Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 30 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#21

Post by chiefalchemist »

e_zr wrote: post #16
chiefalchemist wrote: post #5

Speak in terms of benefits, not features. No cares about features. They care about themselves. "What's in it for me?" we all subconsciously ask ourselves. Benefits answer that question. After that, make it super-simple to try out. The more friction, the less traction. Ironic, huh.

Totally. Great advice. I think they're looking for more short-term suggestions for recruiting some folks to try their product and give early feedback

Still applies. It's still a "sale" on Twitter. On HN. In forums. To colleagues. Etc.

Where to pitch is the easy part. Getting the pitch right. Well, that's where things go wrong too often.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#22

Post by solardev »

e_zr wrote: post #15
solardev wrote: post #9

I can't tell what your service does. The website could use more clarity, maybe a few bullet points with precise screenshots or short animations instead of videos.

Thanks. I'll tell them to add those. Did you check out the SDK landing page? maybe that's clearer? https://www.sdk.livecycle.io/signup2 My understanding is that this is aimed at FE development teams who are already using a preview environment platform (like Vercel or Netlify or something like that) to get preview environments for their PRs. When you install this SDK, you get the ability to leave review comments on to…

That's the page I'm talking about. It doesn't mention anything about preview environments and comments, at least at a skim. Videos are great for details but not for figuring out what a service does at a glance.

And FYI Vercel already offers built in commenting in the precise environments. I think it's in beta but we have it enabled on our preview deployments.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#24

Post by BunnyPafi »

I think if you just put more focus on what people get out of it, it will work. Engineers just don't like BS, so if you beat too much around the bush they just won't try it because you're selling too hard. IMO it looks very cool, I'll check it out over the weekend. If I can make my designer use it :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#25

Post by eladav »

I know the product and it’s a real gem. There are some cool use cases for this that I think can be showed off more. As a FE engineer I spend a lot of time being reviewed and having cycles of design and UX fixes and touch ups, doing this quicker and more accurately is valuable, maybe it’s possible to emphasize it more?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#26

Post by pkrotich »

e_zr wrote: post #13
pkrotich wrote: post #8

Perhaps your friends interviewed potential customers (i.e buyers not just users) and arrived at marketing it as a dev tool for dev teams... In my opinion - I'm not so sure if the product should be marketed to "dev teams" per se! To me it looks like a collaboration tool around product development... not just for developers. I would think the primary buyer would be PMs (Product / Project Managers) who would then push f…

That's a great point. I'll show them your feedback. But since this is an SDK that needs to be installed on the preview environment, I assume a developer needs to be involved...

I agree that developers are vital - but the buyer is who to market to, not necessarily the user.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#27

Post by [deleted] »

e_zr wrote: post #17
sargstuff wrote: post #3

Hire someone with sales/marketing experience, ASAP. What type(s) of dev teams? sales, marketing, etc. Ah, ok end of 2nd sentence -> developers. Why would someone develop NEW SDK for a 80's c64 commodore for sale reps when current stuff is supported/understood by by both in-house IT, sales reps and management.

For sure. I agree that marketing is super important for them... They're focused on Front-end development teams. Helping the workflow between designers, PMs and developers work faster and better.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to get developers to try a new devtool?

#28

Post by sargstuff »

e_zr wrote: post #17
sargstuff wrote: post #3

Hire someone with sales/marketing experience, ASAP. What type(s) of dev teams? sales, marketing, etc. Ah, ok end of 2nd sentence -> developers. Why would someone develop NEW SDK for a 80's c64 commodore for sale reps when current stuff is supported/understood by by both in-house IT, sales reps and management.

For sure. I agree that marketing is super important for them... They're focused on Front-end development teams. Helping the workflow between designers, PMs and developers work faster and better.

Yes, but having reader work to figure out basic overview information is quickest way to generate negative information. (even more so when consider product is designed to generate clear/better/faster communication).

Given a stack of academic papers, what would the typical reader do if had a choice between a) read a paper & develop an introduction/abstract before deciding if paper is worth time to read or b)move on to paper(s) with introduction/abstract spend 0 time the paper without an abstract/introduction.

Someone with sales/marketing background (friend, google advice) would be aware of things such as https://www.questionpro.com/blog/beta-testing-community/

Recommended hire or see a consultant with suitable background, because then can assess if there are conflicts (aka competitor) with advice being given before potentially waisting time on a suggestion(s).

Yes, even if end product will be open source.

Post reply on HN