Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
For years, I was the architect of what I now call "digital ghost towns." I'd pour weeks into crafting pixel-perfect websites for clients - stunning brand aesthetics, seamless user journeys, mobile-optimized everything. Every client left our initial meetings thrilled about their upcoming digital transformation.
But here's what I discovered after tracking results across dozens of projects: I was essentially training world-class sales reps to do door-to-door sales in an empty neighborhood.
These websites looked incredible. The conversion optimization was textbook perfect. But nobody was visiting them. I'd built beautiful stores in empty malls, and it took me embarrassingly long to realize the fundamental flaw in my approach.
This realization forced me to completely restructure how I think about website development. Here's what you'll learn from my expensive mistakes:
Why 90% of "conversion-optimized" websites still fail to convert
The critical shift from design-first to SEO-first architecture
How to build websites where every page is a potential front door
The testing infrastructure that lets you iterate rapidly
Why treating your website as a marketing laboratory beats following "best practices"
This isn't another generic conversion guide. This is what actually happened when I stopped building beautiful ghost towns and started creating revenue machines.
Reality Check
What most agencies won't tell you about conversion
Walk into any web design agency, and you'll hear the same conversion gospel preached with religious fervor. "Reduce friction!" they'll shout. "Optimize your CTA buttons!" "A/B test your headlines!" "Add social proof!" "Improve page speed!"
The industry has convinced itself that conversion optimization is about perfecting individual elements. Here's what every agency presentation includes:
Above-the-fold optimization - Because apparently, nobody scrolls anymore
Trust signals and social proof - Logos, testimonials, and review badges scattered everywhere
Conversion funnel mapping - Detailed user journey flows that look impressive in presentations
CTA button psychology - "Orange converts better than blue" and other color mythology
Mobile-first responsive design - Because Google said so
This conventional wisdom exists because it's measurable, teachable, and makes agencies sound scientific. Clients love seeing heatmaps and conversion rate improvements. It feels like progress.
But here's where it falls short: All of this assumes you already have qualified traffic. You're optimizing the sales process while ignoring the fundamental question - are the right people even finding your website?
Most businesses get trapped in this optimization theater, endlessly tweaking button colors while their beautifully optimized website sits in digital obscurity. The real conversion problem isn't your CTA copy. It's that nobody's seeing it.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I once watched a startup manager spend two full weeks obsessing over whether every heading on their site should start with a verb. Two weeks. While competitors were launching features and capturing market share, this team was stuck in grammatical paralysis.
This wasn't an isolated incident. Throughout my freelance career building landing pages for SaaS and ecommerce businesses, I've seen this pattern repeatedly: managers focusing on the wrong priorities while their conversion rates stagnated.
The breaking point came when I analyzed my client portfolio and discovered a painful pattern. Beautiful websites? Check. Professional brand presence? Check. Actual visitors coming to see it? Crickets.
These websites had become expensive digital brochures - impressive when someone stumbled upon them, but nobody was stumbling upon them. I was training world-class sales reps to work in empty malls.
The client who spent two weeks on heading grammar? Their site converted at 0.8%. A competitor I worked with who embraced rapid testing? They hit 3.2% within three months. The difference wasn't talent or budget. It was mindset: viewing the website as an evolving marketing experiment rather than a static asset to perfect.
This experience taught me that most businesses treat their website like a digital brochure when it should be treated as a marketing laboratory. Every page should be an experiment, every visitor an opportunity to learn, every conversion a data point in your optimization engine.
The companies that succeed aren't the ones with perfect websites. They're the ones with websites that can evolve quickly based on real user behavior.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Part 1: Build Your Testing Foundation
From my experience, you need a CMS that marketing teams can actually use without begging developers for help. Every CMS promises "easy editing" - in reality, most are nightmares.
