What CTAs should you choose for your open-source project homepage?
Was always wondering what is my default.
There are many options: "See docs", "Get started", "Sign up", "Start X"
But in open-source you want people to start playing with it, install it.
So what should you choose?
Recently came across Astro homepage and loved what they chose.
"Get started"
Install code
Whatever I choose I will actually get my hands dirty.
I think this will be my default from now on.
Copy that lands makes a huge difference in dev tool website conversion.
Earthly proved it with this "tiny" change.
So I am a huge believer in good copy.
Not the clever one but the one that is written with words that your customers use.
That is rooted in product and research.
But I often hear devs or founders say things like "it's just copy".
It is not "just copy" it is your message, it is your positioning.
It is the difference between "cool, let's try it" and "now for me, whatever".
So some time ago I came across this article from the Earthly CEO Vlad Ionescu.
He shared that at some point they decided to run this A/B test with just a "tiny" change.
They changed the word "CI" -> "Build" across the homepage.
And their core website conversion doubled.
So next time you work on website copy give it some more thought and you may be surprised that "just copy" made a huge difference.
Which feature/product to show in the header?
How about all?
Many dev tool products are feature-rich. And you want to show those awesome features.
But it is easy to overwhelm the reader when showing so much info.
That is why I really like the header tabs pattern that @PostHog uses:
This pattern is especially powerful when you want to communicate completeness.
Posthog definitely wants to do that. If you are on that train I'd strongly suggest considering/testing it.
Great SEO tactic.
What folks from Cronitor did is:
This can be used for many dev-focused tools as by definition they use commands which can be templated.
I've heard about it originally from Harry Dry over at https://marketingexamples.com/seo/cronitor
Simple yet powerful CTA in the navbar resources section.
The resources section in the navbar is mostly navigational. Well, the entire navbar is ;)
But you always have that one action that is more impactful than others.
💚 And I think that a Plauground is a great option. You get people to see how your product works. You let people play with it and see for themselves.
Not many next actions can be as impactful as getting people to experience the product.
Especially if you are a heavier infra tool that people cannot really test out in that first session. I mean, you won't really create a realistic example of your core database in 15 minutes to see how that new tool that you just saw works.
🔥 Making this CTA "big and shiny" and showing a glimpse of what will happen after clicking is great too.
🤔 2 changes I'd test out:
But the core idea behind making the playground your core navbar resource section CTA is just great.
When selling dev tools you typically have 3 "buyer" levels:
Individual dev:
Team lead:
Org lead:
How does Postman solve it?:
They even go the extra mile. Something I didn't see too often.
They understand their customer's reality and identified one more level between Org and Team.
Basically a department-level unit that probably has multiple teams but is not at the organization/enterprise level.
I really like what they did hear. Solid.
Gonto shared an interesting play that they tried at Auth0 when he was running growth there.
So the story goes like this:
I think that doing just the sponsorship for the retargeting pixel could work.
But when you add that branding consistency between the sponsored site and the product the CTR is better.
Interesting one for sure.
The problem with presenting API is that it is hidden. It gets the job done in the background.
So it is not "attractive" in the way some other dev tools can be.
But you can:
That is how Mux, video API, solves it.
Found this awesome crossover on their homepage.
They give you:
Love it!
Really good product navbar tab from Supabase.
The product tab in your navbar is likely the most visited one on your site.
And there are a million ways of organizing information in there.
But ultimately, you want to help people understand what this product is about at a glance.
Even before they click. Even if they never click.
And how do you explain your product to devs?
By answering common questions:
Supabase does it really nicely:
Very solid pattern imho.
What I'd improve:
Memes are good top-of-funnel, awareness-type content.
Many companies use them on socials as they can "go viral".
But.
You need to either:
I like how Datree connects it to the product here.
They are a Kubernetes configuration tool and talk about exactly that here.
They do that with jargon too "k8", "config". When used well it can help you belong to the tribe you are marketing to.
Most dev tools have two deployment options:
And then companies present it on their pricing page with some flavor of two tabs.
And you need to name them somehow.
