The Art of Writing One-Sentence Product Descriptions | Hacker News Reader

The Art of Writing One-Sentence Product Descriptions

medium.dave-bailey.com

335 pointsdavesuperman57 comments

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Writing effective one sentence product descriptions can be boiled down to:

Describe in simple terms a major product feature that either or both:

a) solves the biggest pain point for your customer

b) makes you the most different from your closest competitor

Examples:

https://heapanalytics.com: Automatically track all website and app user actions - no coding required

https://mailchimp.com/: Easiest to use email marketing platform

https://www.pipedrive.com/: Drag and drop interface CRM - view all deals by type at a glance

https://www.getrevue.co - Effortlessly send a weekly newsletter to engage your audience

http://www.artofemails.com/ - Proven prewritten sales email templates

You took one point from OP ("lead features") and missed the others.

For example, the "input output" part. Without that you are probably missing some representation of the user/customer in your description.

Ab rollers would never sell if they said "gives you rock hard abs" without the "just 20 minutes a week!" part.

I was hoping for more insight into how to distill a product into that one line sentence. Obviously there is no magic formula for this, but the article mostly consists of "You should be doing this" with little other substance.

> I’d argue that even the most complex SaaS platforms can be simplified with an illustrative lead feature.

Again, was really hoping for some insight into why he argues this.

I work for a company that provides a SaaS/PaaS product that is immensely powerful but notoriously difficult to describe. The company is well established in the marketplace, but still has a difficult time getting 3rd party developers on board unless those developers had prior exposure to the product for some reason. I've often felt that the answer involves some distillation of the functionality into a ridiculously short description, but have not been successful in crafting such a description (yet).

It's easier to say it can be done than to do it. ;)

You might find this book useful:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Your-One-Sentence-Attention/dp/0...

I'm part-way through it and have found the advice valuable so far. I don't think there's a "cookie cutter" formula, but there are exercises and things you can do to help you distill a pitch down to one sentence.

As someone who often has to distill ideas and words down to convey a message. I would say try to focus on the "emotion" more than functionality. Emotion>reason/facts in these sort of situations. What is the "frustration" your product solves for developers, appeal to that. Everyone wants their frustrations solved, just thinking about it is soothing.

Things that stand out in your statement to me already are "powerful" and "developers".

Also if a layman asked why your product is powerful for developers what would you say?

Good luck! I always enjoyed these sorts of problems.

Thank you for the advice! Good food for thought.

I'm sorry, but the writer was super clear about the exact formula. It's a simple I/O arrangement that opens with what a user does and closes with what happens (e.g. Push a button, get a ride).

That's it.

Not sure if sarcasm? The writer was super clear about the desired end state, which is: "Write a statement that distills your product into Action/Output". But arriving at that action/output is far from simple, especially with products that aren't so simple.

Take any major PaaS/SaaS/IaaS product (AWS, Heroku, SalesForce) and try to distill it into an action/outcome. Can it be done? Probably to a certain degree, but not every product can be described in terms of pushing a button to get something.

Back to the original point and your assertion that the exact formula was provided, this really feels like the "Draw an Owl" meme to me. For those not familiar, here's how you draw an owl:

1. Draw some circles 2. Draw the rest of the fucking owl

It's a great formula if you know how to draw the rest of the owl. But in general, not a great formula at all.

As the end of the post notes, if you're having an especially hard time with this, that's a pretty good indicator that your company may be screwed. Noting how hard it is to unscrew a company that lacks clear focus, it makes a strong case for defining the core I/O very early on.

It may turn out that the I and the O are, themselves, fairly complex concepts that are only understood within particular, highly-specialized markets. That's fine. People in those markets can still easily describe and discuss what your product does without anyone from your company being there. And that's the goal.

It's not about what the marketing team says. It's about what's said when the marketing team doesn't even know the conversation is happening.

I agree in either you don't know your differentiating value... or your audience

For me there is no simple formula, its elbow grease. You write you description, then re-write again and again. You always try and remove the unnecessary, occasionally forking improvements to a new message. Clear and simple text is surprisingly hard and time consuming.

Something that works for me - I avoid distilling. Instead I focus on a killer opening line.

