Hexclad Cookware

Landing Page UX Audit

Audited by Victor Ade-Samuel | June 2026

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UX Audit Goals

Primary goal

• Increase product engagement rate, conversion rate and total purchases by improving the UX/UI flow.

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Secondary goal

• Strengthen user engagement and reduce friction across key interactions.

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To ensure the audit directly supports business goals, I rely on a combination of heuristic evaluation and industry-recognized research.

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The checklist used in this audit was built from publicly available guidelines, including:

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• Baymard Usability Institute
• Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g)
• Google UX Playbook for Retail
• Other reputable sources and usability heuristics

Methodology

Part 1:

UX Audit & Problem Framing

Each finding highlights a specific usability or conversion issue.

The hero CTA is vague and disconnected from the page's actual goal

This maps directly to Nielsen Norman Group's "Match Between System and the Real World" and "Consistency and Standards" heuristics - users build a mental model from the first CTA they see, and a vague label fails to set accurate expectations for what happens next.

Baymard's CTA research similarly finds that specific, benefit-oriented button copy ("Shop Pans," "See the Sets") outperforms generic labels like "Learn More," because it removes ambiguity about the next step and reduces the perceived commitment of clicking.

• Customer impact: Users arriving with purchase intent (especially from a paid ad, which the top promo bar suggests) hesitate or bounce because the first action offered doesn't match their goal. It forces them to scroll blind, hoping to find a "buy" path.
• Business impact: Soft, ambiguous primary CTAs are a well-documented conversion leak. They suppress click-through at the exact moment of highest intent (first fold), and they make it harder to A/B test or attribute conversion since the CTA doesn't behaviorally commit the user to a purchase path.

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Problem: The hero's only action is a small red "Learn More" button. "Learn More" is an information-seeking label, but everything below it i.e. the testimonials, the "Up to 50% Off Best-Selling Sets" banner, the final "Shop Best Sellers" CTA is transactional. There's a mismatch between what the button promises (more info) and where the page actually wants users to go (purchase). This also breaks consistency: three different CTA styles appear across the page ("Learn More," "Shop Now," "Shop Best Sellers") without a clear hierarchy of which is primary.

Price and offer information is buried until ~90% scroll depth

Baymard's research on price transparency and above-the-fold value communication consistently shows that price is one of the top 3 factors in purchase decisions, and pages that delay or obscure it create unnecessary friction. Users are forced to "hunt" for the information they need to decide, rather than being given it as they evaluate the product story.

• Customer impact: A user who is already comparing HexClad against competitors (common for considered cookware purchases) has to scroll through ~8 screens of brand storytelling before learning what anything costs or what sets are available. That's a lot of cognitive effort spent before the page even confirms there's a deal to be had.

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• Business impact: Price-sensitive or comparison-shopping users (often the most ready to convert) are the most likely to abandon during an unnecessarily long scroll. Surfacing the offer earlier (or in a persistent/sticky element) would let high-intent users self-select into the purchase path immediately instead of being walked through five educational beats first.

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Problem: A promo ("Up to 30% Off") is mentioned only in a tiny top utility bar that's easy to miss, especially while scrolling on mobile. After that, there is no pricing, product variant, or offer information at all until the "Up to 50% Off HexClad's Best-Selling Sets" banner which sits near the very bottom of the page, after five full feature blocks and a testimonial carousel.

The "5 Reasons" feature section is long, repetitive, and offers no exit ramp to purchase

This runs against NN/g's principle of minimizing user memory load / recognition over recall. Without a visible CTA or progress cue, users have no sense of how much content remains or whether continuing is worth it. Baymard's research on long-scrolling pages also recommends a persistent/sticky CTA for exactly this scenario: when marketing content runs long, the purchase action should remain reachable throughout, not be withheld until the user has consumed the entire narrative.

• Customer impact: Users who are already convinced after reason #1 or #2 (e.g., they just wanted to confirm nonstick + oven-safe) have no way to act on that conviction. They either keep scrolling past content they don't need, or they leave. There's no "convinced already? shop now" off-ramp.

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• Business impact: This is a classic case of over-justifying to an already-sold visitor. The page assumes everyone needs the full pitch before buying, but in reality intent varies. Lack of a sticky or interstitial CTA means the page can't capture conversions from users who decide early, which on mobile (where this scroll is even longer) is a meaningful chunk of paid traffic given typical mobile attention spans and scroll-depth drop-off curves.