And how you describe those things sometimes adds confusion for your buyers:
I like how nice and simple solution Retool used on their pricing page:
Explicit, obvious and to the point.
Love it.
Came across this classic What is Segment brand video while watching an interview with one of the folks behind it, Maya Spivak (she is awesome btw).
What I like about it is that:
• it is fun, not formal, builds rapport
• it introduces the core problem the tool solves
• it shows the tech and explains it in a way that is simple but not simplistic
And it follows a flavor of the classic AIDA format:
Putting all that in 90 seconds is hard.
And even though this video is 4 years old it could easily still work today IMHO.
Really solid baseline to s̶t̶e̶a̶l̶ get inspired by ;)
𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹?
Hard, but Run.ai did that.
Infra products are not "obviously cool".
There is no shiny UI, no happy people wearing your sneakers,
So what do you show on your ads?
First off, the rules still apply:
• Catch your audience's attention
• Say what you do in their language
• Better yet, show how it actually does it
And Run.ai ai and MLOps infra tool managed to create a beautiful Linkedin ad IMHO:
• They catch attention with the code visual
• They say what they do quickly with "Dynamic Fractional GPU using One Command"
• They extend on that in the post copy with an action-driven "Open Terminal -> Run Command -> Boom"
• The code shows what it feels like to use the tool
• And it shows you the result -> fractional GPUs
Job well done!
I really like this Reddit ad from Sentry.
Powerful simplicity.
They don't do:
• long value-based copy
• fancy, in-your-face CTAs
• creative that feels "professional
They go for:
• focus on the pain
• creative that speaks to that pain
• low-key CTA ", get Sentry" rather than "Get Sentry Free!"
• building rapport with the dev with copy "If seeing this in React makes you 🤮"
And through simplicity and focus they deliver a message:
• Stack traces in React are not much fun
• They seem to understand that
• Sentry helps you solve that
Good format.
The main message you want to land on your homepage community section is:
"We have a big community of devs who love using the product"
🚧 That helps you tackle obstacles your dev reader has:
💚 Modal solves it beautifully by going simple but smart:
It lands the message that this section should land for sure. I really like it.
I like this idea of showing how your dev tool works.
With developers, you almost have to explain how it works on your homepage.
Many products do some version of Step 1 -> Step 2 -> Step 3 -> Success.
I really like how @SST approached it with a timeline.
I find it more engaging than those disconnected steps.
And when I follow this journey the final and logical step is to try it out. Get started.
Navbar is a hugely important conversion lever on the dev-facing website. I saw it move the needle by x times in some cases/conversion events.
So, what does a good one look like?
Auth0 did a great job on their developer portal. But the learnings can be applied to your marketing website too.
What I like:
That makes it easy for devs to explore. Without having to click out to see what each tab/item means. And when devs know what you mean they are more likely to actually click out. And convert.
Most devs want to explore products themselves.
They want to read the docs, see examples, play with the product, or watch a video.
They don't want to hop on a demo call, especially early on in the evaluation process.
And they definitely don't want to sit through the demo to learn what your pricing is.
But there will be moments when they will want to talk to you. They will raise their hands and let you know then.
Posthog speaks to this reality with this copy beautifully:
This is very developer-focused approach and I love it.
How do you make your dev tool pricing simple?
I really like this one.
Saw someone share a pricing page from Userfront some time ago and really liked it. They changed it now but I really like the thinking behind the older version.
It is just remarkably simple while hitting all the boxes:
Just a very good baseline.
Sometimes your product just wins on price.
I like how New Relic owns it on this page:
After reading this I'd trust them to give me a solid price estimate and that it will likely be cheaper than Datadog.
Obviously price is not the only reason why we choose tools, but if that was a problem I had with Datadog, they have my attention.
How to present benchmark results masterclass from RavenDB
The biggest problem with the software benchmarks that you run is?
People don't trust you. Especially when the results are good.
𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁. 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆.
People from RavenDB do it by:
This looks solid because it feels like I could re-run what they did myself.And so I trust them and I probably won't ;)
Nicely done Reddit post that went viral on r/MachineLearning.
