Happy Sunday!

In last week’s newsletter, I ranted about building a repeatable, frictionless process for growth. This week is Part II,  diving into one crucial piece of that process: building high-converting landing pages efficiently. But before we get into that…

Vendor of the Week

Instant — The AI-Powered Retention Marketer you need for BFCM

I’ve brought up Instant a lot... but here’s my final message: go live with Instant, turn on the 11+ AI flows (start with high-intent triggers), and let AI handle the timing + content. Keep your legacy Klaviyo flows if they’re working, but just use Instant to fill the gap and run the flows you never setup yourself.

This past week I sent you a 8+ page deep-dive on BFCM retention, one of them was all the 11+ flows to get live (it’s revenue sitting right there). How? Because Instant’s AI knows exactly when and what to send each shopper, to convert.

Every brand I’ve started with Instant has seen an instant lift (no pun intended). It’s all incremental revenue, you can pause anytime, and every un-emailed shopper goes to your competitor. Not to mention the average 60x ROI. 

Their onboarding pipeline is filled up quickly before BFCM. Book a demo before 11/9 to lock in a spot and get 50% off your first 60 days.

Click here to make record money with email!

Want to take a survey for $1,000 cash?

Would you be willing to take this anonymous survey with me? I'd like to hear directly from you about what’s happening on your team, how you’re testing things differently, and your marketing pain points. 

Take the survey on this link! It’s quick, anonymous, & you’ll be entered to win cash.

Building a Process to Build LPs

If you look at some of the fastest-growing supplement or consumer brands, many of them scaled quickly because they were smart about their funnels… nailing their messaging, creative, offers, and understanding retention and churn. At the core of those funnels are dedicated landing pages. Why? Because landing pages let you streamline the customer journey and boost conversion rates by reducing friction and educating the customer along the way.

Let’s break down how to create a cost-effective, conversion-focused landing page process that can scale your brand.

Why Landing Pages Matter for Scaling

A good landing page is an essential part of your marketing funnel. Rather than sending ad traffic to a generic homepage, a focused landing page can guide a prospect from first click to purchase with minimal detours. Fewer clicks means fewer chances for people to drop off – naturally increasing your conversion rate because you’re removing distractions and friction in the buying process.

But it’s not just about reducing clicks. A landing page also gives you the space to properly educate your customer about your product and brand. You can concisely explain why they should trust you, how your product solves their problem, and how it will enrich their life. By the time they reach the “Buy” button, they’re informed and confident.

In other words, a great landing page rolls out the red carpet for the customer: it delivers the right information at the right time, building trust and desire, so the purchase feels like a no-brainer. For brands looking to scale up, mastering this kind of customer journey is a game changer.

Strategy Over Tools: Content Is King (Not Fancy Tools)

When a brand first decides to build landing pages to improve conversion, the initial instinct is often to whip something up quickly and cheaply. Maybe someone on the team (or at an agency) suggests using a drag-and-drop landing page tool, or you hire a freelancer from Fiverr/LinkedIn to design a page for a few hundred bucks. These tools and quick fixes can be fine to get started, but here’s the truth: the tool you use or how “pretty” the page looks is far less important than having the right strategy, messaging, and content.

You absolutely must get the basics right – the offer, the copy, the user experience (UX) flow, and the messaging hierarchy. Those elements will make or break your page’s performance. The functionality or shiny UI elements come second. If you don’t have a clear strategy and compelling content, even the most expensive landing page builder or the trendiest design template won’t save you. (As I mentioned last week, having a very clear brief is the first step. Without clear direction on your audience, angle, and goals, the landing page will likely miss the mark.)

Let me emphasize the difference: UX vs. UI. UX (User Experience) is how the page works – how easy and intuitive it is for a visitor to navigate, understand your message, and take action. UI (User Interface) is how the page looks – the aesthetic design, colors, fonts, images, etc. A beautiful UI can enhance trust and reinforce your brand identity, but a pretty page alone won’t convert if the UX and content are poor. An ugly page with great copy and flow will outperform a gorgeous page with confusing messaging every time.

Case in point: Comfrt Clothing reportedly does almost $1 billion a year in revenue through a very basic Shopify site. It’s not winning any web design awards for flashy visuals, but it is one of the most efficient shopping experiences out there. Hudson Leogrande, Comfrt’s founder, focuses on the key UX elements that move a customer from interest to purchase with minimal friction. The site is simple, fast, and laser-focused on guiding the user to buy: proof that fancy UI bells and whistles are less important than a clear, conversion-driven UX.

The takeaway: Don’t get distracted by tools or over-fancy design. You can use basic landing page tools or simple templates to start, that’s fine. But what really matters is the substance: a clear angle and audience, strong copywriting, a compelling offer, and a smooth user journey. Nail those, and even a “ugly” page can print money. Miss those, and no amount of good design will save your conversion rate.

