Which website can I reverse engineer for you?

Corporate sites like this are interesting. I don't know these guys, but a lot of companies like this have a sales force that does all the heavy lifting, the website does nothing more than act like an old school brochure.

There's a lot of jargon, and stock photography, but they are doing some important things...

- focusing on social proof. they are highlighting being featured in credible 3rd party reports. they are highlighting how many fortune 500 co's they work with. and they have video case studies with credible clients.

If I were a startup trying to beat a site like this, I would focus on the appearance of more human connection to the community. I would create my site with the goal of having zero stock photos, but 10x more photos / videos of real people in the business.

I'd probably use interviews about security issues to justify those images/videos. And you could probably create enough photos/videos from a few days at a single security expo somewhere, maybe without even having to pay for a booth. Just take someone with a camera and interview as many people as possible about their hopes/fears in this space.

You end up with the ability to show and name a bunch of industry people, on your site, and talk to them about security, without them being clients. But you're still creating the perception of a deep connection and trust, in the community/industry. And of course, your get some contact with potential clients in the process.

I'm not sure the site has enough general appeal, or lessons for me to break it down any deeper.

don't use them so i m curious how they did it:

pinterest

linkedin

pinterest is a little like modern google. I was thinking about the main benefit of the modern google (beyond the basic utility of the search function) and its the chrome browser. as in, you don't even need to goto google to search google any more. you just type into your browser bar.

similarly with pinterest, we know what it promises, its simple enough that they don't need to sell it, if you're visually minded you get to create vision boards on your favorite topics. For people into that, its reinforcing both their values and aspirations. The key thing that makes it usable is that you don't have to goto pinterest to use it. Once you have the plugin or extension every image on every website can be instantly plucked and collected.

The lesson to extract, or the question to ask is - how might I get people to benefit from using my site, in the context most useful to them, without them having to think about, or come find my site?

bubble.io points of interest... - basic value proposition is clear. - level of simplicity is emphasized. if you're selling tech to a less technical audience, you want to make it clear this is easy ala "drag and drop, one click hosting, full control" - almost all consumer btw are attempting to gain more control in their life through a purchase. - Join 326,534 Bubblers today! enter email to get started. So not only are they providing social proof of their popularity, but they have a business model to make that possible, with multiple free or low priced options to build that number. - a lot of their other copy isn't that great and much of it won't be read beyond the headlines. people scan to see what they should read, when you write copy for scanning, they never read anything but the headlines. - they also lack any kind of humanity, people buy from people, that's your opportunity to compete with them. showcase real humans and real human projects way more upfront. - I think their pricing and ease of getting started is a key point, everyone is comfortable with the idea of starting free and paying more as you scale. - they also name the various groups their customers fall into, so people can think "yes, this is for me". - combine the above points, and its enough for someone to sign-up and start the process. How far they get depends on the app itself.

So your opportunity to compete is (as is often the case with tech sites) to lead with a more human approach. Show yourself, show your customers, show real projects. Just connect as humans, with the humans reading your page. You could also replace 90% of that copy with a dozen, longer, more carefully thought out headlines that deliver a more complete pitch. They are selling their tool - but they aren't selling themselves, and they aren't selling the dream. What is it that people wanting to build their own apps are really trying to achieve? I'd go all in on one of those groups - startups or education/students or businesses. Then you can really talk their language, develop a personality and a community around the pursuit.

duckduckgo is riding the growing wave of concern over privacy. So they get to chip in on every press story about privacy issues and google.

google at the time was riding the wave of the web itself taking off, an also it was an order of magnitude better than the alternatives, which a new google would need to be to compete.

People don't change habits for a little benefit, when the existing solution is already good. the new benefit has to be 10x better.

they might change for ideological reasons, or social reasons. if you have a world view about privacy it's easy to buy into an alternative because of that. as we've seen, most people don't care about privacy. maybe that changes in 10 years, maybe not.

But any strategy for a new product needs a target, and a story before you think about which media to use.

For example, you target teens now, who over the next 10 years will be the ones showing their parents how to use, and what to use on the next set of devices.

Or, you focus on a new niche kind of search, image search and video search and social media search and map search all came after website text (and likely were invented by other companies google acquired) maybe the next kind of search with come out of the VR world or whatever.

Either way, you start with some niche of people who will be the ones naturally motivated to spread the message. You never try to directly convince the general public of something.

That usually means starting with the group who is suffering the most pain, and wants the most urgent solution.

One thing DDGo do well on their homepage is deliver their message in long meaningful headlines... - We don’t store your personal information. Ever. - We don’t follow you around with ads. - We don’t track you in or out of private browsing mode. - Switch to DuckDuckGo and take back your privacy!

They use 4 full screens to deliver 4 headlines, that's super easy to consume, but it feels like a full message. The rest of those screens get to tell a hero's journey story visually with friendly cartoons, and a likable color palette. This feels the opposite of corporate and tech.

If you want to compete with those two, with a search engine, find another wave to ride. Another big story that people feel strongly about.

Breakthrough Advertising is one of the best ad books ever written, it explains really well how society creates these waves of feeling, the conversation of the day, the worries of the day, the hopes of the day. And how to direct that energy into your product.

Dove soap is an obvious example, a wave of emotion about the number of perfect photoshopped women selling cosmetics in magazines. Dove rode it by creating campaigns around "real women". Its a story, riding a wave, but it has sold a lot of otherwise ordinary soap. (they don't even call it dove soap anymore its a beauty cream bar lol)