It's really hard to take four, or whatever, paragraphs and reduce that to one sentence. It'll feel lossy every step.

Instead I focus on the first and most powerful sentence. From there I imagine it opening up a dialog where all the possibilities and nuances can flow. But you'd got to start at that sentence.

Now, maybe it'll not be that exactly, but I find that process a lot more fruitful than a distilling one.

I agree-- the idea of the first sentence is not to completely describe everything, but to get people interested enough to ask for more information.

It may be difficult to summarize the features, but can you produce a one sentence description of the chief benefit? Your 3rd party developers will be interested in the feature set, but their decision making budget holding manager will want to the benefit.

Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd link to the company or at least identify it. I'm really curious about a super-powerful tool with functionality that's difficult to describe.

The elevator pitch is fundamentally a pitch. And a one sentence summary is fundamentally a summary. They're fundamentally different.

I was sailing with a buddy (a made man in SV) and he asked me what I was working on. I blurted out a one sentence summary and did it ever hit. I hadn't even thought of running through an elevator pitch because I was racing and was really thinking about sail trim. But I remember the summary and I'll use it. I may even lead the pitch with it.

BTW the worst single sentence summaries are the Hollywood summaries: this is Airbnb for Ubuntu distributions. That sort of summary says that you haven't really thought it out. It's a trope and their eyes just glaze over immediately.

For better or worse, some people really want to hear your "We're the X for Y". My startup [1] isn't the X for any Y (the closest thing I've found is "we're the Dolby for reading" — but this is not a close fit and makes people think too hard), but I've heard from many mentors/investors that I should try hard to come up with an "X for Y" comparison because they and their colleagues like to hear them.

I agree with you that these summaries are sometimes quite awful, but in some cases they are quite apt. The conclusion I've come to is that if a very good analogy exists, you should use it. But the bar for "very good" should be quite high, since a bad "X for Y" will do more harm than good. You end up in meta-conversations about the analogy itself, which isn't helpful.

1: http://www.BeeLineReader.com

With a summary, you're trying to get a value proposition across succinctly. And I (as in this is my opinion) don't think you can do that with X for Y.

  You push a button and in five minutes a Mercedes
  picks you up and takes you where you want to go.

I know exactly what that means. I immediately see the value in it.

As you say but this is not a close fit and makes people think too hard. That means they can't immediately see the value in it. That means you have to keep working on it. Bailey didn't say this was gonna be easy.

BTW, the Kalanick summary personalizes brilliantly and name checking Mercedes sure doesn't hurt. The later Uber summary (“Tap a button, get a ride.”) does nothing for me. I only vaguely know what it even means because I already know it's about Uber. It could be talking about an FPS for all I know. Still, it is better than an iPhone app for taxis.

But the bar for "very good" should be quite high. That's an awesome line.

Maybe someone from YC wants to chime in, but I noticed a pattern the other day when looking at their product descriptions.

http://yclist.com/

Look at the difference in F1 going forward...

To help people position your product in their heads effectively, points of parity (e.g. analogies) and points of difference are very useful.

The 'X for Y' is a way to express both at once "it's like X but it's different because it focuses on Y". However, as you say, it only works well in limited situations and can come off as very cliché.

During customer development, I recommend leading with the input / output description and then letting the recipient clarify using their own 'point of parity'.

and that shows exactly my problem with the one sentence analogies: "we're the Dolby for reading".

The first thing I know about Dolby is the noise suppression technology for tapes. So you are noise suppression for reading ? Well, that didn't work.

Next thing I'm thinking of is Dolby surround. But I can't think about how surround sound should work with reading.

I look at your webpage and now I know your product. But "we're the Dolby for reading" didn't help me at all in understanding your product.

Most of the time on hackernews when I'm reading "We're the X for Y" I have to google X first to understand what they're trying to say with this sentence.

You're right — this is a terrible analogy from a customer perspective. I only ever use it if pressed by a VC who wants to know how our business model will work. There aren't many tech (non-biotech) that get most of their revenue from licensing, so Dolby it is. But the analogy only "works" in the context of a discussion about business models.

I think you're on the money, there isn't a good "A for B" analogy.

