You send a founder a page of prose about their homepage and it sits unread. You send them a screenshot with three pins and a one-line verdict at the top, and they fix the headline that afternoon. The difference is structure. Below is a template you can copy for every positioning audit you run, built so the whole thing fits in one scroll.
What the template is made of
Every positioning audit has the same job: tell a cold visitor who this is for, what it claims, whether it proves the claim, and how to start. The template turns that job into a fixed shape so you are not reinventing the layout each time. It has four parts, in this order:
- A one-line verdict at the top.
- A pinned homepage screenshot.
- Three labeled callouts: headline, subhead, primary CTA.
- One line on the phone view.
Keep them in that order. The founder reads the verdict, glances at the screenshot that proves it, and only drops into the callouts if they want the detail. That is the one-scroll promise.
The verdict line goes first
Open with your overall read in a single sentence, before any screenshot. Not "here are some observations." Say the thing. For example: "A visitor who lands cold cannot tell in five seconds who this is for, because the headline describes the technology, not the buyer."
Write it as a floating note item at the top of the review, with no screenshot attached. It sets the frame for everything under it. If the founder reads only this line and closes the tab, they still got the point. Every audit should pass that test.
The pinned homepage screenshot
Capture the homepage as the visitor first sees it: above the fold, desktop width, nothing scrolled. Click Capture screen, grab the frame, then crop to what matters so the founder is not hunting across a full-bleed hero for the spot you mean.
Drop three numbered pins, one on the headline, one on the subhead, one on the primary button. Numbered pins make a reader take the callouts in order, which matters when the headline problem causes the subhead problem. The pins and any arrows you draw are baked into the exported image, so a founder who opens the PDF on a phone sees exactly what you marked without your original file. If you want the detail on why a pinned still beats scribbling on the live page, a cropped still travels better than a link to a page that may change tomorrow.
Three callouts, one per element
Make one item per pin. Each comment follows the same shape: what it says now, what a cold visitor takes from it, one concrete change. Keep it tight.
Pin 1, headline. Quote the current headline verbatim, then say what it communicates versus what it should. Example: "Current: 'Infrastructure for modern teams.' A cold visitor cannot tell what you do. Name the job: who you help and what they get."
Pin 2, subhead. The subhead's job is to prove or specify the headline's claim. Flag it when it repeats the headline in different words instead of adding evidence or a concrete detail.
Pin 3, primary CTA. Check the button verb and whether it matches where the visitor is in the decision. "Get started" on a page that has not yet said what the product is asks for commitment before interest. Note the mismatch and suggest the smaller step.
If you would rather write these as fields a copywriter can act on, the three fields a rewrite needs maps cleanly onto these three callouts.
The phone-view line
Add one more item for the phone. On a narrow screen the headline wraps, the subhead can drop below the fold, and the CTA may sit under an image. Capture the phone view (take a normal screenshot on the device and add it to the review) and write one line: what a phone visitor sees before scrolling. Often the desktop audit passes and the phone view fails, and that is worth its own item because most cold traffic arrives on a phone.
When to adjust it
The four-part shape holds for a homepage. Change it when the page changes:
- A pricing page. Swap the three element callouts for plan-clarity checks, or run a dedicated pricing page teardown instead, which answers a different question than positioning does.
- A product or features page. Keep the verdict and the screenshot, but your callouts become "does this page prove the homepage's claim" rather than headline and subhead.
- More than one key page. Repeat the screenshot-plus-callouts block per page, but keep a single verdict line at the very top. Do not give each page its own verdict, or the founder loses the one-scroll read.
Handing the notes to someone who rewrites copy? Format them so a copywriter can rewrite straight from your review, with the current text quoted and the direction stated, not just a complaint logged.
Publishing and the detail on cost
When the review is ready, publish it for a short link anyone can open with no login, no app, and no install. The founder reads it in the browser; a copywriter can pull the same review as a Word doc. Capturing and sharing is free to try, with no password and no card. Reviews stay fully editable for 7 days, after which a review goes read-only for you (the shared link keeps working for the people you sent it to). Pro removes that cutoff at $5 a month if you keep auditing and want every past review editable.
If you would rather not capture the homepage yourself, Cobalt can run a positioning audit end to end: give your AI assistant the URL and it renders the pages, judges them, and comes back with a review in this same format. Either way, start a review and build your copy of the template on a real page.