If your dev tool's USP is that it is faster -> Show it in the header
I like how folks from Bun focus on the fact that they are a faster library.
They show the benchmark as the key visual on the homepage header.
I love it.
If you think about it how else do you really want to show that you are faster?
This is believable, especially with a link to the benchmark so that I can dig deeper.
They show competitors, they don't pretend they don't exist.
And they talk about being faster left right and center.
I mean, they drive this "we are faster" home for me.
If that was important to me, I'd check it out.
"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.
๐๐๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐ฎ๐ป ๐ถ๐ป๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฎ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ฟ๐๐ป๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐ฎ ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ฎ๐น?
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:
โข Catch your audience's attention
โข Say what you do in their language
โข Better yet, show how it actually does it
And Run.ai ai and MLOps infra tool managed to create a beautiful Linkedin ad IMHO:
โข They catch attention with the code visual
โข They say what they do quickly with "Dynamic Fractional GPU using One Command"
โข They extend on that in the post copy with an action-driven "Open Terminal -> Run Command -> Boom"
โข The code shows what it feels like to use the tool
โข And it shows you the result -> fractional GPUs
Job well done!
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.
It's a nice template for ads on socials.
So you have:
Ideally, I'd make it dark to stand out in the feed and make the CTA about that value as well.
But still, great ad imho.
Nice Reddit ad from kftray.
This is a simple ad format but lands the message:
An interesting fact is that there is no call to action?!
They say "Kftray is an open-source" which is enough for those interested to google "kftray github" or just go to GitHub and find it. And makes the ad less pushy which is a nice touch on Reddit.
But the most important takeaway is this. If the problem is real to the dev audience you target you don't need to go fancy. Just show how you solve it.
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. ย 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.
Dorky joke right?
But it does two very important things beautifully.
It gets a smirk (from some people) and when it does you know you just moved someone closer to your brand.
It has a clear CTA which is hard to do with joke-format ads.
This subtle call to conversation/check us out does the job.
Love it!
Algolia gets over 80% of referral traffic from a single free tool they created called Search Hacker News.
But why does it work so well for them?
Hacker News doesn't really have a native search experience.
Algolia gives devs an amazing search experience out of the box.
So folks from Algolia created their own website where you can search Hackernews... with Algolia search engine.
Of course, when you click on "Search by Algolia" you get directed to the website and can learn how to set up a similar search, which you have just used yourself.
What I love about this:
And looking at the results it delivers.
Very cool project.
You type in your GitHub name and see your history in 3d.
And Voila!
You have an intrinsically viral brand awareness campaign.
Just brilliant.
Scrolling through many feature/capability sections of a dev tool website mostly sucks. But dropping things to make it shorter can suck even more.
This is a cool design pattern that deals with that problem. ย
Single section that switches subsections on scroll. And folks over at @Graphite did a great job with that on their homepage.
It works like this:
Also, I saw variants of this that also looked great:
What this design helps you achieve is:โ
I really like this pattern and I have already recommended it to some folks working on their sites recently.
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?
Need one more call to action idea for your dev tool blog?
How about starting an article with it?
Sounds weird but if done right it can work. Even with devs (or maybe especially with devs).
Earthly did and they are known for great dev-focused content.
Ok, so how does it work?
You start your article with a contextual call to action where you explain:
And then you let people read.
Those who find the topic important will remember you and/or maybe click out to see more.
I like it. It's explicit, transparent, and actually noninvasive.
Nice post format.
I like it for dev tools that have both API and UI components.
You show code and what it produces in one view.
You can add additional things to the vis part of it for more context.
Well done templates gallery from Vercel.
For developer-focused products, having an examples/templates/code samples gallery can be a powerful growth lever.
โ It helps people:
Just a great touchpoint in the developer journey.
๐ And Vercel does this one really well IMHO.
They start with an easy-to-find CTA in the navbar resources section. Bonus points for adding one-liner descriptions that make it clear what is on the other side of the click.
On the templates library page, they give you solid use case navigation with tags. And each template tile has a result thumbnail and a one-liner description. The beauty of this is in the simplicity and what they didn't put in here.
