HN Gopher Feed (2017-09-04) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Tell me what your company does
199 points by HappyKasper
https://medium.com/@kasperkubica/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell...___________________________________________________________________
shurcooL - 2 hours ago
Contrast that with a site like this:https://gotools.orgIt tells you
exactly what it does in one sentence, and that sentence is the only
one on the page. Despite that, it's probably not as popular as the
vague sites being complained about here.
draaglom - 2 hours ago
There's a good reason for this, and it's not (directly) to get you
on the phone & up-sell you.These landing pages are optimised for
conversion, which means they're targeted at the niche who are most
likely to convert already - and for bigger, specialist firms, that
niche quite likely already knows the essence of what the company
does.Because these users are also likely evaluating competitors at
the same time, the pressure is on the company to differentiate -
and one way to do that is to tout your high level values."We're not
just an X, we are an X which gets your need for Y unlike
$competitor"All of this isn't to say that incomprehensible websites
are good, of course. There are ways to express how you're way up
maslow's heirarchy without being completely confusing.
continuations - 2 hours ago
My startup is focused on customer-oriented experiential
personalized relationship-building solutions by leveraging
distributed smart reactive coin offerings powered by unsupervised
blockchain adversarial deep learning supported by containerized
self-driving car clouds.Investors plz line up, take a number, and
contact me thru PM.
christophilus - 2 hours ago
So, I'm confused. Is it the Uber of Facebooks, or the Facebook of
Ubers?
continuations - 2 hours ago
It's the Uber of Initial Facebook Offering. I thought that was
painfully clear.
in9 - 2 hours ago
cryptocurrency of ubers of facebook. Duh...
[deleted]
perl4ever - 2 hours ago
My company is "a leading provider of business process services
with expertise in transaction-intensive processing, analytics and
automation. We serve as a trusted business partner in both the
front office and back office, enabling personalized, seamless
interactions on a massive scale that improve end-user
experiences"
glandium - 3 minutes ago
Kind of related: Many sites have a footer with links like "About
us", etc. which would seem like what people may want to check out
right? Well, some of them also have infinite scroll, and the footer
is not visible without scrolling, so you scroll down, see the
footer for a brief moment, until more content is loaded and pushes
the footer out of the view . Rince. Repeat. It's as if they don't
want you to ever use that footer.
dvdhsu - 58 minutes ago
I think the non-obvious difference here is bottoms-up vs top-down
adoption.If you're going bottoms-up, your deal size is smaller, and
you want people to start using you by themselves. Think consumer
startups like Uber, Airbnb, and enterprise startups like Github.
The decision-makers here are ordinary people, and they want to know
exactly what they're buying so they can make an informed
decision.If you're going top-down, your deal size is larger, and
your goal is to get a few high-paying customers. You want to
maximize the # of people who you can talk to (and convince) over
the phone, as well as extract the highest $ value out of. So you
filter for the people who are a) serious about the problem, and b)
can make the decision. As a developer or engineer, your
discretionary budget probably isn't high enough for these companies
to care about you. In fact, they probably don't even want to talk
to you!So companies that mostly rely on top-down sales have very
vague landing pages. Their goal is to find specifically the people
who have so much pain that they're willing to take a 25-minute
sales call. And if you're willing to spend 25 minutes, it probably
means that you have the budget that they care about.[edit: removed
stuff about my own startup]
jasonrhaas - 50 minutes ago
If I have to get on a "sales call" just to see what the product
is or demo it, I am not interested. Let me try it for free, and
tell me what it does... I really don't have time or patience for
sales calls.
dvdhsu - 48 minutes ago
Then you're probably not the right customer for us! Do you have
problems with internal tooling that you'd pay thousands of $ /
month to have solved?For now, that's who we're looking for. And
a "request a demo" is a pretty good way of finding exactly
those people.
maxxxxx - 44 minutes ago
At least in my company the people who have the actual budgets
love sales calls. Even if the engineers tell them that the
product is not good they will still buy it from a good sales
rep.
forg0t_username - 44 minutes ago
You forget the people in a) who don't have the time to deal with
bulshit calls. That's where you're losing leads.
dvdhsu - 40 minutes ago
We cost thousands of $ / month. If you had a problem that you'd
pay thousands to have solved, it's probably worth you talking
on the phone for 20 minutes.So it's a good filter for us, for
now. Once we bring the price point down, you're absolutely
right -- we want to have a descriptive landing page that makes
people think "wow, that's exactly my problem!".
trgv - 2 hours ago
I always assumed this is just the result of the people who design
the site not knowing what the company does.