Reddit dev communities are notoriously hard to market in.
You need to have something really valuable to say to that dev crowd.
But even if you do, it is so easy to screw it up and get trolled or downvoted for "obvious promo".
I know that from experience. So painful to watch.
This is a really nice example of how to do it right:
Try something like that next time you post and see what happens.
Obviously, it is nearly impossible to do when:
But then why would you even post something?
OK, the best way of getting GitHub stars is by creating a project that solves real developer problems well.
I assume you have done that already and the metric that people love to hate ⭐ is growing organically.
What do you do now?
I mean you got to ask people in one way or another.
Many companies put it in their navbars or hello bars.
Posthog adds a sticky banner at the bottom of the page that follows you as you scroll.
It also shows a start count which at their size (11k + stars) acts as social proof.
You can close it and the next time you visit the page it will be off not to push too much.
I like the concept makes sense to test it out this way imho.
Subtle but effective dev blog CTA -> info box.
Basically a plain article in-text CTA but there is something special about it.
It looks like a docs info box.
It is not a "buy now" style call to action but rather a subtle "you may want to know about X" push.
But for it to really feel like an info box it needs to connect to the section of the section of the article around it.
Otherwise, it will just feel like an intrusive ad anyway.
PlanetScale does a great job here.
They link the part of the article about the sharding library Vitess with their product that was built on top of it.
It feels natural and I am sure it gets clicks and if not then product awareness.
This is one of my favorite header patterns for dev tools lately. Layered video visual from MUX.
So that video design pattern in here is this:
There are a few bonus learnings here as well:
btw I really like that branding. Custom font makes it so memorable. It is, isn't it?
An interesting option to push people to read the next article.
You use a slide-in triggered on a 75% scroll with a "read next" CTA in the bottom left.
On the aggressive side for sure but when the article you propose is clearly technical it could work.
And if your articles are not connected to the product explicitly you do need some ways to keep people reading and see more of your brand.
"See docs" is one of my favorite secondary CTA on dev-focused pages.
TailwindCSS takes it to the next level by inserting docs search right into the header CTA.
This takes devs directly to the page they are interested in rather than have them try and find things for themselves.
They could have searched the docs in the docs, of course.
But this is just this slightly more delightful developer experience that TailwindCSS is known for.
There are many things that I like about it.
Overall with very little effort, I understand what it is, and what it does.
And I can go and dig deeper for myself or spread the word with my circles.
Adding CTA in dev-focused articles is hard.
You don't want to be too pushy, but you do want to get conversions.
DigitalOcean strikes a great balance with its in-text article CTA design.
They make this CTA look like an info box that you'd typically see in the documentation.
It is clear that it is a Digital Ocean CTA but it doesn't feel pushy.
It feels like a piece of potentially useful information.
Love it.
This is a sandbox experience folks over at Sentry.io created.
I like the navbar CTAs with a big "Documentation" button in there.
Reminds me that I can go and see it when I need it.
But I also get those conversion focused "Request a demo" and "Start a trial" for when I am ready.
On top of that I get tours and help in the sidebar for when I get stuck.
.... and the whole thing is gated behind a work email which I don't love.
But having that work email let's you nurture (and Sentry is known for awesome emails).
Plus it does help sales. If anything it is an additional signal for your account scoring models.
But if you are going to gate a sandbox, make sure to show all that value behind the modal like Sentry did.
With that I can feel compelled to type in that email.
Classic remarketing ad. But things are classic because they work 👇
Youtube remarketing is one of the most popular ways to stay top of mind with devs who visit your site.
Lots of devs spend time on Youtube so it is a solid match.
But, "buy now" style ads rarely work because if they wanted to try/buy they would have already.
They need something more.
That "more" is often trust.
They simply don't trust you, your product, and your company.
They don't think you are the real deal and will solve their problems.
But you can build that trust. And to do that you can use testimonial-style ads:
That is it.
Show enough of these and % of people will trust you and convert.
Pushing cold blog readers to try your tool rarely works.
So you need a transitional CTA, something that worms them up.