Each template page shows the result, gives you a tutorial on how to use this, and clear CTAs to either see this live or deploy yourself. Bonus points for the "Deploy" action copy (instead of "Sign up").
Kudos to the Vercel team. They are one of my favorite inspirations.
A freaking developer TV.
They took this "be a media company" to the next level.
They created entire TV around their company, audience, and products.
I respect people really going all in.
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.
Awesome sponsorship ad from Trieve in the Cassidy Williams newsletter.
Not sure who wrote it but it must have been a dev ;) It is just so refreshingly to the point.
๐ What I like:
This ad does it so gracefully and quickly it is just hard not to love. ย
With infrastructure tools, it is notoriously difficult to show people the value quickly.
To really see it they would need to set up everything at their company infra, create dashboards for their use case, and so on.ย
A lot of work.
That is why creating a sandbox experience is a good way of giving people a taste.
I like the way Axiom calls it a playground and says "Play with Axiom" and "Launch playground".
This copy is good because:
I love the design of this crossover section on the Tailwind homepage.
I see the code and the result next to each other.
I see how I can get that result with code.
It is interactive and catches my attention.
It makes me feel inspired.
Great job Tailwind team!
Using memes in the product release.
If you understand your ICP (in this case open-source backend devs) it may be a great idea.
An additional benefit is that people may share a meme... that actually has a link to your announcement.
I like the design of this crosshead.
Simple and powerful messaging.
They say what they do. Zero fluff.
They make it easy for devs by explaining how they are different than (obvious) competitors.
They add a little developer-focused social proof.
People want to be valued by their tribe.
One of the ways to do that is by being helpful.
So they want to share things that have a "smell" of insight.
Tool stack/workflow/pipeline chart makes them feel that way.
โ
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.ย
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.
Mixpanel primary CTA is to take an interactive tour.
They take you to a 30min video + a guided UI tour.
Not a signup.
That is because with products that have long time to value (like analytics, observability etc) dev will not see value in the first session.
I mean to really see value you need to see real data, real use cases. And if you were to actually test it would take weeks.
That is why many companies do demos. But demos have their own problems (and most are bad).
Interactive tools make it possible for me to explore the value without talking to anyone.
I love this option.
An ad that doesn't feel like an ad.โ
I like that this is almost a meme.
But it still explains what the company does.
Love it.
Handing #1 dev obstacle: "We can do it ourselves".
Check it out from second 0:35:
โ"Iย bet you're like
We can do it ourselves, it's not that hard.
We know what we're doing.
First, Iย hear you.
Second, are you sure?"
This is mastery.
Pointing out ignorance without alienating people.
I like how this starts with a [WHAT IT IS ABOUT] scroll stopper.
That is coupled with a big block of code that has:
(presumably) when you click "See more" you get the rest of the text post.
Code-style ad format on Reddit.
Code can speak louder than words (sometimes).
It makes your value prop real and concrete to the right audience.ย
I love that it is static and it blurs everything I don't need to get the concept.
For the dev audience, static graphics, when done well, are better than
Tell me what you do in 1 sec, not 60
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 ย 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.
This is a really clever billboard campaign.
Show don't tell they say.
And Segment did exactly that by putting billboards with the wrong location printed on them (LA in SF etc).
The theme/message was "What good is bad data?" which was exactly what they wanted to convey.
What I like about is the alignment between:
This is hard to do imho so big kudos to them ๐!
Downside?
Reportedly many folks who saw billboards didn't get that it was intentional and Tweeted at them about the error.
Or maybe they were next-level jokers...
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.
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 ย "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.
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.
Nice and clean code example.
Clear copy, what it does etc.
Calls to action with links to Github and website.
Really long code example which looks great when clicked on.
I love this dev tool header copy from Neon.
โ They could have gone with "We make your data fly" or "10x your database developer efficiency" or other stuff like that.
๐ 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%. ย
How to bring attention and trust to a feature section?
Add a testimonial.
Ideally, it should talk about that feature to make your message even stronger.
I like how Appsmith made it animated and it just makes you look.
And you read the testimonial and look at the feature above it.
