The Five-Second Test
Someone arrives at your homepage from a launch board, a Reddit thread or a search. They haven't read your docs, they don't know your name, and they'll decide within a few seconds whether to stay. In that time, the top of your page has to answer three questions:
- What is it?
- Is it for me?
- What should I do next?
Developers who write their own homepage often answer a different question: how does it work? That's natural, because it's the part you spent months on. But the architecture is interesting only once someone already cares.
Try this before you change anything: show your homepage to someone who has never seen it for five seconds, then hide it and ask them what the product does and who it's for. If they can't say, the copy needs work, not the design.
The Headline: What It Is and Who It's For
The headline should say what the product is, plainly enough that a stranger gets it. Clever lines and slogans can come later, once you have a brand people recognize.
| Vague | Clear |
|---|---|
| Supercharge your workflow | Turn customer emails into bug reports in Linear |
| The modern way to ship | Preview deployments for every pull request, on your own servers |
| Your data, unleashed | Query your Stripe data with SQL |
| Built for the future of work | Time tracking for freelancers who bill by the project |
Two simple formulas cover most products:
- [What it does] for [who]: "Uptime monitoring for indie hackers."
- [Do the job] without [the pain]: "Send invoices without the spreadsheet."
Use the words your users use. If customers say "client portal", don't call it a "stakeholder collaboration hub". The best source for those words is the people who already use your product: what they wrote in emails, support tickets and comments.
The Subheadline: The Outcome
The line under the headline explains why someone would want it. It turns the "what" into a result: time saved, a mistake avoided, a thing they can now do.
Headline: Query your Stripe data with SQL.
Subheadline: Answer revenue questions in minutes instead of exporting CSVs, with no data warehouse to set up.
One or two sentences is enough. If you need a paragraph, the product may be trying to be several things at once. Pick the one job most of your users hire it for, and lead with that.
Show the Product, Early
The most convincing thing on a homepage is the product itself. Put a real screenshot, a short clip or an interactive demo near the top, ideally in the first screen.
- Use real screens, with realistic data in them. Empty states and placeholder text make a product look unfinished.
- Crop to what matters. A full-window screenshot of a dashboard is hard to read at homepage size. Show the part that does the job.
- Keep clips short and silent: 10 to 30 seconds, showing one task from start to finish.
- For developer tools, show code. A short, real snippet of how someone uses it says more than three paragraphs.
Turn Features Into Reasons
A feature is what the product does. A reason is why that matters to the person reading. Most homepages list features; good ones connect each to a reason.
| Feature | Reason |
|---|---|
| Webhooks with automatic retries | Never lose an event when your server is down for a deploy |
| Role-based access control | Give contractors access to one project, not your whole account |
| Exports to CSV and JSON | Your data is yours; leave whenever you want |
| Runs locally | Nothing leaves your machine, so it's fine for client work |
Three to six of these is plenty. Lead with the reason in bold and put the feature underneath. A long grid of every capability usually means none of them stand out.
Answer the Objections
Every visitor who's interested still has reasons not to sign up. Answer the common ones on the page, before they leave to look for the answer:
- "What does it cost?" Show pricing, or at least a starting price. Hidden pricing makes people assume it's expensive.
- "Can I trust it with my data?" Say where data is stored, who can see it, and how to delete it.
- "What if I want to leave?" Say how exports work.
- "Is anyone behind this?" A short note from you, with your name and face, helps a lot for a small product.
- "Does it work with what I use?" List integrations and platforms plainly.
A short FAQ near the bottom is the easiest place for these. It also helps search engines and AI assistants: questions and direct answers are exactly what they quote. Our guide to getting found in AI search covers why.
Only add proof that's real. One genuine quote from a user, with their permission, does more than a row of logos you can't stand behind. Never invent testimonials or user counts.
One Clear Call to Action
Decide on the one thing you want a new visitor to do, and make it the obvious button: "Start free", "Try the demo", "Install the CLI". Repeat that same action at the top and the bottom of the page.
- Say what happens next. "Start free, no credit card" beats a plain "Get started".
- Keep secondary actions quieter. "Read the docs" or "See pricing" can sit next to the main button as plain links.
- Make the first step small. Ask for as little as you can to let someone try it. Every extra field loses people.
If Your Buyers Are Developers
Developers read homepages differently. They're skeptical of marketing, they want to see how it works before they believe what it does, and they often decide by trying it, not by reading.
- Lead with a working example: an install command and the shortest useful snippet.
- Link to the docs from the first screen. Many developers go straight there to judge the product.
- Be precise. "Handles 10,000 requests a second on a $5 server" (if it's true) beats "blazing fast". Unmeasured claims are ignored.
- Be open about limits: what it doesn't do, which languages aren't supported yet, what's in beta.
- Make the license and pricing obvious for open-source and open-core tools. What's free, what's paid, and what happens to the free tier later.
For example, the top of a developer tool's homepage might read:
Log every LLM call in your app. One line to set up.
npm install your-package
Then read your logs in a dashboard, or query them with SQL.A Template to Fill In
Use this as a first draft, then cut whatever doesn't apply:
- Headline: [What it does] for [who].
- Subheadline: [The outcome], without [the usual pain].
- Main button: [The one action], plus what happens next ("free, no card").
- Product shot: a real screen, clip or code snippet.
- Three to six reasons: each with its feature underneath.
- How it works: three short steps from sign-up to first result.
- Proof: a real quote or a real number, if you have one.
- Pricing: on the page, or a clear link to it.
- FAQ: the five objections above, answered plainly.
- Note from the maker: who built it, and why.
- Main button again.
Then check the page's title and description, which are what people see in search results and link previews. Our meta tag generator shows how they'll look. When the homepage is ready, the same words make a strong launch listing; see writing a launch listing people click, then launch on Hauntboard.