I’ve built and rebuilt websites for startups, B2B SaaS platforms, and growing tech companies—often with tight timelines and even tighter resources. Whether working solo or with a team, one thing has always been true: a website is not just your storefront—it’s your hardest-working employee. Read my best practices on website planning for tech companies.
It has to attract, explain, convince, and convert—all while speaking to different visitors at different stages of their decision-making journey. These aren’t theoretical tips. They come from real constraints, real experiments, and real results. And if you’re a marketer juggling product positioning, user needs, and decision-maker expectations with limited resources, these principles will help you build a site that works—not just looks good.
1. Start with the Hero Section
Make your product and value proposition crystal clear in the first 5 seconds. Visitors should know exactly what your product is, who it’s for, and why it matters. Avoid vague taglines. Use plain, bold language.And make the next step obvious: one primary call-to-action (CTA). Don’t make people choose between 3 different buttons. Tell them what to do next.
Take a look at Loom’s hero banner:
“One video is worth a thousand words
Easily record and share AI‑powered video messages with your teammates and customers to supercharge productivity.”📌 Why it works?
- First line = clear value. It immediately tells you why Loom matters “One video is worth a thousand words.”
- Second line = what it does. “Easily record and share AI‑powered video messages with your teammates and customers to supercharge productivity.” gives an instant product summary.
- CTA (“Get Loom for Free”)is highly inviting and action-oriented—no confusion about what to do next.
The hero section also uses a product demo video usually accompanies the text. This avoids clutter and keeps the focus on the value. It provides great use case.
💡 We used Loom during User Acceptance Testing for our own website. It helped us communicate clearly with UI designer and front-end developer, cut review time, and document feedback effortlessly. It’s a great product for sharing easy-to-record videos without the error-prone back-and-forth of file uploads—you just share a link. That’s what makes Loom a great collaboration tool.
2. Structure Your Site Around the Buyer Journey
Your users, decision-makers, and buyers are often different people—especially in B2B SaaS. Your website must serve all of them.
- Users want to see feature sets, product walkthroughs, and easy access to demos and resources.
- Decision-makers need to quickly grasp ROI, business benefits, and technical fit.
- Buyers and procurement teams look for proof of capability—company stability, privacy policies, about pages, and delivery capacity.
Design each section and page with these personas in mind. A great reference is saaswebsites.com, where you can study how well-structured SaaS sites separate and prioritize information for each audience group.
Think about how each persona enters and flows through your site. A solid structure guides them from landing to action without friction.
Airtable’s website is a strong example of aligning navigation with different buyer roles:
- Platform tab speaks to technical evaluators—focusing on scalability, integrations, and architecture.
- Solutions tab targets business units and decision-makers, offering clear value propositions by function (marketing, HR, product, etc.).
- Resources section provides onboarding help, documentation, and guides—catering to users and integrators who need to go deeper.
📌 What works well:
They map their site to real personas involved in B2B buying. Business leaders see results and templates; technical buyers get reassurance on infrastructure.✅ Takeaway:
Use your navigation to reflect the full buying ecosystem—decision-makers, technical approvers, end users, and integrators. This structure not only improves clarity but supports the full adoption journey from first click to daily use.
3. Make It Skimmable for First-Time Visitors
Visitors early in their journey—still recognizing a problem—don’t need deep specs. They need clarity.
Use imperative, easy-to-skim headlines, short sections, and visually distinct blocks. First-time visitors often don’t read—they scan. Your site must deliver value at a glance and help them quickly orient themselves.
Stripe’s homepage is an excellent example of how to design for visitors who are just starting to explore a problem and aren’t sure what solution they need yet.
- It opens with a concise headline: “Financial infrastructure for the internet.” It sets the context clearly, even for those unfamiliar with payment platforms.
- The layout is structured with short, clear sections, each anchored by bold, purposeful headlines.
- It covers full payment journey, business type, scaleability and integration to your environment.
- Stripe uses visual hierarchy—spacing, font size, and clean visuals—to guide the eye and encourage scrolling.
📌 Why it works for early-stage visitors:
Someone in the need-recognition phase isn’t comparing features—they’re trying to figure out if they’re in the right place. Stripe’s clarity and structure quickly builds relevance and trust. It makes you say: “That’s what I’m looking for.” Without requiring deep reading, it delivers just enough insight to trigger interest and further exploration.✅ Takeaway:
For visitors still defining their problem, your site should be easy to scan and immediately relevant. Use strong headers, clear structure, and purposeful design to lead them from curiosity to consideration.
4. Speak in Their Voice, Not Just Product Names
Don’t speak like a product catalog. Avoid jargon. Use “you” more than “we.” And always focus on what your user is trying to achieve, not just what your product does.
Instead of “Acme Analytics ProX 2.0 now supports multi-channel tracking,” say:
“Track every customer touchpoint in one dashboard.”
Make them feel like you understand their day-to-day, not just your feature roadmap.
Slack’s homepage shows how to speak like a human, not like a spec sheet.
Instead of listing technical features or product names, they lead with short, action-driven phrases that relate directly to the user’s daily work:
“Share it. Discuss it. Get it done. Side-by-side with AI agents.”
“Bring your people, projects, apps, and AI agents together.”📌 Why it works:
These phrases are simple, active, and focused on outcomes. They speak to what users want to do—collaborate, move faster, get results—without drowning in product terminology.Slack also consistently uses the second person—“you” and “your”—which pulls the visitor into the experience. It feels like it’s written for you, not about them.