CalChris - 2 hours ago
Bezos was infamous for jealously controlling every pixel on the
Amazon landing page. You could easily imagine a better design but
at least you knew what to do.
[deleted]
mrkurt - 1 hours ago
There are two ways to tell people what a company does:1. Explain
the value of what you do 2. Explain how it's implementedThe
Optimizely example in this article is the former, though the
headline is not great. The subhead is pretty decent.Optimizely
could easily say "we're an application for testing different
versions of your app", which is true and explains what they
literally do.In my experience, if you care about conversions,
"explain the value" wins. People who believe they need
experimentation don't mind digging for implementation. But they
want to know you'll make them more money, or do something else to
improve their lives.This is weird for people like me, I'd usually
rather read the README version of a product. But I'm not the one
making buying decisions for Optimizely or an agency.
Frondo - 3 hours ago
Yep, this is the end-game of "customers buy benefits, not features"
marketing writing.Don't get me wrong, I'm fully on board with the
idea of marketing your benefits, not features, but so very much of
the marketing writing you see out there now takes the concept to
this unhelpful extreme.I ride my bike past a shop every few days
that's called something like "Shelter Solutions," but in smaller
print they say "We rent equipment for commercial and residential
roofing need". Boom, done, that's what I care about.Or some lady
who gave me a fistful of business cards at a networking event (she
apparently has five thriving gigs, eyeroll), one of which was
"telecommunications solutions consultant"--talking to her, she has
some cell phone MLM program she's a part of.Customers buy benefits,
but if you're not telling them what the features are, you've failed
at writing clear copy. Most people do.
TeMPOraL - 3 hours ago
I sometimes feel like I'm an alien on this planet. I can't
imagine how "customers buy benefits, not features" could possibly
work.What I mean is this - I'm not going to buy a product that I
don't understand, period. Be it a piece of software (from kitten
photo apps to CAD software) or an appliance, I only buy (and ever
imagine buying) things for which I at least clearly understand
what inputs and outputs are. I can use this software to upload
JPGs to friends. I put dirty dishes in this appliance, add some
consumables, and clean dishes pop out. Those are "features", not
"benefits".On the other hand, when I see people selling on
"benefits", I immediately assume they're dishonest and steer
away. The listed benefits usually are, at best, a serious abuse
of some cherry-picked words, and at worst outright lies. It's one
of the strongest negative signals for me when evaluating
companies (especially when I don't have third-party information
on their actual products).Do most people really live their lives
looking for something to buy that will make their lives
"connected", or their company "full of streamlined cloud synergy"
or something?
Retra - 2 hours ago
Given how the sales and marketing people at my place of
employment respond to corporate announcements... they'll
probably do anything to arrange words and phrases into
something that triggers a "sounds like a corporate executive"
response from their superiors.
fairpx - 2 hours ago
I think the main problem is that people assume that in order to
sell expensive products/services, the website needs to have 50
pages and feel like a complex entity. We sell a B2B UI Design
service to web and mobile development companies, all we have is a
simple one pager that doesn't do anything except explain in plain-
english what the service is about. We have people
buying/subscribing to our service sometimes as fast as a B2C
product. I personally wouldn't want to be a slimly salesman on the
phone, hide our prices and have complex copy on the website. The
customers that do want that are not a fit for us. So the question
is, what type of a customer are you trying to attract?
paultopia - 2 hours ago
Also, PUT THE PRICES ON THERE. Even more infuriating than a
company that won't tell you what they do is a company that tells
you what they do and then demands you contact them to be
salespersoned at before they'll tell you the price. Fuck you, no.
