Case study 00 · Our own site

We critted ourselves first.

Before scoring anyone else’s landing page, I ran the rubric on my own — the first version Claude built against the redesign I shipped. It went from 69 to 85, and where the points came from was the interesting part.

critclub.design
Subject: Claude’s first draft
Before: Shipped redesign
After: 24 checks, 5 sections
Rubric: September 2026
Date

The first draft’s landing page: “Your app is live. Does it look like it?” over a submission form, with three annotation chips on the right. — Before — first draftscored 69

The shipped redesign’s landing page: “The #1 Rule of CritClub is: You DO talk about your landing page.” over a URL input, with lime coin marks either side. — After — shippedscored 85

What the rubric caught

Three findings, including one my own redesign introduced and had to fix.

E4 · Brand & Voice
The first draft had no social preview image
Shared anywhere — X, Slack, iMessage — the draft rendered as a blank card with a bare URL. It’s a single meta tag, it’s invisible on the page itself, and it’s the difference between a link that gets clicked and a link that gets scrolled past.
Fixed: a proper 1200×630 OG image with alt text. Brand & Voice went 50 → 86.
B3 · Trust & Conversion
My redesign moved objection handling further from the button
The first draft said the crit was free right under its submit button. My redesign kept “no login, no spam” there but dropped “free” — it only survived in an FAQ at the bottom of the page. Hesitation happens at the button, not six sections later. The draft was right and I was wrong.
Fixed: the line under the button now leads with it — “Free. No signup. Scored by a human, not a script, all within 48 hours.” It’s part of why Trust & Conversion went 60 → 88.
B1 · Trust & Conversion
Both versions score zero on social proof
No testimonials, no case studies, no honest early-stage framing. A redesign can’t fix this — it’s a content problem, not a design problem, and it survived untouched from draft to ship.
Status: unfixed. This page is the beginning of the fix.

The receipts

Same rubric, same scorer. Every section went up, but not evenly: Brand & Voice gained 36 points, UI & Consistency gained one.

before

69/100

First Impressions70
Trust & Conversion60
UI & Consistency83
UX Flow75
Brand & Voice50

after

85/100(up 16)

First Impressions(up 18)88
Trust & Conversion(up 28)88
UI & Consistency(up 1)84
UX Flow(up 7)82
Brand & Voice(up 36)86

What actually changed

Brand & Voice moved the most. UI & Consistency barely moved at all.

Identity

From competent to recognizable

The draft was a dark page with a text-only logo. The redesign added a wordmark and the coin marks — one element a visitor could describe later. That, and the social preview above, account for Brand & Voice going from 50 to 86.

Comparison table: Agency, Freelancer and Crit Club compared on cost, timeline, what you get, and whether the work is scored before and after. Only the Crit Club column has a check for scored before/after.

Positioning

A comparison nobody else can make

Agency, freelancer, Crit Club — cost, timeline, deliverable, and a scored before/after. The last row is the one competitors can’t check, and it didn’t exist in the draft.

What didn’t change

Structure was never the problem

Spacing, hierarchy, and component consistency scored 83 in the first draft and 84 after the redesign. The draft was already structurally sound. What it couldn’t produce was an identity.

What this changed about the service

The redesign made the page look like something. Its first pass also quietly moved “free” away from the button — and the rubric caught that, on my own work, in public. That gap is exactly what a crit is for, and it’s why every Fix ships with a before and after score instead of a mood board.

What’s your number?

Drop your landing page and find out. Scorecard and top fixes within 48 hours.

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