But it needs to be aligned with the goals of the reader.
And I think pushing folks to a community discord is a solid option.
I like the copy "Discuss this blog on Discord" as it is very reader-focused.
Some folks read the article and have more questions.
They want to discuss it somewhere.
And while you could just do a comments section, a community gives you more options to get people closer to the product.
How to write a "What is {MY CORE KEYWORD}" article that gets to the top of HackerNews? 👇
First of all, almost no one succeeds at that as you write those articles for SEO distribution, not HN distribution.
To get an SEO-first article on HN your content quality bar needs to be super high.
But you can do it.
PlanetScale managed to get their "What is database sharding and how does it work?" on the orange page (kudos to Justin Gage!).
Here is what was interesting about that article:
𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼.
• ❌ No "In today's fast-paced data-driven world enterprises work with data" stuff.
• ✅ Just "Learn what database sharding is, how sharding works, and some common sharding frameworks and tools."
𝗛𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘃 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿.
💚 Speaking peer to peer, not authority-student:
• "You’ve probably seen this table before, about how scaling out helps you take this users table, all stored on a single server:"
• "And turn it into this users table, stored across 2 (or 1,000) servers:"
• "But that’s only one type of sharding (row level, or horizontal). "
𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲
Things like:
• "Partitioning has existed – especially in OLAP setups"
• "Sifting through HDFS partitions to find the missing snapshot "
𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
🔥 Look at the section "How database sharding works under the hood" with subsections:
• Sharding schemes and algorithms
• Deciding on what servers to use
• Routing your sharded queries to the right databases
• Planning and executing your migration to a sharded solution
🎁 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀: 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆
Section "Sharding frameworks and tools" shares open-source tools (every dev, but HN devs in particular like OS projects).
And there as an info box, you have the info that Planetscale comes with one of those OS projects deployed.
Just a beautifully executed piece of content marketing.
Why not highlight your free plan?
Most companies highlight their middle paid plan saying it is "most popular".
First thing, yeah, sure it is your most popular plan.
But more importantly, most visitors will not convert to your paid plans right away.
So why not try and capture as many devs as possible on the free plan?
If they like your dev tool there are many things you can do to convert some of them to paid plans.
But if they leave that pricing page and go with some other free tool, you are not converting anyone.
@CircleCI highlights free and they are in the mature, competitive market of CI CD tools.
Idk, it really does make a lot of sense to me.
If people need more advanced features they will choose higher plans anyway.
But if they want to get things started with the basic plans they will choose free or go elsewhere.
I'd rather have them choose free than none.
"How fast do you ship?"
Not many dev tools answer that on their homepage. PostHog does.
In a typical (enterprise) sales process, people often ask:
And you show them the roadmap or get someone from the product on the next call.
But I haven't yet seen dev tools talk about it on their homepage.
But why not?
Devs who want to buy self-serve want to know it almost just as much.
After all, they won't be able to twist your arm to build that custom feature cause "we are your biggest client and we need it".
I like it, it builds trust, it shows me you are transparent,
And it shows me that those features I can see on the public roadmap will come true.
I really love this hand-drawn feel.
It makes it super authentic.
Also, starting from scratch (not a ready diagram) makes following it more fun and less overwhelming.
Great stuff.
BTW the tool used for this is called excalidraw.com
How to get more ROI from your dev conference booth? -> Add obvious CTAs.
Yes, giveaway stuff.
Yes, make it nice and branded.
Yes, make it funny, shareable, and cool.
But give people an easy and obvious option to give back and support you and your goals.
I really liked how Union.ai approached it at the recent MLOps World conference:
Just a nice little tactic but I bet it squeezed a bit more of that ROI juice that we all need in 2023 ;)
If you have an API product presenting it in an exciting visual way is hard.
But Deepgram managed to do just that.
They go for an autoplay presentation that has four acts:
And the delivery is just slick and elegant. Kudos team!
btw, Mux, the video API has a similar design of their visual. I think it is just a great visual element for API products.
Thinking about your next conference giveaway idea?
How about a coconut? Datafold did just that!
