POV: Two CTAs? Kill one.

_{Day 185/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

I mocked the layout above after watching three people skim a homepage and miss the only button that mattered.

Now, if you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time, you’ll have seen an image like this. I wanted to make the home page version. Usually what you see if vague and with no context.

Now, given we’re not all redesigning homepages, I made the blog design version too.

It’s further down.

80/20 Visual design rules

One job per screen

Pick a single winner per screen and dim its neighbors.

• Pick one job per screen. Make it the loud one.

• Give it the obvious wins: biggest type, darkest ink, closest to top-left, the only filled button.

• Everything else goes on mute: outline buttons, lighter text, smaller weight.

• Kill twins. If you’ve got “Start free” and “Book demo” side-by-side, pick one. The other lives in the nav or lower down.

• If any card looks as heavy as the hero, lighten it. Don’t let a side quest steal the crown.

• Blog twin: above the fold, choose continue or subscribe—not both. Delay sticky bars for the first ~700px.

The gap is signpost. Not the text.

• Stack a headline and one short line. Leave a calm gap under them. Put the button at the bottom-right of that gap. Your eye drops there on its own.

• Make one side looser. If the next thing is on the right, leave a bit more room on the right. Eyes drift toward open space.

• Blog version: tuck an image or pull-quote just before your next subhead so there’s open space beside it. That gap points you straight into the subhead.

The gap is signpost. Not the text.

Big text helps. But, you can’t use it all the time. Pacing is your next best friend:

• use three voices
  Big headline. Normal body. Tiny whisper (notes, tags, UI labels). Stop there. Keep their spacing the same so eyes can coast without thinking.

• After a chunky paragraph, give a breather—a simple card, image, or pull-quote—then back to text. Heavy → light → heavy. Feels like breathing.

• For the blog open with two quick sentences that set the promise. Keep every H2 looking exactly the same. Every screen or so, drop one bold line that says the point in plain English—the speed bump that saves skimmers.

Here’s the blog version for you

It’s helped me a lot with knowing how people read blog pages.

✌️ Tim "you’ll read this last" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. If you wanna know what sticks out the most. Just squint your eyes. I’ve been trying to make a bookmarklet that does this. Would you be interested in that?

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.