Good stuff.
Funniest dev tool explainer ever? Coming from Wasp.
Let's face it, introducing a problem in an explainer video is often boring. Especially if the problem is
How do you introduce a SaaS boilerplate? Good luck pitching faster time to value or something.
Wasp did something out of the box:
Got me hooked and kept me watching for sure.
+ funny is memorable so you will get a better recall too.
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.
Mux does a few things beautifully in this header.
Value proposition:
Animated visual that is really good for dev tools:
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.
A great example of a quote-style ad.
I like it because:
Great stuff.
Was scrolling LinkedIn the other day, minding my business and what do I see but a new dev marketing newsletter. DevPMM newsletter by Marek Nalikowski (dev PMM at Oxla).
In the first issue he talks about โDeveloper product positioning and messaging examples that slapโ.
His devy explanation of positioning/messaging is just so cool. Will steal it and us it with eng founder for sure. Here it goes.
One idea that Marek goes into that I donโt see used enough is anchoring. You anchor on something your audience knows. Now classic example of โopen-source Firebase alternativeโ from Supabase is one.
But there are other flavors of anchoring.
Funny enough just last week I talked to a marketer from one of the startups I advise about my personal framing for what they do just to see if I get it. Something along the lines of โIf X and Y had a baby, that focused on Z, and had a developer experience of Rโ. So yeah I did anchoring positioning for myself.
Ok, I digressed. The example that made me want to share this with you is this beauty from Tinybird.
I am talking about this quote that anchors on three popular tools: ClickHouse, Supabase, and Postgres. This one sentence carries so much meaning to people who know them. Good luck landing that message in less words.
This is the tricky part though. You need to know your audience enough to know what concepts are commonly (enough) known by them to use it. So the non-dev audience will likely not get it at all. But this is ok. You should land messaging for the champion.
And Marek argues that this is how devs naturally think and talk about products.
Cannot agree more. I often ask dev founders โso what does the product doโ (having read the website)? How do you explain it to dev friends? How do you explain it to other devs on a meetup or conference? Anchoring is surprisingly common in the way they explain it and very rare in their messaging.
๐๐ผ๐ ๐๐ผ ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐ด๐ผ๐ผ๐ฑ ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ต๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ก๐ฒ๐๐ ๐ฎ๐๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐น๐ถ๐ธ๐ฒ๐?
The general tip is simple. Create content that the HN audience finds interesting.
๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐๐ฝ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป๐:
But how do you actually do that?
๐ข๐ป๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐ผ๐ธ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ต๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ณ๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐น๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐:
That was exactly what folks from CockroachDB did at the beginning. ย Heard about it on one of the episodes of the Unusual Ventures podcast with Peter Mattis from Cockroach Labs.
๐๐ ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฝ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ก:
โข "CockroachDB Stability Post-Mortem: From 1 Node to 100 Nodes"
โข "Serializable, lockless, distributed: Isolation in CockroachDB"
โข "How CockroachDB Does Distributed, Atomic Transactions"
ย
Kudos Cockroach Labs team and thanks for sharing!
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 onย 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!
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:ย
Then it goes on to explain how it works with a simple, static graphic.
This whole thing makes me feel peaceful.
How to promote your important company event? How about right there in the header.
A typical approach to promoting events on your site is to have them in the Hello bar (right above the navbar). This is a solid option of course.
But what if this is a super duper important event that you really want to push?
Put it in the header.
The header is the most viewed part of the most visited page on your site.
Doesn't get much better than that.
But you don't want to distract people from your value propositions and main CTAs too much.
How do you do that?
This is how Vercel did with last year's NEXT.js conf.
Nice execution on that pattern.
"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.
Streamlit has an amazing explainer.
They show how to go from:
In 42 seconds.
No audio, just code and a simplified result window.
Amazing stuff.
Action-focused copy is usually better than "sign up".
But sometimes it is hard to find a good copy for this.
Some teams like Vercel or Auth0 ย do "Start building " ย
But that doesn't always work.
I really like this "Get API keys" CTA copy.
Now for the Hero section I really like those two CTAs:
Really great job imho.
