On and off throughout my software career I've been shown software products that are good and bad, but one common theme I'm finding is that websites for these products seem to be a bunch of tech/startup jargon thrown into sentences that don't explain the product at all.<p>For example, take New Relic (https://newrelic.com/)...<p>"New Relic One is an observability platform built to help engineers create more perfect software. From monoliths to serverless, you can instrument everything, then analyze, troubleshoot, and optimize your entire software stack. All from one place."<p>I'm going to be really blunt here. What on earth does all of that mean? From that explanation alone I have no clue what New Relic is. I'm going to have to use it first to even know what it does.<p>So on my quest to figure out what New Relic actually is, I decided to research "observability". Let me just say, WikiPedia did not help...<p>"In control theory, observability is a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge of its external outputs. The observability and controllability of a linear system are mathematical duals." - Wikipedia<p>I've put myself out there and called out, what I've heard is, an excellent product. I'm just saying, I can't get a clear explanation on what it actually is from the website. Now it's your turn...<p>What's your best example of a website that doesn't do a good job of telling potential customers what the product actually is? Why is it like this? Am I missing out on something? What do I have to do to become the type of developer that doesn't cry when I have to investigate a new product solution?
The best resource I have seen that discusses this issue and offers a solution is <a href="https://www.mystorybrand.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mystorybrand.com/</a><p>Potential customers should be able to answer these questions within 5 SECONDS of reading the site, or marketing material:
1. What do you offer?
2. How will it make my life better?
3. What do I need to do to buy it?<p>You can do this with fewer than 300 words on your sales page.
Honest answer to an honest question? Because the nerds are in charge.<p>I’ve lost count of the number of times dev types have been put in marketing or management roles because someone thought that stuff is easy. Imagine putting a marketing type in charge of your server.<p>Writing, marketing, product management: these are all real, solid skills, and quite often (not always), devs or startup CEO’s don’t have them.
> Why is it like this?<p>1. It is hard to guess what someone else will understand.<p>2. There is a trade-off between using words everyone knows, being concise, and getting enough richness of meaning across.<p>One of the world's top professionals in technical communication has a book where he uses diagrams and only the ten hundred most common English words to explain subjects[1]. However, this sort of thing can people feeling condescended-to[2].<p>3. Different forms of communication have different goals.<p>The goal of that page is not to help every software engineer understand what New Relic <i>is</i> without them using it.<p>The goal of that page is to sell software. There are multiple audiences for that, which means making communication tradeoffs<p>4. Sometimes people fail at doing things well. That includes copy-editing.<p>------------------------<p>> What do I have to do to become the type of developer that doesn't cry when I have to investigate a new product solution?<p>I empathize with the feeling of overwhelm.
Because the makers of websites are web devs and not copywriters.<p>I’m a copywriter that specializes in SaaS tools, and it’s literally always the case.<p>The founders are brilliant nerds but haven’t a cooking clue about the first thing when it comes to marketing, product positioning or delivery of their value proposition.
Are you sure you're a potential customer? Apart from the somewhat broken English I can't see what's wrong with that 50-word summary.<p>I'd guess they would have a few pages explaining its features but it seems the website is down atm.
I've noticed this too. In many cases it's purely down to poor marketing/copywriting, but I think in some cases it's because they've specifically tailored the language to their target customer.<p>If the language is compelling to the people who actually buy the product (who may be quite nerdy/technical themselves), then it doesn't matter if it's confusing to the average person.
I find that product descriptions can be hard to parse when they fail to describe the problem they solve, and instead focus only on describing aspects of their solution.
Not a very good example considering New Relic dominates that space. Also, companies adapt their description to include latest trending words such as observability.