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Comment by themoonbus | Hacker News Reader

Here is how to write a landing page.

Big letters: "Sandstorm makes it easier to do XYZ" or "Sandstorm lets you do XYZ by doing XYZ"

E.g. "Sandstorm lets you run your own personal web applications without needing a background in IT!"

or "Sandstorm lets you to install personal web apps as easily as you install mobile apps!"

3 examples of what this could actually mean for 80% of your users "Run your own Dropbox!" "Host your own WordPress Blog!" "Get a mailbox to match your personalized email address!"

THEN drill down into what it actually is (Sandstorm is a open source platform that makes it easier to run and manage your own personal server, yadda yadda), and its more specific features, such as usability, security, etc.

(This advice operates under the assumption that "individuals" are your main target audience.)

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+1 I went to Sandstorm's home page, and spent the first 5 minutes trying to figure out what it is & what it does.

"Sandstorm is an open source platform for personal servers". Ok, fine, but what is it REALLY? What does it do? Why is it better than (hosting / VPS hosting / AWS / Docker / PaaS)? Give me some examples of what I can do with it.

Sorry, you lost me with your home page.

I had the same experience. Still don't get it.

Question: Did either of you try the demo?

(I know it was kind of broken under all the traffic earlier.)

Usually the demo is what makes people "get it".

It's been surprisingly difficult to find a sentence or two that describe Sandstorm in a way that is effective on everyone. For any text we use, different sets of people get it or are confused. :/

Sure, but I think almost anything is better here than "Sandstorm is an open source platform for personal servers."

People on the internet are easily distracted and have short attention spans. You want them to get interested enough to actually run your demo. I'm not going to take 10 minutes to delve deeper unless you hook me to begin with.

Also, you don't need to have text that appeals to everyone (there is no "average" user), but you should be able to write text that appeals to at least one of your groups (individuals, developers, enterprise). The two sentences you have currently are so generic that they don't say anything at all. An open source platform? An open source platform that does what?

Target the group with your messaging that you are targeting with your platform. Sure, sandstorm could be used by any of them, but which group is MOST important to your platform?

I've added a brief subtext based in part on your suggestions. Let me know what you think.

Looks good! I would think about replacing your main tagline with that sentence, or something like it. Not to be overly harsh, but your main tagline doesn't say anything.

Edit: Actually, I think if you said something like "Sandstorm is an open source app platform for personal servers" that would be a major improvement. The whole "app" part is missing from the main tagline. Then, your sub-tagline goes into more detail about what apps.

Edit 2: Actually, I would remove the open source part altogether. It's redundant if you have a github link somewhere on your page, which you do, and I think the developer community you are targeting would assume that it's open source. Or, just keep "open".

Actually, the words "open source" are a recent addition to our header, whereas we've always had the github link. We discovered from feedback that many people who visited our page had no idea that it was open source, since most people don't look at nav bars, and this of course completely changed their perception of the project (for the worse, obviously). When we put "open source" into the header, we saw a marked increase in interest.

Thanks for the feedback, though! We'll think about inserting "app" in there.

Ah, gotcha. Makes sense!

10 minutes? The demo allows you to set up a Wordpress blog in literally 10 seconds (it's four clicks and no typing or scrolling -- not even to log in). I'm not sure why that's so onerous, even for folks with short attention spans.

Admittedly people don't find that out until they've already decided to click, which they might not if they expect it will take 10 minutes. :)

Maybe we should change the button text to "60-second demo" or something...

That's such a great line that you just wrote: "You can setup a WordPress blog in 10 seconds". Why don't you say that under the demo link? Or say, "Try our demo. It takes 10 seconds to install WordPress" or whatever app.

It's not onerous at all, but you have to get people to the point where they're actually at the demo. My "10 minutes" was based on the thought process that goes through my head when I see a "try our demo" link. If the demo takes only 10 seconds, that's highlighting a major selling point of your platform, so make that explicit.

(Note that rpdillon is just a commenter, not a Sandstorm dev. But, yes, this is a good idea.)

This exchange made me smile. It got to the benefits in the end though.

How about 'Run X in Y minutes' (somewhat after the Learn X in Y series).

"... Usually the demo is what makes people "get it"...."

Kenton, I'd agree with this approach.

The killer approach is for newly created applications, ported to sandstorm to take advantage of the isolation, security and scalability.

So one area to look at, might be extra tools/paths to port, maintain and expand development.

