Roast my website - I will do the same for you

Congrats first of all on making paperless.io a thing! ok.. so:

• first impression; clean design with a confident use of whitespace. I like the restrained use of blue to unify the page elements and draw my eye to the main copy. Feels legit.

• second impression: the copy needs to be refined. Both the headline and the secondary copy. "The All-in-One platform for agreement management" feels either too 'clever' or too vague. Agreement management doesn't mean anything to me - I would assume you've either tested this messaging on your audience or its an industry term that strikes an immediate chord with your target audience.

• Saying "all in one platform" as a value proposition creates a few expectations. First, that this is different to other products because it 'bundles' several other tools that do not do 'all in one'. Secondly, I now expect it to be a platform and not just a (non-platform) product. Meaning - it should connect at least two distinct groups of users together and / or the platform creates revenue opportunities for an ecosystem of 3rd party vendors.

• "book a demo" creates the expectation of the product being too complicated for me to trial myself, or there's a longer sales cycle involved.. or worse, it will be a sales call. Either way, I am now wondering why i need hand-holding to decide if i want the product or not.

Expectations set.. let's scroll down and explore:

Animation:

• This builder: is this a major pain point for customers? I imagined that many people already have pdf contracts and documents made, they just need someone to sign them digitally. Do i have to use the builder?

Am I missing the point already - is this about signing an actual document or creating an online form that can be "signed"?

• "stored securely" in 2021; you need to be much more specific. Is there an ISO/IEC or GDPR compliance here? These documents will have personal data so, if you want big businesses to use it it needs to offer something real beyond your competitors or at least match them. If it's not doing either, I wouldn't bring attention to it upfront.

Ok, i want to take a break from your site and go look at DocuSign. I just remembered signing something via DocuSign a few months ago. Seems like a competitor.. let's look at them.. https://www.docusign.co.uk/

Header: "Keep your business moving forward"
Strap: "Get started with eSignature"

Product highlight: "Agreement Cloud. Connect and automate your entire agreement process"

Assuming they are the incumbent here, their copy is tight compared to yours. Not unexpected, they probably have a team of people pouring over every word. However, we can learn a lot from their efforts and you can use it to improve your own copy.

"Agreement cloud" is an industry keyword + key technology. Nice and simple. It tells me it is not on premise and it's just vague enough - no big claims here about being everything and a platform.

"Connect" and "automate" tells me that the results of their own customer research revealed that business 'agreement' workflows are siloed, disconnected, and manual. DocuSign understands that telling me the benefits and advantages is better than selling me on the features.

Ok.. let's go back to Paperless.io.

The animations on Paperless.io are nice and feel "friendly" compared to the harshly corporate video on DocuSign's website.

"Transform existing files into interactive... etc"

• ok, so it is about bringing my documents online and converting them into forms. Hmm.. is this a one-way ticket? What if i want my
• Is this a major pain point for people that having an online form solves?
• How complicated is it really to turn a poorly made PDF or word document into one of your online forms?

Okay.. i've reached a new headline and pitch:

headline: "Better Document Lifecycles"
strap: "Save time and reduce errors by automating the entire document workflow."

Wait.. this is a much better head and strap that you have ATF (above the fold) at the moment.

Can I suggest that you could refine this headline by signposting what is 'better' more clearly.. i mean, better than what customers have currently (meaning they are not using a competitors product) or are you saying its better than using DocuSign or another product?

For example, if long lifecycles are the problem say "Shorter Agreement Lifecycles". If its a complexity issue say "Simpler Document Lifecycles". Better has to be better than something. Spell it out.

Clean up the strap - trim it and make it personal: its not "the entire" it should be "your entire". Suggestion:

"Save time, reduce errors. Automate your entire document workflow. "

Or "your entire company's document workflow". Depending on if your targeting a couple of people in a legal department or to C-level execs in charge of legal, HR, procurement etc (or the people doing all that themselves in smaller companies) who are aware that delays in signing documents is delaying payments and work.

You keep putting the "builder" up front. I am expecting (with my Product Manager hat on) that this is because its the biggest pain point, not because its the thing that you are most proud of building (or the thing that you put the most effort into without testing the market first).

Ok... the "Collaborative by design" bit

• i'm amazed that this is the first time you're using that phrase. It has weight as a value prop.. let's see.

"Whether your teams are colocated, distributed, or fully remote, Paperless provides an engaging, intuitive, in-person collaboration experience with multiple options for real-time or asynchronous teamwork on all Paperless documents."

ouch. Okay. What? Well.. you don't need 'engaging' and 'intuitive'. Together they make the sentence harder to skim or actively read. I would cut 'engaging' out. It should go without saying and it fell like it adds anything.

So.. this paragraph is actually one sentence. ONE. But it feels like a lot to take it. Here's a quick stab at what I might have responded to better myself as a user:

"Collaborating in real-time with Paperless is intuitive. Using Google Docs or MicroSoft 365 ? It works the same - make adjustments together live , or work on it at different times. No version control, no email attachments."

It's a slightly different voice and tone to your current copy, but you get the drift hopefully. I'm trying to make it easier to read and understand, even if its actually longer than your original copy.

Why isn't collaboration mentioned earlier?!?!

