
For the love of God, please tell me what your company does - basitmakine
https://hackernoon.com/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell-me-what-your-company-does-c2f0b835ab92
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david-cako
> I’m confident that most people in the day-to-day of business will agree —
> the more expensive the service a B2B company provides, the more
> incomprehensible its website.

This is 100% accurate. There was a thread on here a few days ago about the 10
most valuable startups, and I was surprised to find that I wasn't at all
familiar with several of them. I started googling and was shocked at how
difficult it was to understand what the fuck their business is from their home
page. It is much easier to just go on wikipedia or read a press release of
some sort.

I have to wonder if the conclusion in this article is valid -- the more
obscure the web marketing, the more phone calls they will get, and the easier
they can do the hard-sale. I feel like most of these businesses are so cryptic
and generic that it pushes people away.

~~~
devopsproject
> the more phone calls they will get, and the easier they can do the hard-sale

A couple of reasons:

1\. It lets them be flexible with what solutions they can offer.

2\. For companies that do a few things, it can be really difficult to be clear
and concise

Example: You own a company that makes consumer facing apps with a focus on QR
codes. A potential customer who wants a website for an internal use may not
choose you so you end up with garbage like "we create dynamic and flexible end
to end solutions to enable your core competencies"

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jmmcd
I don't think they do it to upsell on the phone. I think they do it because:
1. They want investors more than they want customers, and they think investors
like "media intelligence" better than "list of contacts". 2. They prefer
talking about "media intelligence" when they go to parties. 3. They like
talking about values and communities and making the world a better place, just
like those guys on Silicon Valley.

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galonk
This drives me crazy. Most of the things that pop up on HN that I haven't
heard of, I click the link and there's nothing there explaining what they do
or what the product is.

There's a company called Deekit that was on HN recently. This is what I see
when I click their product page:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxucYFiswY_vazdFTF9mUlNHb1U...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxucYFiswY_vazdFTF9mUlNHb1U/view)

Not just no explanation... no text! (you have to scroll down). Note: they are
not selling fashion or phones... turns out it's a shared whiteboard or
something.

~~~
kailik
Hey there! I'm one of the founders here at Deekit. I see you brought out the
gap in our mobile homepage not having the short summary tagline on the top
image. We're actually fixing it to match it with the site you see on the
desktop. Totally agree that the twitter-length summary of what the
product/service is about should be always the first thing you see quickly.

PS! A collaborative whiteboard in the cloud is exactly what we do -
collaborate, draw and discuss ideas on any device and anywhere :)

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gumby
For some companies the point of such a web site is prospect qualification: If
you are in the market for the product/service you'll understand what the
company does; if not you won't waste the company's (or your) time contacting
them. This isn't just a web issue: consider the famous sign on 880 in Oakland
that stood for years and read only, "stop casting porosity".

However in general the point of the article stands...unfortunately.

~~~
jmmcd
That sign isn't quite famous enough for me to have heard about it. What does
it mean?

~~~
gumby
It qualified you properly: you are apparently not in their customer
demographic!

If you simply type "stop casting porosity sign" to a search engine you will
find an enormous discussion by people who did and did not understand it. It
was quite famous for decades.

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Twirrim
This continues to drive me absolutely nuts. At the very least you should have
your elevator pitch right up front.

------
jbergens
Great article! I wish this fad goes away soon.

If I had the money I would think about hiring this company to get the contact
info to a couple of reporters that could write more articles about Meltwaters
bad site (and others like it).