For cough, Microsoft (platform), it was VB, the killer app. For Linux (platform) it was Apache (killer app). So "the path" to get applications on Sandstorm (platform) to create a killer app, might be the answer.

==== background ====

In fact, one way would be to ask what apps people (HN for example) already use and what problems they have. You need a feel for the numbers of applications companies/startups use. Is it technical? Is it business related? Is it cost?

Install it (if it's ported) and work a discussion around it. For example the reader who chimed in on creating a page on Wordpress - show the path to do that.

Another one I'd suggest as a side-business/demo is a collaborative editor (hello etherpad). [0] I know for a fact google, for example, use some crappy Doc editor (sans the nice editor features) to screen candidates. So there's a demand there.

For the technical minded, poking around https://capnproto.org/ really explains what sandstorm servers can do.

[0] https://sandstorm.io/apps/?host=https://demo.sandstorm.io

So write more than two sentences? Tell the story.

There's this idea around that people don't read text. What if it's just that most text sucks? Web designers end up writing web pages with text that isn't really designed to be read, so people don't read it, and then it get optimized away. The result is often really weird. It's this blank pastel page with some vague promises and a SIGN UP NOW button. Zombo.com all over again.

I thought your Cap'n Proto page did a good job of this actually! It tells the story.

> What if it's just that most text sucks? Web designers end up writing web pages with text that isn't really designed to be read,...

Pretty much. "Web designers" are mainly focused on extracting money from credit card numbers. Humans are an annoying intermediary.

It's better because the internet was supposed to be a bunch of computers talking to each other. It was a beautiful vision. Instead, it's been centralized on two levels:

FB/Google/Instagram etc. serving content, and AWS/DigitalOcean owning the hardware for those intrepid individuals who want to roll their own solutions.

The internet wasn't supposed to be Amazon, Google, and Facebook all talking to each other. It's scary that ISP's don't even want you to host your own (modest) server. It's SUPPOSED to be a bunch of computers networked together! Sandstorm makes it easier to live that vision where you own the hardware, or at LEAST have full control over your cloud. It doesn't necessarily need to be your home computer - a colo'ed odroid (or RPi if your needs are modest) would do the trick too. As more and more of the internet is gobbled up by VPS services I think it's important that the average Jane or Joe can still put together their own website, blog, game server, etc. and not be reliant on a company for it.

Unfortunately, I don't see how this solves the problem. The main problem for me is this part of my ISP's ToS: "Users may not run any type of server on the system."

Further, every ISP I've ever had has had some such clause. I'd have to get a business plan to actually be allowed to run a server. So who is this, or any home server software, even for?

(Or at least, who in the US)

Sandstorm is not necessarily about running the server at home (though you can). It's more about being able to choose what is on your server and control how your data is stored and accessed, whether on a home machine or running in a datacenter.

I think I can use apt-get/rpm/etc to control what's on my server already these days?

Sure, but only if all of the following are true:

1) You understand how to use the Unix shell and everything else that goes into maintaining a Unix machine.

2) You have the time to do it. (This is what has always stopped me, FWIW.)

3) You are willing to spend money on a machine that has sufficient resources to be responsive when you use it but sits idle 99% of the time since you're the only user.

These obstacles are what drive people to SaaS, where they no longer have freedom to install arbitrary software.

Unfortunately we lost all of the small independent ISP's that offered any semblance of competition. I just host my own stuff anyway with an ISP known to be pretty relaxed about it. You're right, though, it's a major problem.

Great suggestions! I'd say "Sandstorm lets you install server apps as easily as you install mobile apps!"

Yes, I definitely think something along those lines, especially if you're targeting a group of people who are somewhat tech savvy, but not tech savvy enough to run their own server.

and for the ad campaign.." your Server will be with you "

If anything, the call for action ("Try the demo" button) should be made MUCH more noticeable.

I was thinking the same thoughts as you because who wants to try the half-assed barely functional demos that most sites put up?

Well, I decided to give the demo a try anyway, and damn am I impressed.

Almost didn't click it though. So hey, make it pop!

Good ideas, but make sure you hire a copy editor! "Let's" is short for "let us", like "let's go to the store." "Lets" is a conjugation of "to let" (i.e. to enable) like "Sandstorm lets you do XYZ."

Oops, fixed. Yes, don't take copy directly from a hastily written Hacker News post :)

Thanks for your feedback!

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