✏️ The Anatomy of a Billion-Dollar Hero Section

Transformative. Disruptive. Revolutionary. Confusing.

Today we’re dipping our toes in the world of software-as-a-service (SaaS).

The trillion dollar whale.

This market is massive and we’ll be covering it time and time again. But to make this as valuable as possible, I’ve focused on the hero sections of four well-known SaaS brands: Notion, Miro, ClickUp and Zapier.

The hero section is anything above the fold (what you see when the page loads). And it’s the single most important section of any website:

When you’re spending millions of dollars to acquire new customers, it’s worth spending some time optimising for the highest-converting hero section.

Let’s get into it.

Enjoy,
— Robbie

Zapier is a monster in the world of SaaS ($5B+ valuation). It’s actually pretty useful for somebody with my lack of technical expertise. In short, Zapier allows you to connect different applications and workflows on the internet through creating ‘Zaps’. And Zapier is a no-code tool meaning any old simpleton like me can work it out.

Example: you subscribe to copybreakdowns.com and a ‘zap’ sends your information to a spreadsheet in excel so I have a backup.

Transformative: you’ll see this time and time again with SaaS companies (and for good reason). The copy is heavily-focused on the A to B journey. Zapier isn’t a product. It’s a tool. And tools facilitate transformations.

The use of “unlocks” is important here. It hints at potential you already have. As if you’ve already done all the hard work you just need this tool to unlock it. It piques your curiosity: what could I unlock within my business?

This is a form of loss aversion. We’re more likely to take action motivated by the fear of losing something (what we haven’t unlocked) than the reward of gaining something new.

Trust & Expertise: tools that connect different applications lead to huge risk concerns (and eye-watering fines if you get it wrong). This hero section does a great job of highlighting the transformative impact of Zapier with safety at the forefront.

Every founder has two goals: they want to grow their business and they want to do it without risk. Zapier encapsulates that in two words: “safely scale”. This is also great objection handling.

Notice how they don’t say how many users they have. Instead, they highlight their “connected ecosystem of 8,000+ integrations”. This line does a lot of heavy lifting. The brain immediately starts thinking:

The only thing I don’t like in this hero section is the repeated use of “transformative”. Whilst the tool is transformative, saying it doesn’t make it relatable. Every SaaS company can say they are transformative (and most do).

But I also understand why.

Zapier’s target audience is essentially every company that uses the internet (so every company). It’s impossible to write copy that feels relatable when you’re writing to everybody. This is also their home page. With targeted ads, I’d focus the copy much more on the actual transformation (not just saying it’s transformative).

But it’s a nice problem to have.

Miro was built as a result of the distributed workforce. They’re a visual collaboration platform which basically means a whiteboard on your computer. Your team can brainstorm together on the same document from anywhere in the world. You can use sticky notes, diagrams, templates and all that good stuff. It’s pretty cool to be honest.

Transformative: now this is a perfect example of what I mentioned in the Zapier breakdown. Miro don’t say transformative. They show it. This reads like a story of transformation. You can visualise going from “brainstorm to breakthrough”.

This headline also does a great job of selling the sizzle, not the steak. This means selling the outcome not the product or the features. We don’t buy products. We buy outcomes.

Here’s a product-focused headline: Get from messy and disorganised notes to a clear and visual whiteboard → nobody is buying that.

This is a personal preference but I’d remove “Get from” and just have “Brainstorm to breakthrough with Miro”.

With direct response copywriting, imagine every word costs money. Words are expensive. Every single one must serve a purpose or it’s out. If you can remove it without losing meaning, get rid. Your audience has limited attention. Don’t waste it.

Dual Outcome: “build the right thing, faster” does an excellent job of selling the dual-benefit of the tool. Miro doesn’t just help you brainstorm faster, it ensures you’re building the right thing to begin with. This is cool. Great copy.

CTA: the soft CTA is a nice touch—”Watch Video”. This builds trust. It shows they want you to have more information before they push you to a decision. They’re not just trying to get you to sign up right away. I’d like to see the CTR (click-through-rate) on this vs. a standard CTA (call-to-action).

This hero section does a great job of highlighting the benefit of using Miro; it’s easy to understand, concise and has a clear value proposition.

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management platform. It essentially allows you to keep all of your tasks, documents and projects under one roof. The main USP is that you don’t need tons of connected tools when ClickUp does it all for you.

Headline: pretty great, to be honest. The sentence has a really nice rhythm when you say it out loud and the repetition works. It shows the value of ClickUp and immediately handles the first objection.

You know what people don’t want? More software. So the idea that one additional piece of software could eliminate a load of others is pretty appealing. It’s also a nice curiosity hook: “replaces all software…ALL?! Hmm. Let me see”.

Rule of 3: humans are wired in a way that means we have greater recall for things in groups of three (“Snap! Crackle! Pop!”). We also have greater recall for information displayed in bullet points and lists.

This section also effectively sells in what ClickUp can remove from your life. Their whole marketing angle is reduction not addition: less software, less time wasted, and less money spent.

As a whole, this hero section is strong. But I have one grievance I need to share. When I returned to edit this section, for the life of me I could not remember who the company was. There’s no core differentiator. All other examples in this deck have the company name in the hero section. There’s no mention of ClickUp.

In their defence, this is a screenshot of the hero section so it’s taken out of context. But copy isn’t always read in the context you intended. Just a point. I’d change the CTA to “ClickUp is FREE!” → problem solved.

Notion is a similar concept to Miro but focused more on document and text-based information storing. It’s less visual and includes tons more practical features like project management, automations, and forms. Notion also happens to be my favourite of all the hero sections covered today.

Headline: with just four words you understand the benefit of using Notion and it speaks exactly to the reader. There are two truths of remote work:

Notion’s headline delivers the value proposition with punchy and memorable parallelism: [number + noun] [number + noun]. It’s also incredibly easy to scan. One glance and you’ve read the entire headline and understand the benefit (one workspace) and the promise (less friction).

Subheading: two elements of this are done really well. The use of “capture” works perfectly in relation to the promise Notion makes (removing busywork). It suggests that by not using Notion we’re missing something—knowledge is going uncaptured.

This is another example of loss aversion. Notion suddenly becomes a tool that, if we don’t use it, we’re losing out.

The second highlight is “now a team of 7 feels like 70”. It’s visual and sticky. We can picture our small team of seven suddenly expanding. It implies leverage. Notion feels like a superpower. An unlock. An unfair advantage (like reading CopyBreakdowns…).

CTA: one final point that needs to be mentioned. The CTA “Request a demo” implies demand and scarcity. You can’t “Book a demo” because they’re really busy. You can request one and they’ll try and squeeze you in. If you’re lucky.

Notion, hats off to the team behind this. It’s awesome (and I bet it prints money).

TL;DR

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