My Step-by-Step Process for Building Landing Pages

Over time, I’ve developed a process to crank out effective landing pages with minimal wasted effort. Here’s exactly how I do it, step by step:

Define Your Angle & Audience: Start by clearly identifying who you’re targeting and what core angle or emotion you’re leveraging.

Pick a specific customer persona and the primary benefit or pain point you’ll speak to on this page. This will guide everything that follows. For example, say you’re targeting menopausal women and your angle is “better sleep” (and you happen to sell a hydration supplement). That angle-audience combo should shape the entire page. From the headline and hero image to the testimonials and even the stats you mention, everything will speak to a menopausal woman looking to improve her sleep. By defining this upfront, you ensure all messaging stays laser-focused and relevant to the people you want to convert.

Brain Dump All Your Ideas (Copy First): Open a blank Google Doc (my favorite starting point) and vomit out every idea, point, and piece of copy that could be relevant to this landing page. Don’t worry about order or polish yet – just write. Include anything that comes to mind: product benefits, features, catchy headlines, customer pain points, analogies, social proof, comparisons to competitors, FAQs, etc.

If you have customer reviews or testimonials you might use, drop them in the doc (with details like the reviewer’s name, title, etc.). If there are certain visuals you plan to include (like a product comparison chart or a “brag bar” of logos of publications that have featured you), make a note of those too. The idea is to create a massive content sandbox to play in.

Once it’s all out on paper, you can always trim and refine. (Pro tip: if you use AI tools in your workflow (for example, to analyze customer feedback or to polish copy) you can even feed this rough doc into an AI assistant to see if it suggests any improvements or spots anything you missed. The AI isn’t there to write for you, but it can help you refine your raw material.

Outline the Sections & Story Flow: Now step back and organize that brain dump into a rough outline or wireframe on paper. Think about the sections of your landing page as chapters of a story that smoothly guides the visitor from ignorance to interest to desire to action.

A typical flow might look like: Hero (headline, subheadline, call-to-action) → Problem/Pain Point → Solution (your product) → Key Benefits & Features → Social Proof (reviews, testimonials) → Comparison (why you vs. others or vs. doing nothing) → Offer/Price/CTA → FAQ → Final CTA. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula, but whatever structure you choose, make sure each section logically leads to the next.

At this stage, focus on what content goes where, not how it will look visually. Arrange the copy from your doc under these section headings. Cut any fluff that doesn’t serve the core angle or that creates detours. This outline is essentially your wireframe in written form – the skeletal blueprint of the page.

Craft a Wireframe (UX Layout): With your content outline in hand, it’s time to translate it into a wireframe. This can be done with pen and paper or using a simple digital tool; the fidelity isn’t important, because it’s still just the blueprint.

The wireframe should map out: where the headline and copy blocks go, where images or videos will be placed, how the sections flow down the page, and what the primary calls-to-action are. Keep it focused on conversion and user flow: for example, ensure the CTA buttons are prominent and appear at key points, the important info is seen early (above the fold and repeated as needed), and any supporting visuals line up with the copy. This step is arguably the hardest and most critical. You’re combining your marketing strategy knowledge (what makes people click and buy) with everything you know about the customer and the angle, plus all that raw content you gathered, and molding it into a logical flow. Don’t be discouraged if it takes several tweaks – this is where A/B testing and CRO (conversion rate optimization) come into play over time.

Even experienced designers rarely nail the perfect layout on the first try, which is why you continuously test and refine. If you have access to a conversion-focused UX designer (someone who’s designed landing pages for paid traffic before), this is a great time to get their input or have them draft the wireframe. The goal is a page structure that makes it stupid-simple for a prospect to go from skimming the headline to entering their credit card info without confusion or extra clicks.

Design the Page (UI in Figma): Once the wireframe (the what-goes-where) is approved, it’s time for the UI design, making it look like a polished, on-brand web page.

In this phase, you’ll apply your brand’s visual identity to the wireframe: the color scheme, fonts, button styles, imagery, iconography, etc. The key here is to maintain the integrity of the wireframe’s layout and flow while making it aesthetically pleasing and brand-consistent.

Don’t let design “creativity” derail the functional layout – every design choice should still serve the goal of converting the customer. If you have specific content pieces (product photos, charts, graphics, testimonial headshots), plug them in. Make sure the design is clean, professional, and not too cluttered – you want to enhance trust and clarity, not distract or overwhelm.

By the end of this step, you should have a dev-ready design file of the landing page.

Build It Directly in Shopify (Avoid Subdomains): With final design in hand, move to development.

My strong recommendation: build the landing page directly within your main website, not on a separate subdomain or an external landing page service.