That said, I like formulas for this sort of thing, whther they yield the final solution or not. Uber's sentence from the article could be an alternative:

"You push a button and in five minutes a Mercedes picks you up and takes you where you want to go."

"You push a button and you can read 26.4% faster."

That still feels a little vague and evasive, I think.

"You push a button and your book is re-formatted and coloured so that you can read faster."

If you have to have an anology, you could try. "A yad for ebooks."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad

I don't think the formula makes sense with "A" you have to include the Wikipedia link to. The point of "the uber for y" or "the apple of x" is that it plays off of our deep seated awareness of uber and Apple. Do I want to be a yad? I don't know.

The word "Mercedes" in Kalanick's summary is a highly loaded word with a lot of prior meaning attached to it.

Similarly, I think, when people say "Airbnb for something", they're using shorthand for something with a lot of prior meaning attached to it.

My point: we're being too harsh on those who use "Uber for this" or "Airbnb for that"... they're using shorthand the way Kalanick used "Mercedes".

On the one hand, you're right about using a brand name as shorthand for what that represents.

But you're missing a point that's true of the startup metaphor but not of the mercedes one: "uber for x" has been absolutely beaten to death as a low-effort startup pitch, to the point of being a useful counter-signal. Mercedes has no such baggage when it comes to judging the people saying the word.

New pitch: Mercedes AMG. We don't just want Mercedes, we want the AMG level :)

> they're using shorthand the way Kalanick used "Mercedes"

I disagree. Using "Mercedes" instead of "taxi" changes the framing (using "taxi" would have evoked "oh, it's a taxi app; thse already exist"); describing something as "Uber for X" does not change the framing (aside from the known fact that it has become a tiring cliche).

I agree.

Ultimately, writing that one sentence with unmph is harder than it looks. Sometimes "Uber for__" is concise and conveys lots of meaning, sometimes it's vague and meaningless.

I think the biggest trap in the "A for B" formula is trying to ride on the prestige of B. That's why there are so many "Apple of X." What they're trying to convey is "awesome, stylish & successful" or somesuch. It's like calling yourself "Michael Jordan of __". You're just being obtuse in telling me that you're awesome.

"Uber for tripsitters" OTOH conveys actual meaning. Press a button, a freelance tripsitter will arrive.

I had to google tripsitter.

Then you're probably not in the target market. :)

I agree. A pitch and a summary are different. Part of the art of the one-sentence description is knowing your audience.

For instance, I operate a directory of technology for teachers. One of the services I provide is a newsletter and blog [1] where I summarize technologies (e.g. websites, mobile apps, desktop apps, electronics products) in one-sentence descriptions.

The way I've written those one-sentence descriptions has evolved over time. The format that has resonated the most with my audience is stating the technology's primary purpose, which sometimes can imply it's benefit. Since I know my audience is teachers, the context of the purpose and benefit is already assumed and baked into the description.

I would never use a "This is X for Y" description, for example, not because I dislike it (which I don't), but because it wouldn't be informative for my audience.

However, I think a "This is X for Y" description can be entirely appropriate for an audience of startup investors. This is why YC coaches their startups to use such a sentence framework.

[1] https://edshelf.tumblr.com/

I think because of the velocity of YC, and I believe they've even said as much, that YC doesn't care about ideas. They care about people and markets. It's basically their investment thesis. So for their purposes, positioning is much much more important than differentiation. They want people they can recombine and reposition.

There are however other kinds investors and other kinds of entrepreneurs where that just doesn't make sense.

Because "this is X for Y" is technically one sentence but it needs a lot of work to decode. If you can deliver just a sentence, it should also be just a sentence of thought to parse. Instead we need to think about what is X, what is Y, substitute the variables, and now we're juggling a paragraph of incoherent thought. Whereas a "Do this, and that happens" doesn't need any of that.

>BTW the worst single sentence summaries are the Hollywood summaries: this is Airbnb for Ubuntu distributions. That sort of summary says that you haven't really thought it out. It's a trope and their eyes just glaze over immediately.

Wrong. The words "airbnb for cooking - or more specifically restaurants. shared meals at people's homes" are worth $12 million if uttered by the right person. (Which isn't me.)

"X for Y" is properly thought of as jargon, not marketing. It's useful, just not as the only component of a pitch. It definitely shouldn't be considered a summary.

