Customers Aren't Rational and Neither Are You
The article discusses the irrational nature of customer decision-making in the context of SaaS purchases. It highlights the distinction between two cognitive systems that influence how buyers evaluate products. Understanding these systems can help SaaS founders design more effective landing pages and marketing strategies.
- ▪Customers often do not engage with landing pages in a rational manner, making quick decisions based on emotional signals.
- ▪The decision-making process involves two systems: System 1, which is fast and automatic, and System 2, which is slow and analytical.
- ▪Successful software purchases are preceded by three conditions: acute pain recognition, a compelling reason to change, and effective engagement with the product.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | Hacker News (Newest) |
| Canonical URL | https://kausiktoday.substack.com/p/your-customers-arent-rational-and |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 04:33:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T05:02:00.539Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T05:02:00.539Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | uIImf5y_XcD7 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
ShippedYour Customers Aren't Rational And Neither Are YouThe cognitive sequence behind every SaaS purchase, and why most landing pages interrupt it at the worst possible momentKausikMay 21, 20261ShareThere’s a version of your customer that most SaaS founders design for.This customer arrives at your landing page with time to spare. They read carefully. They evaluate your features against their current workflow. They compare your price to the value they’d receive. They make a considered, logical decision - subscribe or don’t, and move on with their day.This customer does not exist.The real customer is in a browser tab they opened between two other things. They’ve seen forty landing pages this month.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (Newest).
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