Coconut + logo burned on it + a person who can open them up
=
A memorable, shareable, fresh (literally), and wholesome conference experience.
And I bet it didn't cost an arm and a leg too.
It goes to show how creativity matters when planning those things.
Thinking about doing a similar thing in Poland... with potatoes of course ;)
Not sure how to find developers for audience research interviews?
Sometimes all you need is ask.
I really liked what the founders of this startup did:
Sometimes you don't need to overthink it and can just ask.
Fantastic all-text Reddit ad from Latitude.
Dev ads are hard. Promotion on Reddit is harder. Running a dev ad on Reddit that gets 50 comments and 90 likes is expert-level hard.
But folks from Latitude managed 🔥
They used one of my favorite Reddit ad formats: all text.
Here is what I liked:
Great execution. Chapeau bas Latitude.
How did this super basic ad get so much engagement on Reddit?
First of all, the value prop is succinct, to the point, and says what it is.
No "streamlining", "boosting", or "democratizing" is involved.
No clever tagline or pains, benefits, or values just says what it is.
But what it is, is "free and open-source" which is what many devs, especially on Reddit want to hear.
And Heroku is a known brand so if you know what Heroku does, you know what Kubero does.
I liked that they linked out to the GitHub project too.
Not 100% sure if that would perform better than a landing page or home. But I see how it feels more in sync with the channel you are running your ads on.
The screenshot? I don't like it but perhaps it doesn't matter as much here?
What do you think?
Oh, and if you read the comments, you'll see that people actually talked about the project, said that they liked the ad etc.
Good stuff.
Super short dev tool case study on a single viewport.
Many case studies follow a Hero -> Problem -> Solution -> Results framework.
Many try and do it on a one-pager.
But what @Resend did is next level and I like it.
Especially with devs, you want to be technical and succinct.
And Resend took all the possible fluff out of it.
I'd like to have some before or after probably or a stronger results (or pain) ) focused headline.
But I think this is great actually.
𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀?
The general tip is simple. Create content that the HN audience finds interesting.
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀:
But how do you actually do that?
𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀:
That was exactly what folks from CockroachDB did at the beginning. Heard about it on one of the episodes of the Unusual Ventures podcast with Peter Mattis from Cockroach Labs.
𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗡:
• "CockroachDB Stability Post-Mortem: From 1 Node to 100 Nodes"
• "Serializable, lockless, distributed: Isolation in CockroachDB"
• "How CockroachDB Does Distributed, Atomic Transactions"
Kudos Cockroach Labs team and thanks for sharing!
Sometimes your pricing is just complex. But you can still make it work.
If you want devs to convert, make it possible for them to estimate the cost.
@Mux does it nicely with a calculator:
What is crucial is that the calculator dimensions need to be understandable and familiar to the reader.:
The goal of this is to make it possible for a person to get an estimate right here right now.
Not have to setup a meeting with half the team to figure your pricing out.
How to do a dev-focused brand video and get 10M+ views?
Making a memorable brand video is hard.
Doing that for a boring tech product is harder.
Doing that to the developer audience is next level.
Postman managed to create not one but three of those brand videos that got from 4M to 10M youtube views.
The videos I am talking about are:
So what did they do right?
Honestly, I am not exactly sure what special sauce they added but those are just great videos that you watch.
And I definitely remember them and the company which is exactly what you want to achieve with brand ads.
The homepage header is about landing your core product message.
For Modal it is basically LLM infrastructure with great developer experience.
And they do a great job delivering it:
Top job on that header folks!
Instead of giving away hundreds of small things that people will forget give away one thing that leaves an impression.
And a huge LEGO set is a great candidate for that one big thing. There is a big overlap between devs and folks who love LEGOs. They are both builders after in their hearts.
Now, some important considerations:
You need to commit to it too.
Don't do 3 different things like that at a conference. Focus on one play like this at a time and try other cool ideas at another conference.
Folks from Sigma Computing ticked all these boxes. Love it!
Great above the fold
The subheader explains the value proposition.
Header handles major objections:
Then we have 3 CTAs but they are super focused on devs:
Then it goes on to explain how it works with a simple, static graphic.