Pricing in your docs? That is how @Fly.io does it.
You click a pricing page link on their homepage and you go to the docs!
No 3 boxes with the "most popular" being the middle paid plan ;)
They just give it to you how it is. Exactly what you'd expect from the docs.
There are tables, explanations, and links to other docs pages.
Very bold decision imho. It definitely makes them feel super developer focused.
Plus if you do want a more standard, enterprise stuff you see:
"If you need more support or compliance options, you can choose one of our paid plans. These come with usage included and additional support options."
And that page looks like a classic pricing page.
But they focus on the developer buying experience here. Super interesting.
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.
A docs header worth a thousand words.
For a dev platform or infrastructure tool it is hard to explain where you fit, what you do quickly, and how you connect to existing components quickly. ย
Hopsworks docs team does a great job here.
So instead of using words, they use a diagram:
All of that in a single diagram.
Now that is a dev-focused header visual.
A nice example of making navbar more developer-focused.
Ask for GitHub stars with a link to the repository.
It does three things:
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.
Make it about belonging.โ
Something some people can deeply connect with.
Nostalgia is a very strong emotion.
It feels good to be a part of something as well.
Devs are builders.โ
Make your home page for builders.
Go directly into the "how" instead of the way.
Many devs when they land on your home page, already know the "why".
I love that it:
Devs have a love/hate relationship with "Book a demo" call to action.
Mostly hate though.
Especially if what they want is:
Let's just say that sitting through an hour demo call with a salesperson just to get the pricing is not what most devs love to do with their time.
But there are moments in the buyer journey when devs do want to have that live session:
Then, having a live session/demo is the fastest way to move forward.
@PostHog handles this dev journey reality nicely with:
This approach solves both scenarios really nicely. ย
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.
Linked GitHub logo in the navbar
Adding CTA to your GitHub repo makes your company look more dev-friendly.
If you have a ton of stars I'd show those as well to play that social proof card.
But even without it, I think it's a good way to get more traffic to your repo and get those stars :)
If you want to get your post to do well on HackerNews you may want to break some "marketing rules" you'd expect to work elsewhere when it comes to titles.
And the titles are really important on HN.
People will start a discussion and fight viciously on both sides of the argument without even reading the article.
I even tested it one time by putting an article "Why people on Hacker News comment without reading" on HN. It went to the first spot in 5min and got a few people talking before it got flagged ;) The article obviously had nothing in it. Just an ask for people who clicked out not to comment saying it was empty.
The point stands though. Titles are crucial imho. They set the tone. Good titles give you a better chance.
And no, in this case, Karma didn't play a role here:
What I think mattered was the titles. Very similar theme but a vastly different vibe.
Imho this is what happened here. The Hacker News crowd lives on good hacker life stories, on feeding curiosity. On titles that don't feel like a marketer would post.
So when in doubt go understated.
btw I have a good story of helping an infra startup get to the top of HN Show if you are interested. Added a bunch of links to resources/learnings in there too: https://www.markepear.dev/case-studies/glassflow
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.
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.
Just wanted to share this classic dev tool branding campaign.
There is even a book about this from Jeff Lawson at Twilio.
But I recently saw someone share on HN that it got changed to "How can I reduce acquisition costs by 65%". Made me a bit sad.
But perhaps after years and years of working it stopped delivering any additional brand awareness/affinity.
Could they have come up with another flavor of "Ask your developer."?
Maybe. But maybe at their levels of mind share you are playing a different game.
The good thing is, you are not at that stage ;)
And f you pull off something that is 1% of the success of that famous Twilio campaign you can make your brand noticed and remembered.
I know we are in the year of doing what brings results right now. And branding campaigns may not make the cut.
But maybe we can (and should) afford to do something that helps us deliver that pipeline next year or a year after that?
I like this Reddit ad creative that uses a classic, devy, bell curve meme.
This is a good creative to use when what you want to communicate is overcomplication. As in:
Plus, with devs, if you can make something not look like an ad you already won.
And there were a few comments suggesting just that:
LOVED HOW Flagsmith did it here:
And they got people curious to see how Flagsmith makes this Test in production claim reasonable. I'd check it out if I was working on those workflows.
