Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
I used to be the architect of what I now call "digital ghost towns." For years, I poured my energy into crafting pixel-perfect websites—brand-aligned, modern, conversion-optimized. Every client left our initial meetings thrilled about their upcoming digital transformation.
I treated each website like a premium sales representative for the company. The messaging was sharp. The user journey was seamless. The design made competitors look outdated. 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.
The harsh reality hit when I analyzed my client portfolio. 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.
This realization forced me to completely restructure my approach. Here's what you'll learn from my journey from design-first to conversion-first:
Why treating your website as a marketing laboratory beats perfecting a digital brochure
The fundamental shift from homepage-centric to SEO-first architecture
How to build testing infrastructure that enables rapid experimentation
Real examples of sites that doubled conversion rates by breaking "best practices"
A practical framework for building sites that actually generate revenue
Ready to stop building ghost towns and start creating revenue-generating machines? Let's dive into what actually works.
Reality Check
What everyone gets wrong about "converting" websites
Walk into any marketing conference or browse through design portfolios, and you'll hear the same mantras repeated like gospel. The industry has convinced itself that conversion optimization is about tweaking button colors, A/B testing headlines, and perfecting the "perfect" user flow.
Here's what every business owner has been told about building converting websites:
Focus on the homepage first - Make it beautiful, clear, and compelling
Follow proven templates - Hero section, social proof, features, testimonials, CTA
Optimize the funnel - Reduce friction, simplify forms, speed up load times
Test everything - A/B test colors, copy, placement until you find winners
Mobile-first design - Responsive, fast, thumb-friendly interactions
This conventional wisdom exists because it's measurable, it's safe, and it makes agencies look sophisticated. Clients love hearing about "data-driven optimization" and "conversion rate improvements." The problem? You're optimizing a Ferrari to drive faster on an empty highway.
The industry has created an entire ecosystem around perfecting websites that nobody visits. We've become obsessed with conversion rates while ignoring the fundamental question: conversion rates of what traffic? If you're converting 3% of 100 monthly visitors, you're still only getting 3 customers. But if you're converting 0.5% of 10,000 monthly visitors, you're getting 50 customers.
Most businesses are stuck in what I call the "perfect website trap"—endlessly tweaking a site that looks professional but generates zero meaningful business results. They're treating symptoms while ignoring the disease: a website without distribution is just an expensive business card.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I once watched a manager spend two full weeks obsessing over whether every heading on their site should start with a verb. Two weeks. While competitors were launching new 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 stagnate. The manager obsessing over heading consistency? Their site converted at 0.8%. A competitor I worked with who embraced rapid testing? They hit 3.2% within three months.
The fundamental problem became clear: Most businesses treat their website like a digital brochure when it should be treated as a marketing laboratory. Your website isn't just a presence—it's a marketing asset that needs constant experimentation and iteration. Yet most teams get stuck in endless debates about copy tweaks while ignoring the fundamental infrastructure that enables rapid testing.
I started asking uncomfortable questions: Why are we spending weeks perfecting a page that gets 50 visitors per month? Why are we following "best practices" from companies with completely different audiences? Why are we optimizing conversion rates instead of focusing on getting traffic to convert?
The breakthrough came when I shifted from thinking like a designer to thinking like a marketer. Instead of building websites that looked impressive in portfolio screenshots, I started building systems that could be rapidly tested, measured, and improved. This wasn't about choosing ugly over beautiful—it was about building beautiful websites that people actually found and used.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After countless failed "perfect" websites, I developed a systematic approach that treats marketing like product teams treat R&D—as a discipline of systematic experimentation. Here's the exact framework I now use with every client:
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. I learned this the hard way when a client wanted to test a new value proposition. With their WordPress setup, it took three weeks to implement. With Framer, the same test took 2 hours.
Part 2: Embrace Marketing R&D
I treat 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 - One client doubled conversions by removing their hero video entirely
Methodically tracking each experiment - I use a simple spreadsheet to track hypothesis, implementation, and results
Building a culture where marketing owns website decisions - No more waiting for developer sprints to test new copy
The most successful sites I've worked on run 2-3 experiments per week. They're not perfect—they're learning machines. One ecommerce client went from 0.8% conversion rate to 2.1% in four months by testing everything from checkout flows to product page layouts.
The secret isn't finding the "perfect" layout. It's building infrastructure that lets you test your way to what works for your specific audience, your specific product, and your specific market position.
Speed Implementation
Set up testing infrastructure first - choose platforms that let marketing teams move fast without developer dependencies
Bold Testing
Test significant changes like entire page structures, not just button colors - small tests rarely move the needle
Track Everything
Document every experiment with hypothesis, implementation details, and results in a simple tracking system
Cultural Shift
Make marketing the owner of website decisions - eliminate developer bottlenecks for content and layout changes
The results speak for themselves. The manager obsessing over heading consistency? Their site still converts at 0.8% two years later. Meanwhile, clients who embraced rapid testing consistently see 2-4x improvements in conversion rates within 3-6 months.
One SaaS client went from 1.2% trial signup rate to 3.8% by testing 47 different variations over six months. An ecommerce store doubled their revenue per visitor by testing everything from product page layouts to checkout flows. The difference wasn't talent or budget—it was mindset.
But here's what surprised me most: the sites that converted best weren't the prettiest ones. They were the ones that had been through the most experiments. Each test taught us something about the audience, and each insight compounded into better performance.
The most successful approach I've found combines speed with systematic learning. Instead of spending months planning the "perfect" website, we launch quickly and iterate based on real user behavior. It's messier, it's less predictable, but it actually generates business results.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this framework across dozens of projects, here are the key lessons that transformed my approach:
Distribution beats perfection every time - A mediocre site with traffic outperforms a perfect site with no visitors
Infrastructure enables experimentation - Choose tools that prioritize speed over features
Small teams move faster than perfect processes - Eliminate handoffs between marketing and development
Your audience teaches you conversion optimization - Stop following generic best practices
Testing culture compounds over time - Each experiment teaches lessons that improve future tests
Conversion optimization is market research - Every test tells you something about your customers
Speed of learning beats speed of perfection - Launch fast, iterate faster
The uncomfortable truth? Most businesses want one perfect website that appeals to everyone. But I learned that creating 10 highly specific pages for 10 different audience segments consistently outperforms one "perfect" generic page.
If you're running a site that hasn't been updated in months, you're not optimizing—you're hoping. Real growth comes from systematic experimentation, not digital perfection.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups specifically:
Build separate landing pages for each customer segment and use case
Focus on trial conversion rate over homepage design perfection
Test onboarding flows as aggressively as you test acquisition
Use your product data to inform website optimization decisions
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores specifically:
Test product page layouts based on your specific catalog and customer behavior
Optimize checkout flow through systematic experimentation, not assumptions
Create collection pages that serve as landing pages for paid traffic
Use session recordings to understand where customers actually drop off