This whole thing makes me feel peaceful.
Vs pages are a classic SaaS marketing.
But I like how Ably adjusts them to the developer audience:
I love this video ad format from Hygraph.
They are reading and reacting to bad reviews.
I saw this in B2C but not in the dev tool B2B. Love it!
So basically how they did that campaign is:
Through all that, you get entertained and learn something about their product. This is such a fun format to test out!
The "Resources" tab is the most loved and hated tab for developer marketers.
Ok so the common problem is that you have lots of different resources:
You want to showcase them in the navbar but where do you put them?
Under product? Company? Docs?
How to make sure that people don't go to your blog to read about your product just to find out that you talk about the industry problems there?
Enter the "Resources" tab. The "Miscellaneous" of the navbar world.
And typically it is just crammed with all stuff that doesn't fit anywhere. Just like any respectable misc folder would.
How do you deal with that?
Snyk approached it in a clear and logical way:
I love this (and already stole the idea for our site).
Make a {X} cry in 5 words or less.
Great Linkedin (or Twitter) post format.
This is one of those fantastic self-selecting mechanisms as well.
People who understand the joke are the people you are looking for.
You may get the exact people you want to follow your profile.
With a nicely targeted joke.
Love it.
VS competitor ads are hard to pull off with devs. Not impossible though. 👇
So the problem is that:
@Convex does it really nicely here:
And even though this is by a "aggressive" competitor marketing hundreds of devs liked/bookmarked this tweet.
Good job!
When you promote your feature/product launch on Reddit, it can easily end up being "not well received" to put it mildly.
I am talking downvotes, negative comments that get upvoted and break the discussion. Or good old crickets.
But Reddit can also be a fantastic source of audience feedback, peer validation for your product, and some of the most vocal advocates you'll ever find.
I really liked how Tom Redman from Convex directed the discussion in the Reddit thread under their laucn post:
The launch post itself was great too:
"Open sourcing 200k lines of Convex, a "reactive" database built from scratch in Rust" that linked to the GitHub repo.
Doesn't get much more to the point and devy than that.
Testimonial ads are a format that helps you move people from "I know what you are doing" to "I trust you enough to do business with you".
Video testimonials are even better.
You see the person who has a similar role that you do saying things about the product you are considering.
CircleCI did a solid job here.
And so if you are running remarketing to people who went to pricing but didn't sign up, or signed up to a free trial but haven't converted yet this is a good format candidate.
There are a lot of boring vendor t-shirts at conferences.
And they get boring results.
I like this bold design from GitGuardian:
Nice.
Conference activation idea: Tetris competition at the booth.
It is hard to get devs to your booth if all you offer is a "do you want to see a quick demo" spiel.
You need to get a bit more creative than that.
💚 The team at Storyblok ran a Tetris competition:
Afaik it was a big hit and I can definitely see why.
📒 A few more notes:
btw, I read about it on DX Tips. You want to check out that article on dev conferences from DX Tips
Many dev tools have complex pricing and packaging.
Say your dev tool/platform has many product offerings.
And you offer usage-based pricing but also enterprise plans but also per-product options, and additional customizations.
But you want to present it in a way that is manageable for the developer reading your pricing page.
Mux solves it this way:
Extended headers on pricing pages are not common as they add friction.
But sometimes adding friction is exactly what you need to do.
Mux managed to make this page (and their offering) easy to navigate by adding a little bit of friction at the beginning.
Maybe you don't browse plans right away but at least you don't waste energy (and attention) on the parts of the page that doesn't matter to you.
Good stuff.
Usage-based pricing is loved by devs. But has its own problems.
Ok, so first what are those problems?
Value metric:
Predictability and procurement:
But devs love usage-based pricing:
It is great for a dev tool company:
But pulling it off is not as easy as you may think.
Choosing that value metric, packaging it, and presenting it is a struggle.
@Appsmith solved it in the following way:
Very interesting approach.
Showing code and UI in an explainer video is always a dance and rarely ends well.
You want to show the code to make it devy.
