Positioning before pixels
The best-performing pages we have shipped started with a sentence, not a sketch.
Elena Marsh1 min read
Clients often come to us asking for a redesign. What most of them need first is a clearer story. A beautiful page that says the wrong thing still converts badly.
Write the sentence first
Before any design work, we write one sentence that explains who the product is for, what it replaces and why it is better. If the team cannot agree on that sentence, no layout will fix it.
- Who is this for, specifically?
- What do they use today instead?
- What changes for them on day one?
Talk to customers, not just stakeholders
Internal teams describe the product by its features. Customers describe it by the problem it solved. We interview five to eight customers on every project and use their words in headlines wherever we can.
If a customer said it, it belongs in a headline. If only the product team says it, it belongs in the docs.
Design to the message hierarchy
Once the story is clear, the page structure almost designs itself. The hero states the promise, the next section proves it, and every block after that answers the next objection a buyer would raise.
A quick test
Show the hero to someone outside the company for five seconds, then ask what the product does. If they cannot answer, go back to the sentence.
Written by
Elena Marsh
Founder & Strategy
Elena founded NexSanity after a decade leading growth at product companies. She runs our discovery workshops and makes sure every page has a job to do.