The reason is tracking and simplicity. When you use a subdomain (like shop.yourbrand.com), you often end up with cross-domain tracking headaches. Your analytics and ad pixels might not attribute conversions properly, cookies can drop, and events may fire incorrectly. I’ve seen brands from $10M to $400M/year unknowingly sabotage their data by running pages on a different domain, causing Facebook and Google to receive muddled signals (and once those platforms get bad data, you can’t exactly “cleanse” it later; it hurts your optimization).

By building within Shopify, you also get to reuse all your existing site infrastructure – the header, footer, checkout integration, etc., and your tracking pixels sees it as the same site (so no lost attribution). Another bonus: once you’ve coded these sections/modules in Shopify, you can mix and match them to spin up new pages quickly. It’s literally drag-and-drop to assemble another page using the same building blocks, which is incredibly efficient for future tests. Bottom line: keep it all under one roof for accurate data and easier maintenance.

QA Everything (Mobile, Desktop, Tracking): Before you send traffic to your new page, test it rigorously.

This means checking the page on all major device types and browsers. Mobile phones (iPhone and Android), tablets, and various desktop browsers. Ensure the layout is responsive and looks great on small screens (where likely 80%+ of your traffic from ads will be). Click through every link and button. Fill out the form or add the product to cart and go through the checkout to make sure it’s smooth.

Also double-check that all your tracking events are firing correctly (page view, add-to-cart, purchase, lead, or whatever events you expect).

On a custom-coded page, sometimes the usual events don’t fire by default, so your developer might need to manually trigger the pixel at certain steps. It’s worth running through a test purchase while having your analytics debug tools open to verify this.

If you’re offering a discount or promo code on the landing page, test that the code works at checkout. Basically, you want to catch any glitch or friction before a real customer hits it. It’s a terrible feeling to spend money on ads only to realize later that your “Buy Now” button wasn’t working on mobile or the Meta Pixel didn’t record any of the sales!

Launch, Monitor, and Optimize: With QA passing, push the page live and start sending traffic to it. In the first day or two, keep a close eye on performance and any customer feedback.

Monitor your analytics: Is the bounce rate reasonable? Are people clicking the CTA? How’s the conversion rate vs. your main site? Often, things will work perfectly, but if something is off, you want to catch it early. Also watch for any unexpected behavior – e.g., a flood of customer service tickets or DMs saying “I can’t check out” or “the code isn’t working” (unlikely if you tested well, but stay vigilant).

Assuming all is well, you can start gathering data and possibly set up A/B tests on elements of the page (headline, images, etc.) to keep improving it. One of the beautiful parts of a dedicated landing page is that you can optimize it specifically for your paid traffic audience, so use that advantage over time.

Educate, Don’t Pressure (Build Trust for the Long Term): As you refine your landing pages, remember the philosophy: walk your customer down a red carpet, don’t push them down a dark alley. The page should feel like a helpful guided tour, not a high-pressure sales trap.

Avoid gimmicks that might boost short-term conversion at the expense of trust like fake countdown timers, spammy pop-ups, or “limited time” claims that reset every visit. Those tricks might squeeze a sale out of a skeptical customer once, but they won’t make them feel good about the purchase or come back for more.

Your content should address the user’s problem, explain the solution, and genuinely show them how their life will be better with your product. When a customer buys because they truly believe in your product’s value, you earn higher-LTV (lifetime value) customers who are more likely to stay loyal, buy again, and refer friends. The best brands scale by building fans, not just customers. Fans are created through positive, trust-based buying experiences. So focus on education and value, and the conversions will follow.

Final Thoughts

Building landing pages in this systematic, efficient way isn’t just a fun side project, it’s often the difference between a brand that plateaus and one that breaks through to the next level. If you can develop a repeatable process with predictable timelines and clear quality standards for each step (research, copy, design, dev, etc.), you’ve unlocked a growth superpower. Instead of landing pages being a bottleneck or a one-off fire drill, they become a reliable growth lever you can pull whenever you have a new offer or audience to target.

This process allows you to test and scale offers rapidly, feeding your paid acquisition funnels with high-converting pages. It removes friction in your org because everyone knows the playbook for launching a new page. Ultimately, that means you can seize opportunities faster, whether it’s a new product launch, a seasonal promotion, or a new ad angle, without losing momentum.

So, invest the time in building this landing page machine. As someone who’s been in the weeds of performance marketing and funnel building, I can tell you it’s absolutely worth it. Get the team aligned, follow the steps, and soon whipping up a killer landing page will feel like second nature. Your future self (and your bottom line) will thank you when you’re scaling from $5 to 10M to $50M and beyond without breaking a sweat.

That's all for this week

I hope today’s part 2 newsletter was helpful and steers you to build a better process for landing pages. We build landing pages and websites for some of the best brands, so if you want us to build yours, fill out this form. 

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you plan to get 9 hours of sleep tonight and go into the new week ready to attack and own the week. Stay hydrated, get your sleep in and have an amazing upcoming week!