"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vs pages are a classic SaaS marketing.
But I like how Ably adjusts them to the developer audience:
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!
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 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.
How to design the navbar product tab? This is what @PostHog does 👇
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.
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!
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
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 do "Start building "
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.
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.
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:
Interactive product tours are all the rage.
But how do you make them work for the dev audience?
How do you deal with:
That is hard.
But Vercel somehow made it.
This is by far the best product tour I have seen so far.
What I love:
This product tour is what dev tool startups will aspire to for years (or months ;) ) to come.
Mark my words.
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.
A classic dev tool blog call to action that is somewhat underused these days.
Was going through Martin Gontovnikas blog and found a post from a couple of years back.
He called this "Aside CTA" and the idea is this:
Why this can work well with devs is:
Definitely a classic that is worth trying.
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 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.
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.
Say what you do and how you do it.
What:
How:
CTA (bonus):
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.
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.
Great example of programmatic SEO from Snyk.
They created a page called snyk advisor.
It is a repository of pages about open-source packages.
Each page is created automatically out of publicly available information.
Enhances it with Snyk-generated security scans and reports.
It builds awareness for other Snyk products in the security space.
A lot of those pages rank high in google for the {package} keyword which is incredible.
And when people land on the package report page the CTAs to Snyk products push conversions.
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.
Say what we are all thinking.
This tweet is great as it states something that most of us feel.
It is something that you may have had a discussion about with someone recently.
You might have fought about one tool or another.
But at the end of the day tools don't matter.
You can share it with someone as:
There are a few developer experience gems here:
Also, their design is super clean, non-invasive, and simple which makes for easy content consumption and more developer love.
There are a lot of boring vendor t-shirts at conferences.
And they get boring results.
I like this bold design from GitGuardian:
Nice.
Devs are builders.
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:
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.
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!
Digital Ocean went for an ad for the Hactoberfest in a tricky place.
To keep it in the medium that fits YouTube shorts they:
I think doing YouTube shorts is an interesting opportunity in a yet unsaturated market (as of 2022).
And doing ads that fit that medium so nicely is an art.
Good job DO!
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.
A great example of a quote-style ad.
I like it because:
Great stuff.
Mux does a few things beautifully in this header.
Value proposition:
Animated visual that is really good for dev tools:
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
I like that this is both strong and subtle.
It comes right after I've delivered a smell of value with a technical intro.
And I can see that there is more value to come after thanks to the table of contents.
The CTA itself feels like an info box in the docs rather than a typical subscribe CTA.
Good stuff.
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.
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.
7k likes on an event promo post to the dev audience.
I don't think I've ever seen 7k likes on a developer company post on Linkedin.
Ok, this is Github, but still.
This is a 26sec video where they go:
This is a job well done:
And they could have done:
This is how to promote an event. LOVED IT!
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!
When your dev tool has two deployment options, SaaS and on-prem, you often need two tabs or something of the sort on the pricing page.
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.