Design · 6 min read
The hero section is not the strategy
Most redesign budgets are spent above the fold and lost below it. A short argument for spending your attention elsewhere.
Takeaways
- The hero earns a second screen — it rarely closes anything.
- Rewrite section three before commissioning an animated hero.
- Scroll-depth data tells you where your real hero already is.
01
Where decisions actually happen
The first screen earns you a second screen. That's the whole job. Everything after it is where a visitor decides whether to trust you, and almost nobody rehearses those screens with the same care.
In the last eleven redesigns we measured, the section with the highest correlation to conversion was never the hero. Twice it was pricing. Four times it was a single proof block halfway down.
“Design attention is a budget. Spend it where the decision is made.”
02
A cheaper experiment
Before commissioning the animated hero, rewrite the third section. Ship it on Tuesday. If the numbers don't move, you have learned something for the price of an afternoon.
Design attention is a budget. Spend it where the decision is made.
03
What to do on Monday
Pull your scroll-depth data. Find the section where 50% of visitors stop. That section is your real hero, whether you designed it that way or not.
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