, after you've earned attention by showing you understand the problem. ## 4. Is the first piece of social proof visible without scrolling? Social proof works best when it appears before the visitor has to make an effort to find it. A testimonial, a client logo bar, a review count, a "trusted by X companies" line: any of these, placed above the fold or immediately beside the CTA, reduces the perceived risk of taking action. If your strongest social proof sits three scroll-lengths down the page, most visitors will never see it. Check your scroll depth data. If 40% of visitors don't make it past the second screen, anything below that line is functionally invisible. ## 5. Does the page load in under three seconds on mobile? Run the URL through Google PageSpeed Insights. Look at Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on mobile. If it's above three seconds, you're losing visitors before they see your headline. This isn't a nice-to-have. On mobile connections, a page that takes five seconds to render loses roughly half its potential conversions compared to one that loads in two. And the visitors you lose to slow loading are invisible in your analytics, because they never triggered a pageview. The usual culprits: uncompressed hero images, render-blocking scripts, third-party tracking pixels that load synchronously, and web fonts that delay text rendering. ## 6. Can you complete the primary action without leaving the page? Click the main CTA. What happens? If it takes you to a separate signup page, a different domain, or a form that feels like a different site entirely, you've introduced a transition that breaks momentum. The strongest landing pages keep the conversion action on the same page, either inline or as a short form that appears in context. Every page transition is a moment where the visitor reconsiders whether this is worth the effort. If a redirect is unavoidable (payment processor, third-party booking tool), make sure the destination looks and feels like a continuation of the same experience, not a hard cut to somewhere unfamiliar. ## 7. What happens if you remove the top third of the page? This is a thought experiment, not a suggestion. Scroll past the hero section and read the page from the first content block below it. Does the page still make sense? Does it still persuade? If the answer is yes, your hero section is decorative, not functional. It means the actual selling starts below the fold, and the top of the page is just a pretty barrier between the visitor and the content that would convince them. If the answer is no, good. That means your hero is doing real work. But also check: is the content below the hero doing enough? Many pages front-load all their persuasion into the first screen and then trail off into feature lists and filler that nobody reads. ## 8. Are you answering objections, or just listing features? Scan the page for the word "we" versus the word "you." If the page is mostly "we offer," "we provide," "our platform," it's talking about itself. Visitors don't care about your platform. They care about their problem. Every feature on the page should connect to either a benefit the visitor gets or an objection they might have. "256-bit encryption" is a feature. "Your data is encrypted with the same standard banks use" is an objection answered. The first is for your engineering team. The second is for the person deciding whether to enter their credit card number. ## 9. Is there a reason to act now rather than later? Most landing page visitors who leave without converting don't come back. Not because they decided against you, but because they moved on and forgot. If the page gives no reason to act now, "I'll come back later" is the default, and "later" usually means "never." This doesn't require a countdown timer or a fake scarcity badge. Legitimate urgency can be a limited-time offer, a free trial that starts immediately, a live availability indicator, or simply a clear statement of what the visitor loses by waiting. The question isn't whether you're creating pressure. It's whether the visitor understands the cost of inaction. ## 10. If you had to cut the page in half, what would you keep? This is the most useful question on the list, and the hardest to answer honestly. Go through every section on the page and ask: does this earn its space? Is the visitor more likely to convert because this section exists? Feature comparison tables that nobody reads, generic stock photos, "our values" sections, partner logo bars from companies the visitor has never heard of: these all take up space and attention without moving anyone closer to a decision. The goal isn't actually to cut the page in half. It's to identify which elements are pulling weight and which are just filling space. The elements that survive this question are the ones worth optimising. Everything else is a candidate for removal. ## How to use the results After ten minutes, you'll have a list of specific problems ranked roughly by where they sit in the visitor's journey (top of page issues first, conversion flow issues last). Here's how to prioritise: Questions 1 through 3 are about clarity. If these fail, nothing else on the page matters much, because visitors aren't staying long enough to see it. Fix these first. Questions 4 through 6 are about confidence and friction. These determine whether a visitor who understands your offer actually feels ready to act on it. Questions 7 through 10 are about efficiency. They help you strip away what's not working so the elements that do work get the attention they deserve. You don't need to fix everything. Start with the first question that got a "no" and work forward from there. One clear fix at the right point in the flow will outperform five changes scattered across the page.