Stop checking boxes.
Start diagnosing the problem.

A different kind of landing page optimisation checklist

Most landing page optimisation checklists start with the page.

Is the headline clear? Is the CTA visible? Have you added social proof? Is the copy too long? Is the form too complicated?

Those can all be useful questions. The problem is that none of them tells you whether changing that thing will actually improve performance.

A landing page doesn't exist in isolation. People arrive from somewhere, with an existing level of knowledge, a particular need and an expectation created by whatever brought them there.

Before changing the page, I want to understand three things: Who is arriving and what do they need? Is the page helping them make the next decision? Is there evidence that this is actually where the biggest opportunity exists?

That's what this diagnostic is designed to help you work through.

The six parts of a landing page decision

1. Audience & Acquisition

Before reviewing the page, understand who is arriving. Where did the traffic come from? Was it a generic search, paid campaign, promotion, email or referral? What does that visitor already know? What expectation did the previous interaction create?

A landing page can work perfectly well for one audience and badly for another. You can't judge whether the page is doing its job until you understand who landed there and what brought them there.

2. Intent & Relevance

I like to start with a simple six-second test. Within roughly six seconds, can someone understand what the page is about, how it relates to their need and whether they've arrived in the right place?

This isn't just about clarity. If an advert promises 50% off running shoes and sends someone to a generic footwear page, the landing page could be perfectly clear and still be the wrong experience.

The question is whether the page continues the intent and expectation that caused the visit.

3. Content & Comprehension

Once the visitor knows they're in the right place, can they understand what you're telling them?

The content needs to provide the information that particular audience requires to make the next decision, in a form they can easily understand. That doesn't mean making everything shorter. Sometimes 100 words is enough. Sometimes somebody genuinely needs 2,000.

4. Trust & Credibility

Understanding what you're offering doesn't mean I believe you.

Testimonials, customer reviews, recognised clients, awards, accreditations, case studies, guarantees and third-party validation can all increase credibility. But simply adding social proof isn't the objective.

The proof should support the claim, concern or objection it is intended to resolve. “Used by 10,000 businesses” might demonstrate popularity. It doesn't automatically prove every other claim on the page.

5. Value & Differentiation

Now we move from “Can I believe you?” to “Why you?”

Does the page explain benefits rather than simply listing features? Can the visitor understand the value they'll receive? More importantly, why should they buy this product or service from you rather than solve the same problem somewhere else?

That includes direct competitors, substitutes, existing suppliers and sometimes the most difficult competitor of all: doing nothing.

6. Action & Confidence

Finally, how does somebody move forward? Having a CTA isn't enough.

The visitor should understand what they're being asked to do, what will happen next and whether the level of commitment is appropriate for where they are in their decision.

“Get started” might mean buying something, starting a trial, creating an account, booking a call or handing over card details. A CTA works when somebody understands the next step and feels confident enough to take it.

Don't optimise the page just because you can

A landing page could score badly in several areas and still not be the most valuable thing to fix.

Imagine 95% of relevant visitors already progress from it, but half disappear during checkout. You could spend weeks improving testimonials, rewriting headlines and testing CTA copy. Or you could investigate the part of the journey where you're actually losing people.

That's why the diagnostic looks beyond the landing page.

Acquisition → Landing page → Next step → Form / Product / Checkout → Conversion

Use analytics to understand where people drop out, whether particular audiences behave differently and where improving performance could create the greatest commercial value.

A checklist finds potential problems. Evidence tells you whether they're real.

A heuristic review can identify things worth investigating. It cannot tell you with certainty that they're hurting performance.

That's where qualitative and quantitative evidence comes in. Use analytics and funnel data alongside interaction events, session recordings, heatmaps, scroll maps, surveys, user testing, customer interviews, reviews, customer-service feedback and previous experiments.

You're looking for convergence. One session recording might be interesting. A pattern across analytics, recordings and customer research is considerably more useful.

The strongest position is triangulated evidence, where multiple independent sources support the diagnosis.

Prioritise problems, not ideas

Once you've identified genuine problems, decide what deserves attention first.

The score isn't science. It's a way of making the assumptions behind prioritisation visible.

The important distinction is that you're prioritising problems worth solving, not generating a list of random things you'd like to test.

Landing page optimisation checklist FAQs