We’ve been building
a small design + navigation planning tool(https://no-edit.lovable.app)
over the last few months, and while testing it, we ended up manually analyzing 312 landing pages across SaaS, indie projects, and AI tools.
The original goal was simple:
understand how people structure navigation before designing UI.
What we found surprised us.
1. 68% of pages had unclear primary navigation
Either:
Too many items (7+ top-level links)
Or vague labels like “Solutions”, “Platform”, “Explore”
Users had to think before clicking.
2. Most CTAs compete with each other
In 54% of cases:
2–3 primary buttons had equal visual weight.
No obvious action hierarchy.
Design looked clean.
Decision-making wasn’t.
3. Mobile navigation is often an afterthought
A lot of responsive menus technically “worked”, but:
Important links were buried
CTA visibility dropped significantly
4. Information hierarchy ≠ visual hierarchy
Several pages looked polished (good colors, spacing, typography), but:
Navigation structure didn’t reflect user journey.
Sections were ordered for storytelling, not usability.
The interesting part:
When we restructured some of these flows into simple sitemap-style diagrams first, clarity improved immediately — even before touching UI.
It made me think that most tools focus heavily on design layers (fonts, templates, components), but skip structured navigation thinking early on.
I’m curious:
Do you plan navigation before visual design?
Or do you design first and adjust structure later?
Would love feedback from people who’ve built and tested landing pages at scale.
epic_ai|1 day ago
epic_ai|1 day ago