But you don't want to show everything not to overwhelm.
The same goes for UI which should look like your UI.
But show only what is necessary.
It's a struggle but CircleCI does it really nicely in this explainer:
They do the same for the UI later in the video.Just a really clean way of explaining things. Nice!
What to say when you have many products?
Dev tool companies over time grow from one product to suite of products to platforms with products built on top of the core one.
The result is that it is harder to communicate without going full-on fluff mode (my fav "built better software faster").
But for most companies, there is this core capability/product where people start. The entry product. Why not use that?
I really liked what Stripe did on their docs page here:
Even though this is docs, the same applies to homepages and other dev comms.
If you have many products, figure out what is the most important one, the one where most people enter. Focus on that. "Upsell" to other products later.
I like how it has a proper "hero section" feel to it but it adds a developer-focused twist:
The rest of the Readme is great as well but the hero section is gold imho.
I love this dev tool header copy from Neon.
❌ They could have gone with "We make your data fly" or "10x your database developer efficiency" or other stuff like that.
💚 Instead, they spoke in a clear dev-to-dev language:
Simple, clear, and to the point. No fluffs given. Love that.
"But we are selling to the boss of a boss of that developer user persona"
Then let that dev champion understand what you are doing and bring it to their boss.
"But we are going pure top-down"
Then does that boss of a boss of a boss actually evaluate your infra tool themselves or send their architect?
Maybe 90% of your site traffic is the buyer-persona CTO. But my bet is, it isn't even 1%.
Pre-roll ads are obviously invasive and annoying, especially to devs. But they are also prime real estate in the ad ecosystem.
You can choose not to do them at all (fair option). Or try and make them more fun and less annoying ;)
I like how Sentry handled it in this 16-second video:
Basically they managed to "buy" 11 seconds of attention with 5 seconds of a pattern-breaking hook. In the world of pre-roll YouTube dev-focused ads, I'd say this is a win.
Also, I don't know the results of the "Sentry can't fix that " campaign, but I like how this builds curiosity. Even with that slogan alone.
This is how you write dev tool JTBD blog posts.
Masterclass of writing this type of content from @WorkOS imho.
Deep 2000 word guide that explains how to add webhooks the your application.
Goes into examples, best practices, everything.
One thing it doesn't do?
It doesn't push the product left right and center.
In fact, the only CTA is hidden in the very last sentence of the very last section.
Why?
Because most likely, the reader's intent is around understanding the problem at this point.
They want to understand what adding webhooks to their app really means from the practitioner's standpoint.
And they did that beautifully.
Could you have pushed the product a bit more? Sure.
But by answering the actual questions devs came here for they managed to build trust.
And I am sure got their fair share of click-throughs and signups anyway.
Hacker News developer audience doesn't love promotion to put it mildly.
But some dev tool companies manage to make this audience their biggest ally.
Fly.io is one of those companies.
And they had a super successful product launch a few years back.
So how did they do it?
Let's go through these in detail.
Who are you? Why should I listen?
What is the problem really?
What does your product do and how does it work?
Speak "dev to dev"
By doing it this way you have a chance of gaining love from the prolific HN crowd.
Fly.io definitely did, and is still reaping rewards with constant HN exposure.
How to show integrations on your dev tool homepage?
Every dev tool needs to integrate with other libraries in the space.
And you want to show how well integrated with the ecosystem you are.
But you ctually want to do a bit more than that.
You want devs to see how easy / flexible / clean it would be for them to use it.
That is why instead of showing just logos from your ecosystem it is good to show the code too.
Meilisearch does that beautifully:
I am sure this is getting more clicks than just a list of logos.
A classic "It doesn't suck" campaign.
Afaik, Barebones ran the first version of this campaign 20 years ago and it was a huge success.
It is so simple, it just speaks to that inner skeptic.
It doesn't say we are the best, we revolutionize software.
It says it doesn't suck.
That is way more believable and makes me think that there is a dev on the other side of that copy.
And there is something cool about this message that makes me want to wear it to the next conference.
Good stuff.
This is such a fantastic ad creative because it is just so different.
