Ask HN: Why do SaaS companies not put up screenshots? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do SaaS companies not put up screenshots?

Why do SaaS companies have such bad marketing?

This is a new trend. Notion, figma, airtable do this. These are all modern day SaaS winners with great design teams. Most SaaS companies don't take design seriously. Cause they don't need to have great design to get customers.

Maybe it's a concern about screenshots not matching current versions of the product, but that shouldn't be a concern on the main product page or home page.

Are screenshots required for good marketing? Are you the market they are selling to?

A screenshot can explain the product and how it works at a glance. One screenshot is worth 1,000 white papers. ;)

For example, Userify (https://userify.com, cross-cloud ssh key management for teams, with a nifty color-coded dashboard so you can actually see who has what access) doesn't seem to have any screenshots anywhere.

Your question about whether I am the target market is an interesting point, but how does a screenshot (or lack) help in resolving that, and how does someone know if the target demo wants to see a screenshot?

That comment was less about screenshots and more about your general comment that all SaaS marketing is bad

Oh, I see. No, sorry, I didn't mean to make a statement like that at all. I meant that it's frustrating when (good) SaaS companies don't even take the basic first step of putting up a screenshot so we can see what it is. Sometimes, of course, it's not applicable or even easy to screenshot, but I can't think of too many SaaS's that can't provide at least a mockup of what it does for you (even the server-focused SaaS's).

For example, I mentioned Userify; how about another (much better) example of Ansible Tower/AWX? It's great to just see a screenshot of the dashboard: https://www.ansible.com/products/tower

This is an example of another great product that's much better marketed than Userify, IMO.

> how does someone know if the target demo wants to see a screenshot?

How do I know they don’t want to see a purple cow?

A significant portion of working as a marketer is understanding the needs and behavior of the target audience, making a decision based on that understanding, and then validating that decision. And hopefully iterating on that over time.

If results are better when there are no screenshots vs. when there are screenshots, why would I include screenshots? Because a couple opinionated randos on HN who will never pay for my product claim to like screenshots?

I agree with your sentiment, even though it is burdened with a heavy assumption that SaaS companies have great marketing teams who are doing A/B tests.

However, your argument would be more persuasive without that last sentence (especially because you don't know me; for all you know, I'm a dog![0])

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

For the most part, I’m not trying to be persuasive on here. Just riling up the randos.

Some do, some don't. It really depends. I'd suggest it isn't bad marketing, but it can often be difficult to make a screenshot look appealing to the buyer. It might look appealing to the user, but that is often a different person.

If it is so consistent in the industry, I doubt it's by accident.

> If it is so consistent in the industry, I doubt it's by accident.

Couldn't it also be because many SaaS companies are better at tech than marketing?

Not the successful ones ;)

Sometimes the SaaS is so old that a screenshot would stop users signing up.

Doesn't mean they're not the best at solving the problem though.

Oh, that's a great point, and probably true (if a bit funny). However, my guess is that a good screenshot (or mockup of a screenshot) would still help.

Even AWS almost never has a screenshot of a particular product in use, even on its main product page.

Yeah that's weird.

And the pricing is always very separated from the actual product descriptions. Try figuring out how much an instance with the right amount of RAM and CPU you need actually costs! Maybe that's intentional, though.

They want you to sign-up.

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