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Comment by sixhobbits | Hacker News Reader

> In my case, I found that the more documentation I wrote the more conversions I got.

I think this is key and great documentation is one of the most underrated parts of business. Stripe nailed this. Digital Ocean nailed this. Most places don't or can't.

[note - personal bias as I have a startup in this space, but it seems very clear to me and I think there's a win-win in businesses focusing more on their docs in terms of improving global efficiency and improving sales and trust in that business - it's just really low hanging fruit in a majority of cases I've seen]

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This is why https://fastcomments.com has an example above the fold on the homepage.

Good docs will be coming soon...

Wow! FastComments.com is hands-down the best landing page I've encountered in a LONG time. Crystal-clear what it is, why it's a good choice, how it works, and a set of FAQs answering virtually all the questions / doubts / potential objections I could think of. Bookmarked; I may well use this for my own site when I get around to re-launching it. Bravo!

> FastComments prioritizes speed and user experience above all else

Just from reading the example code, I see a potential performance optimization.

A site could make pages with FastComments load and render a bit faster by loading your script using <script async>, <script defer> or both together, so the page load time doesn't depend on a round trip to your CDN.

The inline script would have to be slightly different for this to work, but not much different.

Yeah I know, thanks for the reminder though!!

Nice and clean but the lack of syntax highlighting bothered me more than it should have.

Similar to a sibling comment, I really enjoy this page & site - even though I was already expecting it to be good.

Well done to whatever tasteful individuals designed and executed/approved those decisions.

Reminds me of 2005 and trying to figure out jQuery vs. Mootools.

jQuery had lots of docs with examples, and I never was able to wrap my head around Mootools.

I second this exact comparison.

Being able to try and customize jQuery UI components was also what sold me back then. I think simple web-based demos in your docs go a long way in explaining what your product actually feels like to use. Even a demo that's a bit contrived is useful. People will even just mindlessly play with demos. They are very worth doing in my opinion.

I found that technical blog posts and documentation have made me aware of brands I otherwise wouldn't of known existed.

Digital Ocean was great at this in the early days. I don't know if they haven't put as much effort into as of late or changes in SEO, but I don't seem to get funneled there by search engines as frequently.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/write-for-digit...

This is a fantastic way to get your marketing into stratosphere. I'm seeing more and more companies doing it.

Can you give few examples of those other companies? Thanks.

https://github.com/malgamves/CommunityWriterPrograms

strapi comes to mind https://strapi.io/write-for-the-community

Being able to create beginners of your product helps create market and retain customers like nothing else.

As an example in identity space, Auth0 has such amazing documentation, especially their simple and dynamic code examples which reflect your login/tenant.

Recently, I started evaluating Microsoft Azure AD B2C for this purpose and it's just such a nightmare! Their only configuration options are email/sms for 2FA despite the fact they use their own auth app for their own products (such as logging into Azure Portal!). I had evaluated Azure AD 5 years ago and it's still a nightmare from documentation standpoint. You have to hunt down code examples on stack overflow or some github samples that their developers have provided.

This is the benefits of an FAQ or open documentation platform. The treasure trough of organic keyword combinations and semantic linking that Google does makes for wonderful traffic. In most cases these are long-tail searches which evidently power >70% of all searches and from personal experience have a very solid conversion rate due to the intent of the searcher and relevant documentation in place to help answer questions.

For any startups out there, this should be at the top of your list for marketing. It will take time to get out of the Google sandbox but once you are out you are likely to get rewarded for the effort.

> Stripe nailed this. Digital Ocean nailed this

I would like to add Unity 3D engine to that list.

But that sounds great - I love writing documentation and tutorials (how many bugs and holes I am finding during that process!), so I have another justification for working on more articles for my product. I usually underestimate that 70% of traffic comes from Google looking for stuff like "measuring temperature in python".

fyi: I am building "Arduino for Biosignals" (aidlab.com/developer)

This is why I hope that being a techncial writer will help me in my SaaS endevours in the future.

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