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Apple does this extremely well. Let's examine some of their current main headlines: iPod: "Engineered for maximum funness." iPhone: "Loving it is easy. That's w

by aytekin 13y ago

Apple does this extremely well. Let's examine some of their current main headlines: iPod: "Engineered for maximum funness." iPhone: "Loving it is easy. That's why so many people do!" iTunes: "You have never been so easily entertained." Startup headlines usually talk about themselves. For example, we call ourselves Easiest Form Builder here at JotForm. Apple seems to be talking about the user and the emotional benefit they promise: "It is fun", "it is lovable", "it is entertaining".

gingerlime 13y ago
Very true, but Apple can afford it, when 99.9% of the people on their website probably not only already know what an iPod or an iPhone is, but actually already want to have one... If I go to a website of a product I've never heard of, my main questions are most likely to be "what is this thing?", "what can I do with it?", "how is this better than what I already know". In this case, explaining the WHAT is probably most important. If I see "Engineered for maximum funness" on such a website, I think I'd be much more likely to hit the back button.
- someproduct 13y ago
  I think what you say is true, but only if you somehow arrive on a website with absolutely no understanding of what you're looking at or how you arrived there. When most people land on a company's home page, they arrived there from searching specific keywords in a search engine (which demonstrates a context for what they're searching for), clicking-through a socially shared link (which probably includes descriptive text like "Checkout this awesome Fireworks replacement I've been using...), or directly clicking marketing messages in an email or display ad (in which case they'll have a very clear understanding of the category the company is in). In other words, they have a pretty good sense of "what this thing is," and they want to know _why_ it's better than the other ones they've seen. Now, if you click a link on HN that says something like "I'm 13! Checkout the product I coded over the weekend!" then yes, the main question will be "what is this thing?" But in the "real world," people don't often stumble randomly across websites in this way, and if they do, they're probably not in the target audience anyway. Most of the time (and I'm assuming we're all optimizing for most of the time instances), users already know generally what you do. So tell them why you do it in a way that is interesting and meaningful.

by aytekin 13y ago

gingerlime 13y ago

Very true, but Apple can afford it, when 99.9% of the people on their website probably not only already know what an iPod or an iPhone is, but actually already want to have one... If I go to a website of a product I've never heard of, my main questions are most likely to be "what is this thing?", "what can I do with it?", "how is this better than what I already know". In this case, explaining the WHAT is probably most important. If I see "Engineered for maximum funness" on such a website, I think I'd be much more likely to hit the back button.

someproduct 13y ago
I think what you say is true, but only if you somehow arrive on a website with absolutely no understanding of what you're looking at or how you arrived there. When most people land on a company's home page, they arrived there from searching specific keywords in a search engine (which demonstrates a context for what they're searching for), clicking-through a socially shared link (which probably includes descriptive text like "Checkout this awesome Fireworks replacement I've been using...), or directly clicking marketing messages in an email or display ad (in which case they'll have a very clear understanding of the category the company is in). In other words, they have a pretty good sense of "what this thing is," and they want to know _why_ it's better than the other ones they've seen. Now, if you click a link on HN that says something like "I'm 13! Checkout the product I coded over the weekend!" then yes, the main question will be "what is this thing?" But in the "real world," people don't often stumble randomly across websites in this way, and if they do, they're probably not in the target audience anyway. Most of the time (and I'm assuming we're all optimizing for most of the time instances), users already know generally what you do. So tell them why you do it in a way that is interesting and meaningful.