I've just published my first marketing page for my newly started project Revision - and I'm unsure of just about everything ...
https://revision.app
- Does it describe what the product does at all? Does it explain why you should give it a try? If not, how could I do that better?
- Does it look ok? If not, what could I do to make it more professional?
- Languagewise, any hick-ups? How could I word it differently?
- Or just give me your first thoughts :)
Thanks!!! 🎈
I think the general theme of your website is okay.
I did a lot of architectural diagrams for a job for a while and IMO the diagrams that you show look super bland. The first two images are the same anyway.
Just compare yours with e.g. this: http://understandingcontext.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Systems-Architecture-Diagrams.png.
Your diagrams look neither beautiful nor informative, it's just boxes, arrows and small text..
Regarding this text:
"It's hard work trying to build a good architectural diagram using a generic drawing tool. Revisions purpose-built diagram editor has all the best practices built-in and will help you create easy-to-understand architectural diagrams in minutes."
It would be great to have an example of how it's easier with your tool. This just sounds like "ours is better", without any concrete hint as to how.
Sorry for being so critical, I know how hard it is to put something out there - but I think especially the images are a big issue.
PS: You forgot to set your website <title>
I'll start by saying that was gold worth for me - so thanks. Your criticism is constructive and in many ways (if not all) true, so no worries.
I've absolutely overreached when it comes to the editor part ... I'll change that message. And I'll add a title. 😊
As you've done previous work on architectural diagrams I'm also curious about a few things.
Could you see a need for this kind of tool? What tools did you use and how did does work for you?
In your opinion, what are the most obvious things missing from the diagrams I'm showing?
Again. Thanks for taking the time to comment and for being so frank.
You are welcome, happy if I can help! Of course please keep in mind, my opinion is just one of many.
In my job we used draw.io which is mature and free, but as you correctly write on your website, like many tools it is very generic and thus not specialized. I found it also not easy to create great-looking diagrams but for architecture stuff it had all the logos for the AWS services for example. So if you wanted to show how a system works you can drag all the services' icons into the screen, label each, connect with arrows and you already had something quite neat.
As to whether I see a need for another tool - I don't know the space enough and I don't which specific customers you have in mind.
BUT: I can tell you that I myself had the need for a beautiful architecture diagram maker already. For my last project I tried to show the architecture in the documentation and it has some icons and probably gets the architecture across, but it's really ugly: https://togetherdb.com/docs/how-it-works Unfortunately I don't have an example of really beautiful diagrams but I see them sometimes on tech startups' websites. Something like this is a bit more special, with gradients etc, not an architecture though: https://www.elliance.com/media/61880/the_web_life_of_an_article.gif. I really wanted to create an animated diagram, for example that the dotted lines have a "moving" animation, just to make it seem more alive and dynamic. I couldn't find any tool which exports animated diagrams so maybe that could a USP if more people would be interested in it?
Do you have specific use cases in mind for your tool? If not then maybe diagrams for tech startups' documentation could be a start.
Maybe you could hire a designer to create a few georgous diagrams that you can use as a base for your drawing tool and to display on the website.
I've changed the wording on the page a bit. Feels more on point now. So thanks for that! 🙏
When it comes to the product the use-case and the ideal customer are a bit different than what you're describing. I'm targeting mid-sized to larger companies that are using multiple systems, APIs, microservices etc., and integrations between them.
When architectures get larger my experience is that it's hard to describe that in one diagram but one needs to use multiple diagrams - and generic tools don't really work that when having multiple diagrams and navigating between them. I've built the possibility of linking between diagrams and navigating back and forward.
One also usually wants to have reports of for example all systems, all integration between them, and so on. It's often solved by having separate lists in excel next to the diagrams. The idea is that with help of a behind the scene model one could extract that information directly for the diagrams.
I obviously didn't do such a good job describing that on the page 😅
Hey Richard,
In my opinion the design looks very professional. Love the dotted background in the hero, really ties in with the notebook & diagrams theme.
I usually draw software architecture & programming diagrams with apps like Whimsical and I feel like a great opportunity in the feature section would be to show how painful it is to do these diagrams with other apps and highlight how easy it is with Revision. Tell us what exactly “specialized for architecture diagrams” means. For example, what exactly is Revision’s easy alternative to “aligning boxes and arrows”?
Congrats on publishing your first marketing page btw, that’s really exciting :)
Thanks! ❤️
Great feedback! I'll definitely try and flesh out the different sections a bit more.
Oh, one more thing - I know the screenshots aren't great - I'm working on better images from the app right now