dyim - 2 hours ago
Just to play devil's advocate:Whenever I'm seriously considering
purchasing an enterprise B2B product, I mostly know what they do
before visiting their website. I've heard of them already, either
through word of mouth, or by explicitly asking friends for
recommendations. I suspect that I'm not too different from most
purchasers.If a company's targeting a landing page for someone like
me, perhaps they shouldn't optimize for clarity; they should
optimize for signaling reliability. So, the "Web 20.17 parallax-ed
boots[t]rap-ed responsive home page" serves a purpose - it reminds
me of all the other Web 20.17... B2B services I've happily used in
the past.I'm probably ascribing way too much significance to the
semiotics of B2B homepages [1]. But I find it tough to believe that
(e.g.) Optimizely hasn't, well, optimized their homepage for
something.[1] Also, take what I say with a huge grain of salt. My
business' homepage needs a lot of work...
[deleted]
dqv - 2 hours ago
Websites like that are "websites for the record". There are certain
markets who think it's weird that a company doesn't have a website,
but don't really care about the content or how it looks.A lot of
the text seems to be placeholder/written by a designer who asked
about what the company wanted for the content and never got a
response.
rsp1984 - 2 hours ago
So much this. Another perfect example: https://databricks.comThey
just raised a $140m round of financing so apparently they have some
good stuff going on. If you look at the website though:The Unified
Analytics Platform. Accelerate innovation by unifying data science,
engineering, and business.Sorry, what? Click on "learn more about
the platform":DATABRICKS IS A TRULY UNIFIED APPROACH TO DATA
ANALYTICS AT SCALE. Founded by the team who created Apache Spark,
Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates
innovation by unifying data science, engineering, and business.I
still have no clue what exactly TF the product is but I sure got my
weekly dose of BS buzzwords.
closeparen - 2 hours ago
(It's a Hadoop distribution).
trengrj - 18 minutes ago
Not a Hadoop distribution as Databricks uses S3 and DBIO for
storage not HDFS. It doesn't even use Yarn so it can't really
be called Hadoop at all.Basically the product is Spark
Notebooks (think Juypter) on AWS that allow you to quickly
create clusters and even do fancy stuff with spark streaming.A
key thing that people miss also is the the creator of Spark is
the CTO of Databricks and Databricks to some extent controls
the direction of Spark. This probably impacts its valuation.
baldeagle - 2 hours ago
It is the corporate support for Spark, a big data technology.
Kinda like RedHat or Confluent.
avip - 2 hours ago
This is hilarious! I'm a paying customer of databricks, a useful
service that can, and should, be described in a single medium
length sentence.
_dark_matter_ - 2 hours ago
I disagree, Databricks has an easy-to-understand pricing page:
https://databricks.com/product/pricing
gwbas1c - 3 hours ago
I suspect this happens when companies forget what they do!
mhewett - 3 hours ago
I've been trying for several years to determine the company size at
which we will be forced to turn our understandable site into
marketing buzzwords and incomprehensible sentences. 50 people? $5
million/year in revenue? What is the turning point and who drops
by to force us into incomprehensibility?
nickstefan12 - 3 hours ago
Probably when actual "departments" become a thing (e.g. sales,
marketing and engineering as separate tribes with separate
incentives)
pmiller2 - 3 hours ago
I don't know, but there are phrases on my company's website that
literally don't mean anything to me, and I work on the product
it's supposed to be referencing. We have about 100 employees.
semperdark - 2 hours ago
It's probably the point where what you're selling is so
amorphous, customizable, and expensive that it's different for
each customer and you want to be able to say "Yes, we solve that
problem" to everything. Maybe 7 figures per sale?
Clubber - 3 hours ago
I've thought it was because they needed to fill up a large blank
area with copy (words), otherwise the page will look weird.It might
be because the adage, "don't sell a product, sell an emotion," but
taken to an inconceivable level.Or maybe it's like legalese, it's
not necessary, but looks good if you are billing at $500 an hour.
jack9 - 3 hours ago
The bait-sunk-cost approach = get em talking however you need to
(including them asking what the hell you actually do) to tell you
what they want and sell your solution as a possibility or the best
approach.I hate this transparent attempt to trick (me) the
customer. IBM has done this to me when I'm drilling down into
technical requirements like I'm some middle manager who doesn't
know the actual needs. I always suspected that IBMs bread and
butter is to move the sunk cost of contact into an actual sunk cost
of technical debt, but I have firsthand experience now. The sign of
a bad culture and lazy marketing.
stuartaxelowen - 1 hours ago
Holy crap, this totally explains MongoDB's success.