So basically what Kinde it does is:
💚 That timer is such a great way of catching attention and keeping it while landing your product message. It seems raw and "whatever" but I think it is very intentional in its dev-friendly delivery.
So if you have a dev tool that has awesome devex and can get people to that aha moment quickly then give it a go (and tell me how it went ;)).
"There are two types of companies": Just a beautiful piece of copy from Fly.io
Doing us vs them doesn't always play out well.
But folks from Fly made it snarky and playful and fun.
And they basically said that they are:
And this is just such a nice brand play as well.
You just show personality and confidence in this devy snarky way.
I dig it.
This is one of my favorite our dev tool vs competitor blog posts.
With these pages, you want to explain when you are better.
But you don't want to berate your competitor.
And above all, you want to help people make a decision.
Chances are (almost 100% ;)) that you are not better for every use case. And your developer audience knows it.
But there should be use cases, tool stacks, or situations when you are the best option.
Talk about those. Dev to dev.
@Convex did a great job in this post that I think can be a template for how to write these:
After reading that post you are fairly convinced that if your situation matches the one described and if it makes sense to use it.
Love it.
What if you not only posted entire articles on Reddit but also promoted them?
This is what WarpStream did and I like it.
A few weeks back I shared an example of a company posting not a link with a snippet but an entire article on Reddit.
WarpStream is taking it to the next level by promoting it as an in-feed Reddit ad.
I love this trend 100%:
By doing that you assume that if your piece of content gets read by the right people it will lead to business outcomes. People don't need to go to your site to be retargeted by ads and attacked by popup banners.
That is a very fair assumption, especially with devs.
But even generally in B2B SaaS and social channels like here on LinkedIn that concept of zero-click content, coined by Amanda Natividad, is gaining traction and I'm glad that it does.
Beautiful growth loop that uses GitHub PRs to spread awareness even internally in the org.
And just one dev needs to sign up for the product to start it.
Works like this:
Heard about it on Lenny's podcast episode with Ben Williams (the story starts at 20:53)
... and then signed up to see the actual PR.
I really love this one as it allows you to spread inside the organization even if everything is on-prem and you never get to see it.
Those PRs are just working behind the scenes doing marketing for you.
Brilliant!
Looking for a good dev-focused case study format?
People tell you to follow a classic Hero > Problem > Solution > Results.
They tell you to show numbers, talk value, etc.
And it is true. Great format.
But packaging this for devs is hard.
For example, putting numbers in there, and framing it in a "save 28min every week" is a recipe for losing trust with that dev reader.
That is if you can even get those numbers from your customers.
I like how @LaunchDarkly solves it.
Hero section:
Case study body:
They keep the content down to earth and devy but still frame it in a value-focused way.
I like that that they speak in the currency that devs care about.
Wasted time.
Before: "Took 2-3 weeks to ship"
After: "Can ship experiments every day"
The cool thing is you could actually use this hero section format and then have a more technical user story below. By doing that you could speak to the why and how.
That depends on your target reader for this page of course.
Anyhow, I do like this format and I am planning to take it for a spin.
How to present many features at once?
Sometimes your dev tool has many features/products that you want to show.
❌ Showing all of them as separate sections doesn't work with more than 3. It just gets too long very quickly.
✅ You can go with the tabs pattern where each tab has copy+visual for a feature.
💡 But there is another option that makes a ton of sense when you have many features to show.
Interactive tiles of different sizes.
💚 I like the implementation of that pattern coming from Clerk:
That pattern can work really well on blogs or learning centers too but I think we're going to see more of it on dev tool websites.
Understand who is reading. Add social proof that speaks to them.
Social proof is about showing people/companies who are similar to the reader that they got success with the tool.
Company logos can be good if your reader knows and likes those companies.
But if those are random companies, I am not sure how much value does it bring.
Devs care what other devs who use your product have to say about it.
That's why I like testimonials.
Not the crafted, clean ones with features and values.
But the real stuff. Real devs sharing real stories.
Bonus points for "Okay, I get the point" button copy.
It changes from "Show more" when you click.
Nice!