Read old TV Guide plot summaries, e.g. Mr Ed, Season 1 Busy Wife: Carol gets wrapped up in a woman's club and completely ignores Wilbur. It's up to Ed to try and help her overcome the obsession.

"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."

After the death of her parents, a young socialite wrecks a northern kingdom.

And their crowdsourced spiritual successor:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/HomePage

There's a Facebook group that's dedicated to One Sentence Startup Pitches: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1500321840185061/

  "A dating site for vegans: NeverMetHerbivore"
  "A combined BBQ restaurant + strip club: Ribs for Your Pleasure"
  "Autocorrect for tattoos"

"Something where you can type someone’s name and find out a bunch of information about them."

Well Mark Zuckerberg nailed that one describing his Facebook.

In summary, absolutely nobody thinks about your startup or product as much as you do.

You need to pitch at their level, not your own.

A brief, but interesting post on how viral products are simple and can be easily described in one sentence.

>The format of both descriptions is the same: “You do X and Y happens.” X is the input and Y is the output. This input-output pair matches our intuition about how software works. Simplifying the product as a straightforward input and desirable output creates the sense that it’s an ingenious idea.

I think it's important to have a simple product and using a feature to explain it makes sense. However, this brought to mind the sales and marketing idea that it's better to sell benefits, not features. I'm not sure where I sit on which approach is better, I suppose they each have their purpose. I definitely find myself pitching my side projects based on the feature, not the benefit :)

I think you can use both:

Start with the lead feature, so that the potential customer has a simple idea to kick around in their head.

Then, describe the benefits, giving them a fuller story for why they should use the product.

Like most things, if it's too difficult to describe, it's probably too difficult to use. The lack of any core feature is the death of most products.

Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on service and quick delivery."

Ugh. How about "Push a button and your lawn is mowed in 48 hours."

Every business should have a one sentence value prop: Twitter: "open the app and get the news in less than 5 minutes."

Snapchat: "see what your friends did today in the time it takes to ride the elevator to your office."

Stripe: "spend three minutes pasting some code and start accepting credit card payments."

Devzilla: "create an account in two minutes and get more web development leads."

So on and so forth....if you can't describe it like that then it is too hard to use.

> Well said. It shocks me how complex people make their value proposition for no real reason but vanity. "We are like Air BNB for lawn care with a focus on service and quick delivery."

> Ugh. How about "Push a button and your lawn is mowed in 48 hours."

You use the former for a savvy investor whose already seen half a dozen lawn care startups and is looking for where yours is different. ("focus on service and quick delivery", different than focusing on price or on the user experience of the app)

You use the latter to describe what your startup is doing to Uncle Shirley, i.e. potential customers.

The difference is in what you're positioning yourself against. Either it's other startups or the neighbor kid down the street. Use the former pitch with the latter audience and it'll sail over their heads, the latter pitch with the former audience and they'll roll their eyes and tell you to get to the point.

But you can't not position, marketing without positioning is education, and ain't nobody got time for that.

> Every business should have a one sentence value prop:

Sure, but the elevator pitch for customers is not the same as the elevator pitch for investors.

Fair point. I spend zero time thinking about investors.

one of the top branding experts in the world,Al Ries, says the purpose of a slogan is to give your users the tool for explaining why someone should use your product when discussing it with a friend.

https://youtu.be/EAXCu1zeaaI

I marvel at how movie plots can be summed up in one sentence. On-line movie services (ATT UVerse, etc.) give such concise descriptions in so little space.

The inability to formulate a one-sentence product description is a symptom of an imprecise product strategy. It's not a case of "in spite of it".

A mature & reliable product strategy (who you're targeting, what differentiated value you're adding to your targets etc) will automatically yield that one-sentence.

No art about wordsmithing. All about a valuable product.

Sort of, but for highly complex systems (take something like real estate for example) describing it in this way is difficult not because of lack of product and targeting knowledge, but because the customer is so far behind in their knowledge of how the process works.

I prefer product haikus:

---

This smart microwave,

Explodes when our servers fail,

Sorry about that.

what gets lost is the pitch changes depending on the audience... there is no one universal sale. Now I think the concept's valid, but focus differs

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