[deleted]
Retr0spectrum - 2 hours ago
I came across this
recently:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l644fAxGzlwDon't waste
your time watching it. It's a promo video for yet another a very
scammy looking ICO.I watched through the entire 3 minute video,
only because I found it increasingly amusing how long they were
taking to "get to the point". As it turns out, this video is 3
minutes of stock videos of Dubai with a pseudo-inspirational
voiceover about nothing in particular, followed by their logo being
shown for a mere 10 seconds at the end.I couldn't believe that this
wasn't a parody (at least, I don't think it is), it's exactly like
something out of HBO's Silicon Valley show.
rdiddly - 1 hours ago
I ignored your warning and tried to watch it. After about a
minute and a half of non-sequitur platitudes, I couldn't take it
anymore!Edit: It's fascinating like a train wreck. Imagine using
this as the script for a scene where someone is on the phone with
their dad, who is in a room with a bomb that will detonate
exactly 3 minutes and 6 seconds from now (but we compress it to 2
minutes because the actor will be saying the lines very fast) and
the dad hurriedly and tearfully tries to deliver all the advice
he can cram in. As he remembers things to say in pretty much
random order, he blurts them out.
vacri - 1 hours ago
By skipping the second half, you missed the push of "I've been
on Oprah, therefore this company will be successful".
Seriously, the last 20 seconds before the logo reveal starts is
footage of him on Oprah.
scardine - 56 minutes ago
I guess it is like the nigerian posts full of grammar errors,
they are designed to filter all but the most stupid marks.
kaffeemitsahne - 1 hours ago
"The First A.I. Big Data Marketing Cloud for BlockChain"This is
pure comedy.
arlk - 1 hours ago
Well, at least there's no "Uber/Airbnb for .." part
rdiddly - 1 hours ago
OK granted it has AI, big data, cloud and blockchain, but is it
social? That's what I wanna know. Never forget social, because
that's what leads to viral. Also engine. We need an engine. If
it was a viral AI bigdata social marketing cloud engine for
blockchain, then you'd have something.
bitwize - 52 minutes ago
The AI drives the decisioning engine.
redler - 23 minutes ago
Call one of our solutioneers or successsmiths to arrange a
Webex demo.
BLanen - 21 minutes ago
Missing AR/VR there.
michaelchisari - 1 hours ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWOGbu5BcT0
nsriv - 1 hours ago
"Life goes on" is rich coming from Gurbaksh Chahal, a guy that
kicked his girlfriend 117
times.http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gurbaksh-chahals-
ugly...
jimjimjim - 1 hours ago
what a terrible human being.
wavefunction - 1 hours ago
A $500 fine for brutal assault?I had to pay a larger fine for
forgetting to pay a $40 ticket.
rjeli - 2 hours ago
parishilton Looking forward to participating in the new
#LydianCoin Token! #ThisIsNotAnAd #CryptoCurrency #BitCoin #ETH
#BlockChainhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BYmAdNGn9K0/?hl=en
ficklepickle - 2 hours ago
You sold that video short. I mean c'mon, they clearly state at
the end that they are the first marketing cloud for blockchain.
It doesn't get any clearer than that! /s
thomasjudge - 2 hours ago
That was amazingly vacuous.Feels very scammy. Brought to you by
Gurbaksh Chahal..
adora - 3 hours ago
One-liners are hard.One problem is people trying to pack ALL the
features and ideas into that summary. So in the pursuit of wanting
everyone to get the entire vision, the "what you offer right now"
is lost.As a company's product offerings expand into many, this
gets even harder.
lou1306 - 3 hours ago
This is some Silicon-Valley-the-HBO-show-grade stuff. I wonder
whether the people designing these website still think they're
being hip or they just have to cater to some blissfully unaware
managers.
nicolasehrhardt - 1 hours ago
I blame A/B testing actually. Too many folks run experiments
without choosing which metric to optimize carefully. Here,
marketers probably monitor click-through rates of their main
homepage buttons. And unfortunately, if you change the landing page
text from a few actually descriptive sentences to the BS described
in this article, you probably end up with higher click through
rates on your buttons.
