Deep Divin’ into a Product Page
Has this ever happened to you? You want to learn about a particular product, so you go to the appropriate website and dutifully navigate to the product page (or, more likely, so you Googled the product name and went straight to the page).
The page loads.
And then you get some high-level fluff that doesn’t give you any of the information you sought.
Enraged, you abandon the page…seething and vowing never to purchase anything from that company.
Such an opportunity lost.
But there is a better way! And I’m here to share an example. I hereby point thee to: DarwinAI’s GenSynth product page.
From a product marketing standpoint, I like the page for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it is useful.
First things first: audience and intention
The primary audience for a product page like this one is the product’s users. In this case, that means developers and data scientists who build deep learning neural networks.
Knowing the audience is crucial, because it allows us to make informed decisions about what they already know, what information they’re looking for, how they like to learn, and so on. In this case:
- They already know about MLOps in general and about their own development processes in particular; plus, they have broad domain knowledge about artificial intelligence
- They are looking to understand what GenSynth is, how it will make their professional lives better (or worse), how it fits into (or disrupts) their current processes, and whether the product is real or vapourware—and, if we’ve been paying attention, we even know some of the exact questions they will ask
- We can assume they’re OK with—and will even appreciate—explanations and details; of course, we still want to make it easy for them to get the information they want
And what about the page’s intention? At a high level, we can assume that the intent is to establish the product’s credibility with this audience—this outcome is crucial for many B2B sales engagements, as objections from the users can serve as tremendously potent buying barriers. You want your worst case scenario to be that the users don’t object, while in your best case scenario the users are clamouring for the solution and using their influence to accelerate the purchase decision.
BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Just because a page is intended more for users than for buyers doesn’t mean you should skip over the value proposition.
And DarwinAI doesn’t let us down. Right off the bat they hit us with two value statements.
The first one, “Quickly build enterprise AI you can trust”, combines DarwinAI’s tagline with two important modifiers: “quickly” and “enterprise.” Immediately we know that they’re promising to speed things up and that they’re directing the message specifically to enterprises. Focus—I like it!
The second expands on the speed and trust aspects: “Slash months off development time while improving model performance and gaining unparalleled insight.”
Oh wow, OK, you’re telling me you’ll save me MONTHS. I know that saving months on development time will generate a huge amount of monetary savings, will let me get to market sooner, and so on. But will it come at the expense of neural network quality?
You sneaky devils! You’re clear that the time savings are achieved not just while maintaining performance, but improving it. And you’ve even tossed in a combination benefit and mechanism by promising that I’ll gain unparalleled insight.
So we haven’t even really gotten into the page and the visitor already knows what DarwinAI does and why that’s valuable (which, as I’ve noted before, is important)—and even how the value is delivered.
And then these opening statements are supported with a few paragraphs that also show an understanding and appreciation of the challenges facing deep learning developers.
Well played.
Catering to the busy
Joining the value proposition at/near the top of the page, we’ve got an open (i.e., not gated) infosheet and an embedded short explainer video. And the title of the infosheet even serves as an encouraging directive.
These give people, respectively, a handy downloadable takeaway and a time-capped means of getting an overview. So thoughtful!
And there’s also a table of contents that will help me jump to a particular section of the page if I know exactly what I’m looking for.
Giving the people what they want!
The rest of the page is organized into five handy-dandy sections:
- What GenSynth Does clearly explains, um, what GenSynth does (which—and I don’t mean to be a grump—is exactly the sort of content that’s often overlooked nowadays in favour of vague statements and whiz-bang but meaningless visuals)
- How GenSynth Works explains the core technology within GenSynth; however, it wisely positions this technology as an enabler and not a solution in and of itself
- How to Use GenSynth is the real meat of the page, showing designers and practitioners how to incorporate GenSynth into their existing MLOps workflows (aided by a simple diagram), and including a large collection of screenshots (screenshots make things real!!!) to support the claims—salespeople and marketers tend to forget that most organizations don’t like having to change how they do something, because change introduces complexity, risk, and unknowns; in this section, DarwinAI are very clear that all the benefits mentioned above can be gained without undergoing disruptive change
- Technical Compatibility pre-empts the top, validation-level questions about the tools, services, standards, frameworks (and so on) with which GenSynth is compatible—in an important way, this section (which also uses a nice, clear graphic) supports the assertions about not disrupting existing workflows and processes
- GenSynth FAQs does exactly what you’d expect: answers a bunch of real questions the fine folks of DarwinAI get asked (online sleuths will notice that many of these questions come from a presentation DarwinAI gave as part of the Toronto Machine Learning Series)—honestly, I don’t understand why more companies don’t include FAQs within their marketing material (they’re such a quick, easy, and clear way to knock off so many potential delays or misunderstandings)
But what about the call to action???
“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CALL TO ACTION???” screams every demand gen person.
Look, this page is clearly intended to be the go-to resource for tech folks to read up on GenSynth—essentially to validate that it’s a real solution that will do what they need.
As such, the simple act of them coming to this page and reading it is the desired outcome. Plus, the site’s primary C2A is right there at the top-right of the menu—and the menu’s clear enough that the simple, subtle C2A still stands out.
So, whether you want to learn more about GenSynth or want to get some ideas about how to build an informative product page, I encourage you to go take a look!
In summary
In summary…to my eyes, DarwinAI’s GenSynth page is a refreshingly open, thorough, and—above all—useful page that wonderfully caters to a particular audience.
This approach might not be right for every product at every company, but it might be right for yours.