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Problem: The five "reasons to switch" blocks (one-pan cooking, easy cleanup, heat distribution, chef trust, warranty) are each a full-screen image + text pairing, repeated five times in a row with no intermediate CTA, no progress/section indicator, and particularly on mobile, no visual differentiation in rhythm (it's the same pattern five times). This is a very long single-purpose scroll before any decision point appears.

Part 2:

Design Proposal

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Proposed recommendations are based on industry best practices and competitor analysis.

All hypotheses would be validated through A/B testing before implementation.

Content hierarchy

https://www.figma.com/design/Gwh5yDrxhYL0ksKLPbwlTI/HEXCLAD-UX-AUDIT?node-id=0-1&t=NsJ0qzkDE6Au98Qz-1

Landing Page Redesign

Ordered by what a first-time visitor needs in order to decide whether to keep reading, then whether to buy:

1. What is this and why should I care: headline + subhead (kept tight, one sentence each)
2. What does it cost / is there a deal: price badge, visible in hero, not buried
3. What do I do next: one clear, consistently-labeled CTA
4. Quick credibility check: star rating + chef trust line, placed directly under the hero so skeptical users don't have to scroll far to get reassurance
5. Where do I go if I already know what I want — "Shop by Category" grid, giving intent-driven visitors a direct path to a product without reading further. This is for visitors who don't need convincing, only a fast route to click.
6. Why it's actually good: condensed reasons grid (scannable, not a forced narrative scroll)
7. Proof from real people: reviews/testimonials
8. What can I actually buy: product/set cards with real prices
9. Final nudge: offer reminder + CTA for anyone who scrolled the whole way
10. Risk reducers: shipping, warranty, secure checkout, right before they'd leave

The guiding rule: anything that helps a decision moves up, anything that's just narrative moves down or gets condensed.

CTA Strategy

• One verb, one job. Every primary button uses "Shop" language ("Shop Best Sellers," "Shop Now," "Shop the Sale"). Never "Learn More" as a primary action. "Learn More" is removed entirely; if a secondary, lower-commitment link is needed, label it for what it actually does (e.g., "See How It Works") and style it visually weaker (outline/text link) than the primary button.
• One CTA style. Primary CTA = solid red button, same shape and weight everywhere it appears. No competing button styles.
• CTA stays reachable. A slim sticky bar with the price and a "Shop Now" button appears once the user scrolls past the hero, so anyone convinced early doesn't have to keep scrolling to act.
• CTA repeats at natural decision points, not just at the very end: hero, sticky bar (persistent), product cards, final offer banner.

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To explain why changes were tackled in this order, I scored each one using the ICE prioritization matrix - three questions, each scored 1 (low) to 10 (high). While I don't have access to HexClad's actual analytics (heatmaps, scroll depth, drop-off rates, past test results), I estimated impact the way a UX designer typically does before real data exists, based on how severe and how central each problem is to the user's path to buying:

• Impact - if this works, how much will it actually move the needle on engagement and click-through?
• Confidence - how sure are we this will work, based on the audit findings and established UX patterns?
• Ease - how quickly and cheaply can we actually build it?

What changed and why i prioritized them

What changed and why

Part 3:

Optimization Strategy

What if that banner and button just stayed on the screen the whole time, following the user as they scroll — like a small bar pinned near the top that never goes away?

What We're Comparing

• Version A (what we have now): Banner disappears after the top of the page.
• Version B (the new idea): Banner stays visible the entire time you scroll.

We'd show Version A to half our visitors and Version B to the other half, then see which group actually buys more.

What We Expect to Happen

We expect Version B to get more people clicking "Shop Now." The thinking is simple: people often decide to buy while they're reading, not just at the very top or very bottom of the page. If the button is always nearby, they can act on that decision right away instead of having to go hunting for it — and the longer someone has to think about a purchase before finding the button, the more likely they are to lose interest and leave.

How We'll Know If It Worked (Success metrics)

We'll track one number: out of everyone who scrolls past the top of the page, what percentage of them click a "Shop" button afterward?

If that number is higher for Version B than Version A, the always-visible banner is working, and we'd roll it out to everyone. If there's no real difference, we leave it as is and don't spend more time on it.

We'll also keep an eye on two safety checks, just to make sure we're not accidentally hurting anything:

• Are people still reading the rest of the page, or are they leaving too early once they see the button?
• On phones, does the banner feel annoying or in-the-way, since phone screens are small?