Micoloth - 3 hours ago
[[pro tip- a lot of startup companies actually do not do anything]]
smb06 - 1 hours ago
I have looked at this website for a long time, my colleagues have
looked at it, friends have looked at it, and we still can't figure
out what they do.http://www.thit.com/
Retr0spectrum - 1 hours ago
From the sound of it, they don't know either:https://www.reddit.c
om/r/socialmedia/comments/11d8tt/can_som..."it is up to you to
browse the site and create your own interpretation of it"
saagarjha - 1 hours ago
They give out free T-shirts, duh! On a more serious note, it
looks like some sort of social media website.
gt_ - 1 hours ago
Is this one of those? http://cameraiq.co/
nickstefan12 - 3 hours ago
> ?the more expensive the service a B2B company provides, the more
incomprehensible its website> I think the big companies do it to
get you on the phone???so they can upsell.I was thinking these
things, and then BOOM, he says what I'm thinking haha.These are
sales oriented companies. By contrast, B2C is quantity oriented.
They need more customers buying their mostly undifferentiated price
tiers. Selling expensive pants vs regular pants isn't worth high
touch sales. However, in B2B, selling "really really expensive
enterprise plan" vs "regular enterprise plan" is definitely worth
high touch sales. They want to do everything they can to get you
"interested, but confused" and pick up the phone.
mseebach - 1 hours ago
You may want to get them "confused" (or, to use a more positive
phrase, excited), but crucially, you don't want them to get
sticker shock. Most software is essentially free on the margin.
You don't want to leave $20k on the table by scaring them with a
$40k price tag, but you also don't want to charge someone who'd
be happy to pay you $50k tens of thousands less, just because you
felt called to put a number on your website.
cerved - 1 hours ago
It's an answer that provides a possibly logical reason for the
behavior but I don't buy it.Firstly because inbound phone calls
are incredibly rare. Maybe it's more common for people to pick up
the phone in the states but in my three years selling B2B SaaS
(enterprise and startup) I never received a hot inbound lead on
the phone. It's a bit different if your market leader but most
companies and products aren't so I don't think it's a valid
strategy.Secondly because if you are doing a proper inbound
strategy you need to entice people with content, product
demonstrations or trials (ie showing the product).Finally, if you
want to obfuscate your offering, you don't need to hide it behind
a bunch of mumbo jumbo. People rarely understand exactly what
your product does even if you give them full access to it for a
month.I think the reason is simpler. A mixture of incompetence -
B2B companies don't have the marketing savvy of FMCGs - and the
fact competitors don't do a much better job. It's harder to write
a clear, concise and enticing description of what you do than
just generating buzzwordy corporate bs. It looks marketingy, so
the copy is going to be signed off by everyone. Besides, everyone
else in the industry is throwing around the same buzzwords, so
you get this bubble of nonsense speak and everyone just rolls
with it.
adambyrtek - 55 minutes ago
B2B startups don't rely on inbound phone calls, they want you
to leave your email, phone number, and company size in order to
"receive a case study", "book a product demo", or "subscribe to
a newsletter", and that's when the real sales process
starts.They put a lot of money and effort into sales and
marketing, and you underestimate them by thinking that it's a
sign of incompetence.
marcosdumay - 34 minutes ago
Or it is just a case of the site contents not having a very big
priority, because your contracts come from person to person sales
anyway; and the need of never saying anything dangerous, because
your sales people will tell all kinds of different stories to all
kinds of people, and your site must contradict none.
yodon - 3 hours ago
Marketing is hard. Writing compelling advertising copy is hard.
Figuring out what people want and need to know about your product
is hard.Getting some designer with a great visual portfolio to make
your website isn't the same thing as having a marketing plan or a
marketing strategy, but it's a whole lot faster and cheaper and
unfortunately most people don't know the difference.Oh, and as
awesome as Simon Sinek's Ted talk[0] is, you're not Apple and
potential customers actually do care whether your product is useful
for people like them.[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
cperciva - 3 hours ago
I want to see this guy review the Tarsnap website. For all that
some people don't like my web design, I'd like to think that it's
very easy to figure out what Tarsnap is.