✅ Takeaway:
Ditch the jargon. Don’t lead with product names or internal terminology. Start by talking about what your audience wants to achieve. Make them feel understood—then explain how your product helps.
5. Focus on Value, Not Just Features
Your product’s power lies in the value it delivers—not just the tools it offers. As Tony Seba puts it:
Value resides at the customer, feature resides at the product.
This sounds obvious, but in practice, it’s a battle. You have to be a real fighter—especially when you’re the lone marketer in a room full of engineers who want every feature highlighted. I’ve been there. They want to show everything. But more isn’t better—it’s just more noise.
Your role is to cut through that noise. Translate features into real-world value. Lead with value. Support it with use cases and results, make your audience picture success with your product.
Assigning weight to different value messages based on the audience and funnel stage doesn’t just clarify your website—it can also shape your business strategy. It forces internal alignment on who you’re really selling to and why they should care.
I’ll explore this “value weighting” method in an upcoming blog post—how to balance audience segments, funnel stages, and positioning without watering everything down.
Synthesia’s homepage leads with value:
“Turn text to video, in minutes.”
“Save up to 90% of time and cost on video production.”
“Hard truth: people ignore text. People want to watch, not read.”📌 Why it works:
They highlight outcomes—speed, savings, engagement—before explaining the technology (AI avatars, 140+ languages). It instantly tells visitors what they’ll get, not just what the product is.✅ Takeaway:
Start with what your customer gains. Support it with proof. Keep features in the background until they’re needed.
6. Inspire Cross-Functional Use with Clear Organization
While your site should follow the buyer journey, it should also reflect the cross-functional nature of your product. Section 2 helps you guide who visits your site. This section ensures they find what they need based on how they work.
If your product is generic or has broad use, organize your site around specific user roles and use cases—starting with your top menu.
- Provide dedicated landing pages for different roles (e.g. marketing, operations, HR).
- Add specific value propositions and templates tailored for each use case.
- Highlight versatile applications and real-world examples.
While your site should follow the buyer journey, it should also reflect the cross-functional nature of your product. Section 2 helps you guide who visits your site. This section ensures they find what they need based on how they work.
Monday.com is a strong example of how to structure a website for a broad, cross-functional product:
- TheSolutions section is organized by company size (e.g., small teams vs. enterprise), business unit (e.g., marketing, HR, product), and industry (e.g., software, construction, nonprofits). This helps visitors immediately find a context that matches their world.
- TheTemplates section mirrors this structure, offering ready-to-use setups aligned with each business unit, so teams can get started without reinventing workflows.
📌 Why it works:
This layered organization reduces friction. Whether you’re a marketing manager in a startup or a project lead in a large enterprise, you’re guided straight to relevant solutions and tools. It’s not just about product flexibility—it’s about showing that flexibility in action.✅ Takeaway:
Organize around your target users.
- Use clear menu labels forroles or departments.
- Offerfunction-specific value propositions and resources.
- Providerole-based templates to lower the barrier to entry and speed up adoption.
7. Follow UI/UX Design Principles
Visual design is your silent communicator. Good design helps people understand what to do and where to look—without reading every word.
- Use white space purposefully to separate information and guide focus.
- Practice balance in typography and visuals. Too many icons or inconsistent font sizes can cause overload.
- Respect readability principles: apply the golden ratio in text layout and aim for a good readability index (like Flesch Reading Ease). Choose font sizes that work well across devices.
And be intentional with color. Use high contrast for clarity, avoid colors that strain the eye, and minimize distractions. Color should highlight, not overwhelm.
Sketch is a great example of how strong visual discipline leads to an intuitive user experience.
📏 Whitespace
- The site uses generous spacing around content blocks and navigation, giving each element room to breathe.
- It creates a calm, intentional flow that guides the user without overwhelming them.
⚖ Typography
- Sketch pairs serif and sans-serif fonts, creating both visual contrast and improved readability.
- Headings use a serif style for character and hierarchy, while body text stays in sans-serif for clarity, functional with a good linehight for even smaller texts.
- The font scale is consistent aligned with golden ratio, and line spacing is optimized for both desktop and mobile reading.
🎨 Color
- The color palette is clean and restrained: whites, grays, and soft accents. Bright colors are reserved for interactive elements like CTAs, creating immediate visual cues.
- High contrast is maintained throughout, ensuring accessibility and comfort.
📌 Why it works:
Sketch blends creativity and structure—proving that you can have personality without sacrificing clarity. Every design decision supports the user journey, not just the brand aesthetic.✅ Takeaway:
Good design isn’t about making things look fancy—it’s about making things easy to understand. Use white space to separate content, choose clear fonts to help people read, and use color only where it adds focus. When done right, your design helps users find what they need without even thinking about it.
Final Thoughts: Build a Website That Works Harder Than You
A great website isn’t just visually polished—it’s structured, strategic, and built for real people at different stages of their journey.
From making your hero section speak clearly in five seconds, to mapping pages to buyer roles, to using design that guides rather than distracts—every detail matters. These aren’t just design choices. They’re strategic decisions that directly impact how well your product is understood, trusted, and adopted.
A well-planned website isn’t just a design project. It’s a growth strategy.
And for small marketing teams, getting the structure right from the start saves hours of explaining, pitching, and fixing later on.
Whether you’re planning your first site or rethinking your current one, these principles will help you build a site that works smarter—for your users, your team, and your bottom line.
Start with clarity. Speak to your audience. Guide them visually. And above all, show them the value.