The document
Four questions your homepage has about five seconds to answer
Who are you, what do you do, is it for me, and what do I do next. A visitor who cannot answer all four at a glance leaves, and the audit is a way of finding out whether yours can.
Eight sections, a ten-point checklist and a scored report card, so the result is a number you can act on rather than an opinion about your own homepage.
What is inside
Eight sections, from the first glance to the rebuilt hero
The audit works through the fold in the order a visitor experiences it, which is not the order most homepages are designed in.
The five-second window
What forms a first impression before a word is read, and why clarity outperforms cleverness in that moment.
The squint test
Blur your eyes and score the four questions every hero has to answer. The fastest honest read of your own page you will get.
AI search and the clarity tax
What Perplexity, ChatGPT and AI Overviews skip and what they quote, and how to be the sentence they cite.
The clarity checklist
Ten common above-the-fold problems. Three or more present and the hero is working against the rest of the page.
Your report card
Score each of the four questions from nought to two. Anything under six out of eight is worth fixing before spending on traffic.
The clarity stack
Four layers in order: specific header, direct sub-header, one action button, proof underneath. Skip a layer and the stack collapses.
A few of the fixes
Six changes you can make this afternoon
Each one is small enough to ship today and specific enough to measure.
The numbers behind it
What the research says
Before you ask
Questions people send us about this one
What is an above-the-fold audit?
It checks whether the top of your homepage answers four questions instantly: who you are, what you do, whether it is for this visitor, and what to do next. If a stranger cannot answer all four in a glance, the hero is doing less work than the rest of the page.
How long do I actually have?
About five seconds. Roughly 74 percent of visitors leave if they cannot find what they need in that window, and the impression itself forms in milliseconds. Clarity matters more than cleverness in that moment.
How does this affect AI search?
AI engines extract a page rather than read it. They parse heading structure and quote the most specific plain-language sentence they find. A slogan with no clear answer gives them nothing to cite, so they cite someone else.
What score means I should act?
Rate each of the four questions from nought to two, for a total out of eight. Under six is the threshold where the audit recommends fixing the fold before increasing traffic to it.