HappyKasper - 2 hours ago
>Tarsnap: Online Backups for the Truly ParanoidOh, okay, that
makes sense. Probably some super-secure online backup
service...>Encryption: Your data can only be accessed with your
personal keys. We can't access your data even if we wanted to!
>Source code: The client code is available. You don't need to
trust us; you can check the encryption yourself! >Deduplication:
Only the unique data between your current files and encrypted
archives is uploaded.Wow, that's... extremely clear. That's
literally everything I wanted to know, save for maybe
pricing...>Storage: 250 picodollars / byte-month of encoded data
>Bandwidth: 250 picodollars / byte of encoded data...aha, it's
something confusing!>($0.25 / GB-month)...never mind. This is
extremely clear.I could keep going, but as far as copy, this
website is excellent. And even the design could be considered a
plus given your target audience.Though if Tarsnap ever gets a
GUI, I would suggest giving the website one as well :)
gerdesj - 2 hours ago
I agree with your assessment of Tarsnap's website and had a
quick look at my firm's website. Whilst we haven't sprouted
web2arrhoea bootstrapped bollocks ... yet, I'll be having words
with my marketing bods tomorrow.
peacelilly - 2 hours ago
The web design is indeed ugly, but at least it is functional.Here
are some easy to implement design suggestions: You should change
the title of the first heading so it's not the same as the
banner. I think "What is Tarsnap?" is a good choice. Speaking of
the banner, vectorize it. Finally, please remove the bars from
the asides.Your product is good, so transferring a little
attention to its web presence is worth the effort.
vacri - 57 minutes ago
It's not ugly, so much as unconventional. It's also aimed at
developers rather than c-levels or the general public. As for
'what is tarsnap?', the very first block of regular text on the
tells you, in bullet-point form. It's the first place a native
English speaker looks to read something; I read the text in the
box before I read the heading for the box.I hope he doesn't
listen to the folks saying he should follow the herd. Websites
where you have to page down below the fold to get basic
information on the product? We should be pointing them at
Tarsnap. But flat design is king on mobile, so we won't be
getting many of these website layouts anymore.
megous - 1 hours ago
Ugly is subjective. I like it. It's actually readable and easy
to navigate.On small width device the menu will be on the
bottom, so there's no duplication. (website seems to be
responsive)I like that the menu is on the bottom and not hidden
behind a hamburger button.
cperciva - 49 minutes ago
Not just on small width devices! The navigation menu is at
the bottom if you look at the website in lynx, too (with a
link to it at the top).
plorkyeran - 2 hours ago
The Tarsnap logo alone tells you more about what the product is
than many entire websites I've seen.
Animats - 1 hours ago
The amusing thing is when a web site for a company that does real
stuff ends up looking like one of those. I mentioned Continental in
a self-driving car discussion. Here's their web site.[1] Someone
commented that it looked like a fake company. The rearing-horse
logo, "The future in motion" as a slogan, and the vague name looked
suspicious. The pictures look like clip art. The top of the home
page rotates through four large banners - "Making Mobility a Great
Place to Live", "Let your Ideas Shape the Future", "Continental
Pledges Support in Response to Hurricane Harvey", and "First 48V
drive for electric bikes". The last at least mentions a product.
The entire initial screen does look vague.(Continental is one of
the world's largest auto parts makers, over a century old, based in
Germany, and with over 200,000 employees. They make everything
from tires to self-driving car sensor integration units. Not a fly-
by-night startup.)Look at General Electric.[2] Their home page has
"The Digital Industry Company - Imagination at Work", clip art of
some enormous piece of machinery, and a search box. Of course, GE
probably made that enormous piece of machinery. But there's no
indication of what they do. For that, you have to use the "GE
Businesses" drop-down menu. It may take a while to find out that
GE is prepared to sell you a jet engine or a locomotive.What seems
to be happening is that startups are emulating big-company sites.
