AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
I 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.
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.
Here's what you'll learn from my experience building websites that actually work:
Why your CMS choice determines your marketing velocity (not your design)
The two-part framework I use to build converting websites
How I increased conversion rates by treating websites as marketing R&D labs
Why the manager obsessing over headings had a 0.8% conversion rate while their competitor hit 3.2%
The actual features that move the needle vs. the ones everyone obsesses over
Stop building beautiful websites that nobody finds. Start building marketing assets that drive revenue.
Industry Reality
What every business owner has been told
Walk into any web design agency and you'll hear the same checklist repeated like gospel. The "must-have" features that supposedly make a professional business website:
About Us page with company history and team photos
Services/Products page with detailed descriptions
Contact page with multiple contact methods
Professional design that looks modern and credible
Mobile responsiveness for all devices
Fast loading speed for better user experience
SSL certificate for security and trust
This conventional wisdom exists because it checks all the "professional" boxes. Your website looks legitimate, covers all the basics, and won't embarrass you in front of prospects. Most agencies push this approach because it's safe, predictable, and easy to deliver.
The problem? This checklist treats your website like a digital business card instead of a revenue-generating asset. You end up with a beautiful brochure that tells people what you do, but doesn't actually convince them to buy from you.
Where this falls short in practice: You're optimizing for looking professional instead of optimizing for conversions. Your website becomes a static asset that requires developer intervention for every small change, killing your ability to test and iterate quickly.
Most businesses following this approach get a website that looks great in screenshots but fails to drive actual business results. The real question isn't "What features should my site have?" It's "What infrastructure do I need to test what actually works?"
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The manager obsessing over heading consistency? Their site converted at 0.8%. Meanwhile, a competitor I worked with who embraced rapid testing hit 3.2% within three months. The difference wasn't talent or budget—it was mindset.
I discovered this problem firsthand after building dozens of "perfect" websites that looked amazing but generated zero business results. Beautiful designs, flawless user journeys, pixel-perfect layouts—and crickets when it came to actual leads or sales.
The breakthrough came when I started working with a SaaS startup that refused to follow conventional wisdom. Instead of obsessing over the perfect About page, they wanted to test everything: headlines, value propositions, pricing displays, even the entire homepage structure.
But here's where it got interesting: their existing website was built on WordPress with a complex theme that required developer changes for simple text edits. Every test idea turned into a two-week project involving multiple stakeholders, approval processes, and development sprints.
We were treating marketing like product development when marketing needs to move at marketing speed. Their competitors were shipping new landing pages daily while they were stuck in development cycles for basic copy changes.
That's when I realized the fundamental flaw in how we think about business websites. We focus on features and pages when we should focus on testing infrastructure. Your CMS choice, content management workflows, and ability to iterate quickly matter more than having the perfect hero section.
This insight completely changed how I approach website projects. Instead of asking "What pages do you need?" I started asking "How quickly do you want to test new ideas?" The answer to that question determines everything else about your website architecture.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
I developed a two-part framework that treats websites as marketing laboratories instead of digital brochures. This approach focuses on building the right infrastructure first, then optimizing for results through systematic testing.
Part 1: Build Your Testing Foundation
The first decision determines everything else: choosing a CMS that marketing teams can actually use. Most businesses pick WordPress because it's "flexible," then watch their marketing velocity die as every change requires developer intervention.
After testing dozens of platforms with clients, here's my decision framework:
For most businesses: Framer or Webflow give marketers actual control without sacrificing design quality
For ecommerce: Shopify remains essential, but requires proper custom theme setup to give marketers autonomy
For content-heavy sites: Webflow's CMS capabilities outperform most alternatives when you need both design flexibility and content management
The key insight: your platform choice determines your testing velocity. If marketing can't make changes without involving developers, you're dead in the water before you start.
Part 2: Embrace Marketing R&D
Once you have the right foundation, treat your website like a continuous experiment. This means:
Testing bold changes, not button colors: Headlines, value propositions, entire page structures
Systematic documentation: Track what you test, when you test it, and what the results tell you
Marketing ownership: The team closest to customers should control the messaging
Instead of the traditional "About/Services/Contact" structure, I help clients build around testing priorities:
Multiple homepage variants: Test different value props for different audience segments
Landing page templates: Rapid deployment for campaigns and experiments
Conversion optimization infrastructure: A/B testing tools, analytics setup, feedback collection
Content velocity tools: Templates and systems that let you publish ideas quickly
The SaaS client who embraced this approach? We built their site on Framer, set up systematic testing workflows, and gave their marketing team complete autonomy. Within 90 days, they'd tested 12 different value propositions, found their best-converting messaging, and built a repeatable process for optimization.
The real breakthrough: they weren't asking "What features should our site have?" anymore. They were asking "What should we test next?" That shift in mindset drove everything else.
Testing Infrastructure
Platform choice determines marketing velocity—choose tools that let your team iterate without developers
Conversion Focus
Optimize for business results, not just professional appearance—track what actually drives revenue
Marketing Ownership
Give control to the team closest to customers—they understand messaging needs better than developers
Systematic Experimentation
Document every test and result—build institutional knowledge about what works for your specific audience
The results speak for themselves. The SaaS startup that embraced systematic testing saw their conversion rate jump from 1.2% to 3.2% within three months. More importantly, they built a sustainable optimization process that continues driving improvements.
But the real transformation was cultural. Instead of debating the perfect homepage design in endless meetings, their team became obsessed with finding the next optimization opportunity. They shifted from "let's make it look professional" to "let's make it convert better."
The timeline looked like this:
Month 1: Platform migration and testing infrastructure setup
Month 2: First wave of headline and value prop tests
Month 3: Page structure experiments and optimization scaling
The unexpected outcome: their customer acquisition cost dropped by 40% because their website was doing more of the selling work. Better conversion rates meant they could afford higher cost-per-click in their paid campaigns, giving them competitive advantages in advertising auctions.
Most importantly, they developed what I call "optimization momentum"—the more they tested, the more opportunities they discovered, creating a compounding effect on their growth.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here's what I learned after helping dozens of businesses rebuild their websites as marketing assets instead of digital brochures:
Platform choice is strategy choice: Your CMS determines whether you can test quickly or get stuck in development cycles
Marketing velocity beats perfect design: The ability to test new ideas weekly trumps having the perfect hero section
Ownership drives results: When marketing teams control their own messaging, they optimize faster and more effectively
Infrastructure enables experiments: Without proper testing foundations, you're just guessing what works
Culture shift matters most: Moving from "make it look professional" to "make it convert better" changes everything
Small tests compound: Weekly optimizations create momentum that drives long-term growth
Customer proximity wins: The team closest to customer conversations should control website messaging
What I'd do differently: Start with the testing infrastructure conversation, not the design conversation. The biggest mistake I made early on was building beautiful websites on platforms that killed optimization velocity.
This approach works best for businesses that want to grow through their website, not just have a professional presence. If you're planning to drive traffic through ads, content, or outbound sales, you need a website that can evolve quickly based on what you learn from real users.
It doesn't work well for businesses that just need a simple online presence without active marketing campaigns. If you're not planning to test and optimize regularly, the traditional approach might be sufficient.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups specifically:
Choose Framer or Webflow for maximum marketing team autonomy
Build multiple trial signup page variants for testing
Focus on value prop optimization over feature lists
Set up systematic user feedback collection and testing workflows
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores specifically:
Use Shopify with custom themes that allow marketing control
Focus on conversion optimization infrastructure over catalog features
Build systematic product page testing capabilities
Prioritize site speed and mobile optimization for conversion rates