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Cognitive Bias Audit for Your Landing Page: find out what's missing to persuade

Score your landing page against the 12 persuasion principles and cognitive biases that matter most for conversion — social proof, scarcity, anchoring, loss aversion… Get your 0-100 score and your 3 weakest biases, each with an applied example. Free, no sign-up, and it never leaves your browser.

How it works

From 12 questions to a concrete action plan

01

Answer 12 questions about your landing page

One persuasion principle per question, with 3 answer levels: you don't use it, you use it in a basic way, or you use it well.

02

We calculate your 0-100 score

Each answer scores 0 to 2. We add up all 12 and convert them to a 0-100 scale.

03

See all 12 principles ranked

A visual list shows you at a glance which principles you're using well and which you're barely using yet.

04

Get 3 recommendations with an example

Your 3 weakest principles, each with a concrete copy or element example you can apply right away.

Guided checklist

Audit your landing page across 12 principles

0 / 12 answered
1Social proof — do you show real testimonials, reviews, client logos or usage figures?
2Scarcity — do you communicate genuinely limited availability (slots, units, quotas) in a verifiable way?
3Urgency — is there a real deadline or countdown that pushes people to decide now?
4Price anchoring — do you give a reference point (previous price, comparison, cost of the alternative) to judge the price?
5Loss aversion — does the message say what's lost by not acting, not just what's gained?
6Cognitive fluency — is the page easy to understand and navigate (a single CTA, clear hierarchy)?
7Authority — do you show authority signals (certifications, media mentions, awards, years of experience)?
8Reciprocity — do you offer something of real value for free before asking for the conversion?
9Decoy effect — if there are several plans or options, does one clearly guide people toward the one you want to sell?
10Default bias — does the pre-selected option or the path of least effort lead toward the conversion?
11Commitment and consistency — do you ask for the conversion in small steps rather than one big jump?
12Goal-gradient effect — if the process has several steps, can the user see how much is left to finish?

Cognitive biases, applied to conversion

What cognitive biases are on a landing page

The brain doesn't evaluate every landing page rationally and exhaustively: it decides in seconds, relying on mental shortcuts — cognitive biases — that behavioural psychology has spent decades documenting. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that most decisions, including leaving an email or clicking "buy", are made by the so-called System 1: fast, intuitive, and highly sensitive to how information is presented, not just to what it says. Robert Cialdini translated those findings into applicable persuasion principles — social proof, authority, reciprocity… — which remain the basis for almost everything that works, and everything that fails, on a landing page.

Why a "well-written" landing page can still fail to convert

It's common to invest in careful copywriting, professional photos and a clean design, and still see the conversion rate stall. Almost always the reason isn't the quality of the text, but the absence of the decision levers the brain needs to move from "this interests me" to "I'm acting now". Our applied neuromarketing work starts precisely there: it's not about writing better, but about structuring the page around how a user actually decides, not how we'd like them to decide.

The 12 principles this audit evaluates

This tool groups twelve principles backed by behavioural economics and persuasion research: several of Cialdini's six — social proof, authority, reciprocity, scarcity and consistency, plus the decoy effect applied to comparing options — along with other decision biases especially relevant to conversion pages: urgency, price anchoring, loss aversion, cognitive fluency, the default bias and the goal-gradient effect. None of them works in isolation: a solid landing page usually combines 4 or 5 of them coherently, not all twelve at once or forced in.

From the audit to action

The point of this checklist isn't to get a grade, but to point out where the real room for improvement is. That's why the result doesn't stop at the score: it identifies the three worst-used principles and gives a concrete copy or element example for each one, so the next version of the landing page isn't just "prettier" but more persuasive. If the result points to a missing foundation of clear identity behind the message, it's worth starting with our free brand identity audit, which checks whether the problem starts earlier, in what the brand communicates about itself.

Methodology: a checklist built by Ángel Ortega Castro based on Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion ("Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion") and the decision biases described by Daniel Kahneman ("Thinking, Fast and Slow"), applied to landing page design practice. The result is indicative, based on your answers — not an automated URL analysis or a real A/B test.

Frequently asked questions

What people ask about cognitive biases on landing pages

What are cognitive biases on a landing page? +

They're the mental shortcuts the brain uses to quickly decide whether to trust a page and act on it: social proof, scarcity, price anchoring, loss aversion and others. Robert Cialdini and Daniel Kahneman documented the main ones, and this tool applies them to landing pages.

What are the 12 principles this tool evaluates? +

Social proof, scarcity, urgency, price anchoring, loss aversion, cognitive fluency, authority, reciprocity, the decoy effect, default bias, commitment and consistency, and the goal-gradient effect.

How long does the audit take? +

Between 2 and 4 minutes. It's 12 single-choice questions, each with 3 answer levels.

Are my answers or my landing page data stored on any server? +

No. All the calculation runs in your browser with JavaScript; no answer is sent to any server and no sign-up or email is required.

What should I do if my score is low? +

The result points to your 3 weakest biases, each with an applied example. If you want to go through it in more detail on your actual landing page, you can book a free 30-minute session.

What now?

Want us to review it together?

Book a free 30-minute session and we'll go through your result, your 3 weakest biases and how to apply them to your real landing page.