Badly.[1] https://www.continental-corporation.com/en [2]
https://www.ge.com/
a_d - 19 minutes ago
There are possibly a few things happening that explain this:1. Fear
of not communicating "everything" that you do. The fear is of being
perceived as a very narrow solution when it does a lot more.2.
Advice that says "communicate the benefits" not "what you do". This
advice could manifest itself in the wrong kind of (flowery)
language. So instead of saying "export payroll reports for
QuickBooks automatically" websites say "free up for time" [made up
example]3. Internal decision-making by committee.4. Copying some
website that you like - instead of thinking and reasoning from
ground-up about 'what is it that I really want to say'.5.
Pretending to be a big/legit company when you are small6. Big
company with so many features that it would rather just show you
the entire sales deck - the website is just there because it needs
to be, but plays a tiny role in conversions. [why focus on
something that doesn't add value - in this case, the website e.g.
SAP.com]This is a good article. Everyone who is running an online
would benefit from thinking hard about this.
scrollaway - 6 minutes ago
I suspect at least part of it is sites being sold to companies by
contractors who use the same tricks as mediums: be generic, make
vague statements that apply to anyone.Contractors are the least
well positioned people to know how to describe what a company
does. So when the company calls them and asks them for a rockstar
ninja site, they get generic stuff and execs go "oh yeah, that's
such a perfect description of what we do" with no regard for
those that might not already know.
csense - 2 hours ago
Anytime I go onto a company's website and I either can't figure out
what they do, or pricing information isn't available, I think
"Right, their business model is to overcharge folks who have more
money than sense" and I promptly leave.
cagenut - 2 hours ago
I felt that way in my 20's too. I have since grown up and made a
lot of money realizing I was wrong, but I still feel that way.
user5994461 - 1 hours ago
Most websites don't sell anything directly. They don't need to be
understandable.To take the previous examples, continentals and
general electrics websites have nothing to sell to you whatsoever.
The website is used to publish general company information online
like: financial reports, global news, official contacts and
addresses, job offers.
macawfish - 2 hours ago
marketing is a god damned religion
mrspeaker - 2 hours ago
It reminds me of Gavin Volure (Steve Martin) on 30 Rock. After
getting busted as a fraud he says "It's not a real company. You
watch our commercials, we never actually say what we did." and then
it cuts to this beautiful corporate-speak ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlymNLAAzUMI feel like I've hit
that company 50-odd times in my life while searching for vendors.
Kiro - 2 hours ago
I thought Meltwater's flagship product was media monitoring, which
their slogan kind of captures:> Welcome to Outside Insight>
Billions of online conversations, freshly filtered.The title of
their landing page is even more to the point:> Media Intelligence,
Media Monitoring, and Social MonitoringI thought Optimizely was an
A/B testing tool, which makes their punchline OK:> Optimizely lets
you experiment on everything?from design choices to algorithms.
That way the best ideas always win, and the best customer
experiences get even better.I suppose this only adds to his
argument though, it's hard to tell what companies do.
HappyKasper - 2 hours ago
You're right, Meltwater and Optimizely aren't as bad as it gets
(84.51 definitely is). And after spending some time on those
websites, you're able to get a pretty good sense for what they
do.My main point is that it shouldn't ever be difficult for a
potential customer to quickly get to that understanding, and I do
believe these sites could do a far better job at quickly and
clearly explaining their companies' function... just like you
did."Meltwater's flagship product is media monitoring".
"Optimizely is a website A/B testing tool". Boom.
smelendez - 2 hours ago
I think they want to be able to pivot and add new services
without having to retract how they previously labeled
themselves.For instance, Optimizely has a website A/B testing
tool. They also support smartphone app A/B testing, and I think
some backend/server-side testing. If smart watches or VR take
off, they'll probably try to support those as well.They also
recently added automated content generation: I know they can
generate product and page recommendations, and there may be
other options as well.They're a relatively young company and
probably aren't ready to be typecast as "website A/B testing,"
in case another offering really takes off.
mbesto - 8 minutes ago
Ugh, here we go again...If you're complaining that the copy on a
successful tech company is not speaking to you, then it's likely
that you aren't the intended audience.