Newsjacking is a great marketing tactic.
Especially when you can connect it nicely to your product.
โ
And GitGuardian, a tool for secrets management does it beautifully here.
They ran a story on how Toyota suffered from a data breach.
Because they didn't manage their GitHub secrets properly.
โ
Brilliant.
This is a simple but great header imho:
Love it.
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.
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.
In a mature category, it is safe to assume that people know about other tools.
Especially devs.
I love how Axiom owns its unique selling point and how it stands out from the competition.
Takes guts but I love it.
One of the top-performing conversion flows in dev-focused articles.
"Aside CTA" in the "How to do {jobs to be done}" article.
You know the drill:
And Export SDK executes it (almost) perfectly:
One thing that could be tested and changed is putting this "Aside CTA" mid-article and not at the end (tip from Martin Gontovnikas).
A good thing to try if you are running the "How to do {jbtd}" article strategy.
What if your next swag was a donation? That's what Cockroach Labs did.
Ok, so the typical way of doing swag at a conference is to give out t-shirts for badge scans.
And then folks either wear them or throw them away (or keep wearing them when they should have thrown them away but that is another story).
After the conference you take leftovers with you, ship them home or, you guessed it, throw them away.
A lot of throwing away for a badge scan if you ask me.
Cockroach Labs decided to do something completely different.
They donate a few $ to a great charity @Women Who Code for every badge scan they get.
I love it.
An extra benefit (and where the idea originated) is that with this, you can do virtual badge scans too.
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:
โข it is fun, not formal, builds rapport
โข it introduces the core problem the tool solves
โข 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 sฬถtฬถeฬถaฬถlฬถ get inspired by ;)
How to design the navbar product tab? This is what @PostHog does ๐
Figuring out what to put in the navbar is tricky:
The "Product" tab is especially tricky.
It can get overloaded with a ton of content.
I like how Posthog approached it:
I like it.
Great flow of the explainer.ย
Starts with the outcome "Build search UX".
Goes straight to code and 1-2-3-results format.ย
Explains every snippet of code as it is added.
Ends with a nicely presented result: a working search on a website.
No voiceover just code and screenshots.
And it's only 45 sec !!!
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. ย
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).
One of the best types of developer content is a debugging story.
"What is X" or "How to solve Y" work in some situations, especially when you focus on SEO distribution. But a good debugging story is something that even senior devs want to read.
This is an old article from the GitLab and is such a good example of thos format:
The downside of using this format is the same as with most good developer content. You need a real situation, explained by an actual dev in a technical language.
How to get people to sign up for your office hours?
Why not put it on your docs homepage?
Btw, I really like the concept of office hours.
You get your devrels or product to do those weekly and then you just have to figure out how to get people there.
Classic options are to put info in onboarding sequences, in the app, or on the website hello bar.
But Flatfile had another idea. They put it in their docs homepage header.
I find this idea brilliant as many people who browse your docs (especially for the first time) are in that evaluation mode and would actually want to do that.
Plus calls to action in the docs get more respect by design ;)
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.
This is a solid swag copy template that resonates with devs.
"I did X and all I got was this lousy Y"
Why this works imho is:
Very solid start if you run out of ideas.
Is it better to do one big prize or many small prizes?
This is a decision you have to make when thinking about running a swag campaign.
Turns out that a ย small number of huge prizes can get you way better ROI on the same budget.
And NannyML has done it brilliantly here.
They are a monitoring tool and they give away monitoring setup.
This is something that actually can go viral. And it did.
Funny dev newsletter CTA. From shiftmag .dev by Infobip.
It starts with a chuckle-worthy:
"Sarcastic headline, but funny enough for engineers to sign up"
Then they follow up by disarming the "is that spam" and building more rapport with:
They end with an alternative call to action. RSS feed.
Most newsletters don't do RSS.
But for many devs RSS feed is the preferred content subscription.
Great job!
With/without is a classic marketing campaign theme.
AhoyConnect does it nicely in this ad.
Obviously, not everyone loves memes.
But many devs do.
