Most companies treat positioning and product design as two separate projects. First someone writes a clever line about what the product is and who it’s for. Months later, a team designs the product and the website based on whatever is left of that idea.
The result is familiar: the words promise one thing, the product and website quietly deliver something else. Sales and marketing talk about “clarity” and “speed”, while the UI still feels like three tools glued together. That gap is exactly where deals die and churn starts.
Positioning and product design belong in the same room, at the same time. One defines the promise. The other proves it on screen, as fast as possible.
What goes wrong when you separate them
When positioning is done alone, it drifts into theory. Slides, matrices, words that sound good in a workshop but never have to survive a real interface or a real customer. The “ideal customer profile” becomes a paragraph instead of a concrete screen state.
When product design is done alone, it turns into guesswork. Teams ship flows and features that look nice, but don’t clearly support a sharp promise. You end up with:
- Homepages that could belong to ten different competitors.
- Dashboards full of data but no clear first win.
- Pricing pages that talk to everyone and convert no one.
Everyone works hard. No one is quite sure why growth still feels heavy.
What it looks like when you run them together
Running positioning and product design together doesn’t mean endless workshops. It means tightening the loop between words and screens:
- Write one clear promise: who this is for, what changes in their life, and what “first small win” proves it.
- Open a realistic prototype or live page and ask: “Where does this promise show up on screen?”
- If the answer is “nowhere”, fix the screen. If the answer is “everywhere”, the promise is probably still too vague.
The goal is simple: a new visitor should be able to land on your site, read the main line, click once or twice, and actually feel the thing you promised. Not after a three‑month onboarding. In minutes.
A concrete example: “fast onboarding” that finally feels fast
I once worked with a team whose big message was “lightning fast onboarding”. On the website, it looked great. On the product, the story was different: nine steps, long forms, billing before value. Everyone could feel the mismatch, but no one had named it out loud.
We didn’t start by rewriting copy. We started by asking: “If this really was lightning fast, what would a new user see in the first three minutes?” The new promise became:
“From sign‑up to first result in under 3 minutes, without talking to sales.”
Design decisions followed directly from that:
- Sign‑up with email only, password later.
- Sample data preloaded, so the first screen isn’t empty.
- One clear “Do this first” call to action instead of five options.
- A tiny progress indicator so people see they’re nearly done.
Same team, same product. But now the homepage line, the onboarding flow and the first session all talked about the same thing. That’s what “positioning and product design together” looks like in practice.
Positioning should choose what you design first
Good positioning is not a slogan. It’s a decision about what you are willing to be the best at for a specific group of people. Once that’s clear, half of your product and UI decisions become obvious.
If you say you’re for finance leaders who are drowning in spreadsheets, you don’t start your product with a settings page. You start with a single, calm view that answers the question: “Are we okay or not?”
If you say you help solo consultants stop chasing clients, you don’t hide booking links inside sub‑menus. You design around one obvious next step: “Send this link, get booked.”
Positioning should answer at least these questions for the design team:
- Whose day are we changing?
- What behavior do we want to see more of?
- What does a “good first day” inside the product look like for them?
Until those are clear, you can make something pretty, but it will always feel a bit hollow.
Design is where the promise has to survive
Every sentence on your homepage is a bet. “No learning curve.” “Built for busy founders.” “All‑in‑one platform.” These are not just marketing lines; they are design requirements.
If you claim “no learning curve”, your first screen can’t be a cockpit of twenty widgets, each with its own tiny icon. If you claim “built for busy teams”, your flows can’t require people to sit in a 45‑minute demo before they ever see value.
This is why realistic prototypes are so useful. They force your positioning to pass a simple test:
“If I say this out loud to a real customer, and then click through the product with them, do I feel slightly embarrassed or slightly proud?”
If you feel embarrassed, great. You just found where positioning and product design are out of sync. Now you know what to fix.
How to actually run a positioning + product design project
Here’s a basic way I like to run this kind of work with teams:
1. One sharp promise, not ten vague ones
We boil the story down to one sentence: who this is for, what changes, and what the first concrete win looks like. Not “better analytics”, but “sales leaders see which deals are real in under 5 minutes a week.”
2. Map the first proof moment
We decide where, inside the product or website, that promise should be felt first. Not in a long report, but in one screen or one flow. That becomes the core of the prototype or design sprint.
3. Build a realistic version, not a Dribbble shot
We build the experience with real copy, real-ish data and real states (empty, loading, error). This is where your “product design” muscles come in. The goal is not perfection, it’s believability.
4. Put it in front of the right people
We watch a handful of the right users go through that first proof moment. We don’t ask “Do you like it?” We watch what they do, what they say under their breath, and where they slow down.
5. Tighten the promise or the flow
If people don’t understand what you do, we fix the words. If they understand it but can’t feel it, we fix the flow. Often it’s both. We keep going until the story and the screen finally say the same thing.
Website pages where this matters a lot
This positioning + design pairing is not just for apps. Your website either supports your market position or quietly undermines it. A few high‑leverage places:
- Homepage hero: Does the main line match what people actually see when they scroll?
- Product or service overview: Do the sections follow the way your best‑fit customers think, or the way your org chart is structured?
- Pricing page: Do the plans make the decision easier for your core segment, or try to please everyone at once?
- Onboarding / “Get started” flow: Does it lead directly to the first proof moment, or into account settings and profiles?
If your positioning says “we make choosing simple”, but your pricing table looks like a tax form, that’s a product design problem, not just a copy problem.
A small checklist for your next release
Before you ship the next homepage, feature or pricing change, run through a short checklist:
- Can we write our main promise in one sentence without buzzwords?
- Can we point to the exact screen or flow where that promise is proven?
- Does a new visitor see a believable “first win” in under a few minutes?
- Does the pricing page talk to the same person as the homepage?
- Would we feel comfortable walking a real customer through this live, right after saying the promise out loud?
If the answer is “no” to most of these, you don’t need more slogans. You need positioning and product design in the same conversation.
Why this matters for you
When your story and your screens finally line up, a few things happen quickly:
- Sales calls get shorter, because the website and product do more of the explaining.
- Onboarding gets calmer, because new users know what “good” looks like.
- The roadmap gets clearer, because you stop debating random features and start asking: “Does this strengthen our position or dilute it?”
That’s the whole point. Not just nicer words. Not just nicer screens. A clear promise, proven in the product and on the website, for the people you actually want to work with.