After testing dozens of platforms with clients, here's my verdict:
For most businesses: Framer or Webflow give marketers actual control
For ecommerce: Shopify remains essential, but requires proper custom theme setup to give marketers autonomy
Without this foundation, every test becomes a multi-week project instead of a quick experiment. The manager obsessing over heading consistency? Their team couldn't make simple changes without developer tickets. Meanwhile, their competitor was running 3 experiments per week.
Part 2: Embrace Marketing R&D
I've started treating marketing like product teams treat R&D - as a discipline of systematic experimentation. Your website should be your testing ground for finding what distribution formula works for your specific business.
This means:
Testing bold changes, not button colors - Different value propositions, page structures, entire messaging frameworks
Methodically tracking each experiment - Not just conversion rates, but which traffic sources convert best, which pages drive engagement
Building a culture where marketing owns website decisions - No more developer bottlenecks for copy changes
The fundamental shift is from "let's perfect this once" to "let's build something that can evolve rapidly." Your website architecture should support continuous iteration, not hinder it.
The SEO Integration Layer
Here's where most conversion advice fails: it assumes your homepage is the main entry point. In reality, with proper SEO, every page becomes a potential front door.
When I work with clients now, we structure sites around search intent, not company org charts. Each page is optimized for specific keywords and user intentions. The "conversion optimization" happens at the content strategy level, not just the button level.
This approach means your website converts better because it's attracting more qualified visitors who are actively searching for your solution.
Testing Infrastructure
Build systems that enable rapid iteration, not perfect static designs
CMS Autonomy
Choose platforms that let marketing teams make changes without developer dependencies
Content Laboratory
Structure your site around search intent and user behavior, not internal company logic
Marketing R&D
Treat website optimization as systematic experimentation, not one-time perfection
The results from this approach have been dramatic across client projects. The manager who spent two weeks on heading grammar? After implementing this testing infrastructure, their team ran 47 experiments in 6 months. Their conversion rate improved from 0.8% to 3.2%.
More importantly, they discovered insights that fundamentally changed their business. One A/B test revealed that their assumed primary value proposition resonated with only 23% of visitors. The winning variation focused on a completely different benefit - something they never would have discovered through traditional "best practices."
Across the portfolio of clients who adopted this marketing laboratory approach:
Average testing velocity increased 340% - from monthly changes to weekly experiments
Conversion improvements became sustainable - not just one-time bumps, but continuous optimization
Marketing teams gained confidence - decisions based on data, not opinions
The unexpected outcome? Companies that embraced this approach started applying the same experimental mindset to other areas of their business. The website became a training ground for data-driven decision making across the organization.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons learned from transforming websites from static showcases to conversion machines:
Infrastructure trumps optimization - You can't iterate quickly on systems that require developer intervention for simple changes
Distribution beats perfection - A "good enough" website with strong SEO outperforms a "perfect" website nobody finds
Every page is a landing page - Optimize for search intent, not just homepage conversions
Test big, not small - Button colors matter less than fundamental value proposition testing
Speed of learning beats individual test results - The team that can run 10 experiments beats the team that perfects 1
Marketing should own the website - Not IT, not design, but the team responsible for results
Conversion happens at the content strategy level - Attracting qualified traffic is more important than optimizing for unqualified visitors
The biggest lesson? Stop asking "what's the best practice?" Start asking "what works for my specific audience?" Your website is a marketing asset that needs constant experimentation. Treat it like one.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies implementing this conversion approach:
Build trial signup optimization into every page - not just dedicated landing pages
Test different onboarding entry points - direct to product vs. demo request vs. free trial
Use feature-specific landing pages - each targeting different search intents and user personas
Implement usage-based content strategies - help articles that rank in search and drive conversions
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores applying this conversion framework:
Optimize collection pages for search visibility - they're often your highest-converting entry points
Test homepage-as-catalog approaches - sometimes browsing beats traditional landing page structures
Build email capture into the customer journey - convert browsers into subscribers before they leave
Use AI for personalized product recommendations - based on browsing behavior and search patterns