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7 Comments

Are we conveying the right message?

Hey folks! We just launched our beta at https://epek.app - epek is all about planning your projects in a way that gives you a great overview and helps you reach the outcomes you want, with all the bells and whistles you'ld want (sharing, task management, and co)

would love your feedback whether we're conveying the right message!

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    The main copy on the page is a bit vague to me. Ironically, I think your description in this thread of what epek does is more clear than what is written in the main copy.

    I personally don't use project managers a lot so I wouldn't know if epek is any different than the others that are out there. Your description of seeing projects in an overview was helpful in telling some more of what epek could do for me. However, when I go to the site, the copy mostly tells me of what I can do with epek and not what epek can do for me. The difference is messaging is subtle but important.

    You also mentioned goals and milestones in the copy. I liked this portion of it as I'm one that breaks down projects mentally in milestones. What would be great to see is how this milestone creation looks in the product and how it could be used. More in-product shots would be great in general.

    Illustrations are pretty clean and well done

    The width of the page seems to be a problem for me. I'm on an iPhone and some of the page seems to be off screen. I can bring it back on screen but it breaks the browsing experience

    1. 1

      @dwalker! Thank you for your comments (almost two months ago)! We've fixed up the mobile site, although the app itself is still desktop optimized.
      Also improved some of the copy and of course a ton of visual as well as under the hood improvements to epek in that time... definitely tell me if you have taken another look at it!!

    2. 1

      Thank you @dwalker! I like the point about "what the product can do for users vs what they can do with it"... I'll chew on it a bit and see what I can come up with.
      Fair point also on adding some more product visuals
      The app itself is desktop only - but we'll improve the landing page for mobile!
      Thank you for the feedback! It's really helpful!

  2. 1

    Your messaging is, "Plan anything, plan well, collaborate happily! Never lose sight of your goals." I'm not sure if that resonates.

    I've never had the problem of not being able to plan something, not being able to plan well, or not being able to collaborate happily. More importantly, these are all vague and aren't connected to any specific activity. Planning a trip? Planning my quarterly business strategy? Collaborating on music? What are we talking about here? And how would you even help with it?

    You're missing some of the most basic questions anyone asks when they visit a website:

    • Who's it for? Is it for me?
    • What even is this?
    • Why should I use it?

    It seems a bit like you built a product, and now you're going out trying to look for the perfect customer and problem for it to solve. That's tough. It's like crafting a key, then attempting to find the perfect keyhole for it to fit in. What you want to do is the opposite: pick a keyhole, take its measurements, then craft a key. Find a market with a problem, learn what they need, then work backwards to craft the perfect product tailored for them.

    Then it's easy to have a great message, because you can clearly state who it's for, what it does for them, and why they should use it.

    On the technical side of things, I think your responsive design could use work. At some widths I get two scrollbars. And at very large widths, your page's elements are spread super far apart. Your site needs some sort of a maximum width set.

    Generally when I see a page with lots of technical issues like this, my thinking is that you're trying code it all yourself, but you're still learning, which is just fine. But realize that's a ton of time you're investing just to do it yourself, when there are all sorts of free responsive templates and/or landing page builders out there that look and work better than anything you'd make, so you're probably better off just using those, and spending your time on all the other hard parts of starting a business!

    Disregard that last paragraph if you'd really like to learn all this stuff yourself, though. I spent years doing that, too.

    1. 1

      Wow! That's a great and detailed reply! Thank you @csallen!
      Great feedback and we definitely need to fix up the technical side of things on the page - I guess "beta" bars are much higher than ever before...

      About the messaging, I take from your feedback that we need to make it specific to an audience, although my attempt here was to intentionally leave it open to see if it'll resonate as well with regular folks as with tech people, who do some sort of planning all the time.
      The tech people are our primary audience though, and with a broad message I guess we'll lose some if they don't scroll below the fold.
      I'll definitely try to make it a bit more specific and see how that resonates.

      <<I've never had the problem of not being able to plan something, not being able to plan well, or not being able to collaborate happily. More importantly, these are all vague and aren't connected to any specific activity. Planning a trip? Planning my quarterly business strategy? Collaborating on music? What are we talking about here? And how would you even help with it?>>
      I see you are one of those rare individuals who have their process well figured-out, in which case, Kudos! epek is probably not for you. But just to press the issue, yes, you could use it to plan a trip, plan your quarterly business strategy, new year's resolution, or even weekly goals...
      I have to ask though: how do you plan your work? do you use any tools? sticky notes?

      thank you again for the feedback! really appreciate it!

      1. 1

        I plan everything via Notion. I also use it to track tasks, take notes, etc.

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