Those who do may smirk -> smirk builds brand affinity.
Architecture diagrams are awesome.
They have this smell of value that makes you want to share them with others.
This one is particularly good-looking imho.
How to write a "What is {MY CORE KEYWORD}" article that gets to the top of HackerNews? ๐
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:
๐ฆ๐๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ถ๐ป๐ ๐ถ๐ป๐๐ฟ๐ผ.
โข โ No "In today's fast-paced data-driven world enterprises work with data" stuff.
โข โ
Justย ย "Learn what database sharding is, how sharding works, and some common sharding frameworks and tools."
๐๐ถ๐๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ธ๐ฒ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐น๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ.
๐ Speaking peer to peer, not authority-student:
โข "Youโve probably seen this table before, about how scaling out helps you take this users table, all stored on a single server:"
โข "And turn it into this users table, stored across 2 (or 1,000) servers:"
โข "But thatโs only one type of sharding (row level, or horizontal). "
๐จ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ท๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ด๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฎ๐๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ
Things like:
โข "Partitioning has existed โ especially in OLAP setups"
โข "Sifting through HDFS partitions to find the missing snapshot "
๐๐ฐ๐๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ฒ๐ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ต๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ต๐ผ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ
๐ฅ Look at the section "How database sharding works under the hood" with subsections:
โข Sharding schemes and algorithms
โข Deciding on what servers to use
โข Routing your sharded queries to the right databases
โข Planning and executing your migration to a sharded solution
๐ ๐๐ผ๐ป๐๐: ๐ฝ๐น๐๐ด ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐ ๐ด๐ฒ๐ป๐๐น๐
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.
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 โญ 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.
Create a connection with your ideal customer profile.
"Wrong answers only" questions are great for that imho.
Articulate a deeper thought.โ
Sometimes you want to tell the world something but you don't know how.
When somebody articulates what you were thinking you just want to share that with them.
This is what this tweet is about.
A deeper thought with some parallel examples to back it up.
What to put in the header when your dev tool does a lot?
I like how Appsmith approaches it.
In their case, they have multiple use cases they want to showcase.
But you could use the same idea for many features or products.
Show multiple clickable tabs:
A bonus idea is the "Try cloud" | "Self-hosted" CTA.
It communicates right away that you can deploy that dev tool anywhere.
If the self-hosted deployment is important to your customers let them know.
You don't want them to look for it and drop from the page trying to find the FAQ.
The idea behind this conversion play is to put an "Aside CTA" that is unrelated to the content early in the article.
And get that clicked.
But obviously, if you do that it will be pushy and intrusive.
So?
Nevo David from Novu shared this idea on one of the podcasts:
Btw, Nevo says that cat memes work best.
Make login our problem. Not yours.
This is a beautiful messaging of Auth0 solution.
Login
Simple explanation of what it does/gives you.
Simplified of course
Our problem. Not yours.
You "outsource" this boring but important problem to someone else.
It also has a feel of SaaS in there.
They will take care of it.
โ
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!
How to run developer-focused Reddit ads that get upvoted?
Reddit is well known for anti-promotional sentiments.
Just post something along the lines "you can solve that with our dev tool" and see.
So running ads on Reddit feels even more like a no-no.
Especially if you add problems with bot clicks and attribution as most devs will have some sort of blocks.
But you know your audience is on Reddit.
And for some of us, it may very well be the only social platform they are on.
So what do you do?
This is how @Featureform approached it to get almost 100 upvotes on an ad:
If you are going for brand awareness rather than a direct conversion those types of ads can work very well.
I liked it for sure.
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.
I love how simple this delivery is. But this is what makes it powerful:
Bonus points for showing those regions with their balloon logo.
Just loved how they focused their message to the very core and used all of those elements to land it right away. Great job.
Gonto shared an interesting play that they tried at Auth0 when he was running growth there.
So the story goes like this:
Iย 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.
This body cross-section is just awesome.
It makes it obvious that I can connect it to my workflow.
This is a must for dev-focused pages imho.
What I like:
- there are many integrations listed
- I can see the code and that it is easy to use
- The CTA is to integration docs, awesome!
โ
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.