The short verdict
- The generated hero has six parts, and visitors have seen every one of them many times.
- Each part can stay, but each needs to say something only you could say.
- The fastest win is the headline. The biggest is the product image.
01The hero we keep seeing
Ask a builder for a landing page for a software product and you get something very close to this, top to bottom:
- A small pill badge: “New: AI-powered insights”.
- A headline with two or three words in a gradient: “Ship faster with intelligent workflows”.
- A one-line subhead: “The all-in-one platform for modern teams to collaborate, automate and grow.”
- Two buttons: “Get started” and “Learn more”.
- A row of grey logos under “Trusted by”.
- A floating dashboard screenshot, tilted slightly, with a glow behind it.
The example above is a composite we wrote for this post, not a real company. You have probably seen something like it this week anyway.
02Piece by piece
The badge
Fine if it announces something real and recent, with a link. Pointless if it says “New” about a feature that has been there since launch. If you do not have news, drop it. The headline moves up and gets more room.
The headline
“Ship faster with intelligent workflows” names no customer, no task and no result. Rewrite it around the job your buyer hires you for. “Close the month in two days, not ten” tells a finance lead exactly why to keep reading. The gradient on two words adds emphasis to the least specific part of the sentence.
The subhead
“All-in-one platform for modern teams” is the line most often copied word for word between generated sites. Use the subhead to answer the obvious next question: for whom, and how. “Ledger syncs, approvals and reports for finance teams of 5 to 50” is less elegant and far more useful.
The two buttons
“Get started” and “Learn more” ask the visitor to choose before they know anything. Pick one primary action and label it with what happens next: “Start a free trial”, “Book a 20-minute demo”. The second button, if you keep it, should lead somewhere specific, like a two-minute product video.
The logo row
Generated sites often ship with placeholder logos. Even with real ones, grey logos with no context do little. If you have three customers people recognise, show them. If you have one strong number from your own data, it may do more.
The tilted dashboard
Usually an invented interface with fake charts. Visitors cannot learn anything from it, and some will notice it is not your product. Show the real product, cropped to the one screen that explains the value, at a size where the text is readable.
“The hero is not there to look like a SaaS site. It is there to tell one person they are in the right place.”
03Layout, after the words
Once the copy is specific, the layout often wants to change. A specific headline is usually longer, so the centred stack can give way to a left-aligned headline with the product beside it. Or the real screenshot is wide and needs the full width under the copy. Let the content decide the layout, not the other way round.
04Questions people ask
Is a centred hero always a bad idea?
No. It works well when the headline is short and strong. The problem is using it by default, with copy that could belong to anyone.
What if I have no customer logos yet?
Leave the row out. A specific headline and a real product shot build more trust than placeholders.
Should the hero have animation?
One moment that shows the product working can help a lot. Ten things fading in at once does not.
Can you review my hero?
Yes. Send us the link and we will go through it the same way, line by line.
