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Tell me what your company does

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Re: Tell me what your company does

#71
post #67

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/

From the sound of it, they don't know either:

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/11d8tt/can_som...

"it is up to you to browse the site and create your own interpretation of it"

Re: Tell me what your company does

#72
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.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#73
post #67

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/

They give out free T-shirts, duh! On a more serious note, it looks like some sort of social media website.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#74
post #53

I came across this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l644fAxGzlw Don'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 n…

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 sayi…

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.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#75

I came across this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l644fAxGzlw Don'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 n…

"The First A.I. Big Data Marketing Cloud for BlockChain" This is pure comedy.

Well, at least there's no "Uber/Airbnb for .." part

Re: Tell me what your company does

#76
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]

Re: Tell me what your company does

#77

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.

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…

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.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#78
post #53

I came across this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l644fAxGzlw Don'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 n…

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 sayi…

I guess it is like the nigerian posts full of grammar errors, they are designed to filter all but the most stupid marks.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#79
post #62

> 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 p…

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 d…

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.

Re: Tell me what your company does

#80
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The First A.I. Big Data Marketing Cloud for BlockChain" This is pure comedy.

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.

The AI drives the decisioning engine.
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