Okay.. so now I'm reading about some value propositions that feel like they would speak to the "jobs to be done" of your customer base. This feels more compelling than most of the content above it so far!!!!

"All documents are cryptographically signed, locked and protected from modifications and come with court-admissible audit trails."

Bloody hell. That's a big deal. Why oh why was this not mentioned in the animation earlier!!! Crypto-signed! Court-admissible audit trails! How did i have to scroll this far to find that out?!?!?!

"Experience the power of paperless documents"

Your eSignature technology sounds like a big deal. Have you thought about giving it a marketable name to different it from your competitors?

Overall, the design - great. Good choices of colour, spacing, typography. Feels very professional. Your problem here (in my humble opinion) is the devil that's in the details.

Clarify your value propositions (on a piece of paper or Google doc). Rank them according to customer needs. Whatever is highest, lead with that ATF or just BTF.

Tighten up your copy. Look to edit it and aim for clarity - use small words and convey simple points.

There are a lot of features. The way it is all laid out feels like it's almost too many - perhaps because are mentioned at least twice e.g secure storage.

Take a look at something like Apple's Mac Mini web page (https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-mini/). It's not the front page so they can afford to put more copy at the top.. but that copy (e.g. "The Apple M1 chip takes our most versatile, do-it-all desktop...") is a solid sales pitch to buy these machines. Why... well as they tell us:

• They took something good they make and made it better.
• They quantify that its 3x more performant.
• They name drop a technical feature (Neural Engine) and tie it to value (15x faster machine learning).
• They put it in a meaningful and simple-to-understand context: "Get ready to work, play and create on Mac mini with speed and power beyond anything you ever imagined."

For you this might translate to:

• You saw what the industry were doing and made the industry better (with crypto-grade security, online forms etc) OR.. You saw the same problems the industry did and can make those better for people.

Point is this: the M1 chip is the big sell here because the Mac Mini is half the price of a Macbook Pro with the same chip. It's the first card on the page.

The next 3/4 cards showcase one feature each.

Then we move to 2 cards per "page" (I'm looking at it on a desktop) for the less product-defining features. After that.. more technical detail.

On the Paperless.io website it doesn't feel like a unified journey through the product. It feels like I am moving from some initially vague features into more details about either the same or some new features. What are the big themes here? The security.. the speed.. the collaboration.. the fact its all in one.. or a platform..

I hope something here helps you.

• The videos are great! How did you create them?
• I think the copy can be improved.
  - "Agreement management" has very specific connotations. You also use "document management". This can be confusing.
  - I can't quite form a positioning/overall picture of your product. I get lost in all the features. What are the 1 or 2 points you want the user to walk away with? I would look for ways to tie it all together.
  • What is the differentiation? Why would I pick this over competing products?

I would love your feedback on Re:Schedule : https://www.reschedule.app

Impressive one! Paperless.io is one of the best landing pages I've seen because I was able to catch your value prop in few seconds of scrolling. the animation for "Transform existing files to interactive Paperless documents" could be located in the hero section to be more appearing instead of just having text "The All-in-One platform for agreement management."

This is honestly one of the best landing pages I've seen :) Absolutely love the animated product demo right up front, nice load time too. It may be worth it to elaborate on what "Get early access" means. What does giving you my email mean? Will I get access today? Are you just going to send me updates?

Love the idea @Garreis_Jonathan! Here are my two cents:

• The video was probably designed to show how streamlined the "paperless" process can be. But when there's no voiceover, it feels numb and impersonal. Remember that you're targeting people, not processes. As a side point, I as a visitor have no control over it due to the autoplay. I personally tend to speed up landing page videos a lot and I was missing that possibility here.
• The copy needs a bit of work. Most headings & subheadings sound like slogans and it's hard to determine which is a slogan and which serves to illustrate the slogan above it. They sound too marketing-y and don't form a cohesive whole. Check out this priceless thread on How to write a landing page title for inspiration.
• The mobile version is too long / there's too much to scroll. Here's how I "solved" mobile on my own project's landing page.
• Last but not least, I cannot recommend Julian Shapiro's Landing Page Guide highly enough. If you haven't read it yet, give it a shot. It's a gem.

P.S. The "company" section needs an "About us" sub page. Who are you / your cofounders? The "follow us on linkedin" requires an extra click and "ain't nobody got time for that" ;)

P.S.#2 The "about us" page can be combined with a little backstory. Why did you create Paperless? What (concrete) problems/use cases does it solve for you? What's your "mission statement"? This could come at a later point and is certainly not required upon launch but it would give off a heightened sense of professionalism -> you're not creating just a random web app but an actual company. What I'm saying is, people resonate with stories and "paperless", to me, is missing one.

Good luck!

Hey @Garreis_Jonathan,

Good landing page, clean design ... but :

✅ I saw what the product design, I understand it but I did find the actual value proposition. Sometimes is better to highlight some pain point your target may experience
✅ the landing page is a bit long in my opinion.
✅ I didn’t find something related to the pricing.
✅ images and gif on the website are shaking on scroll

I’ll appreciate your feedback too : https://welti.io

Hi Garreis,

Here are my first impressions:

• The design looks very clean, and I got very fast what your product is about.
• I was looking for the "Pricing" link in the header
• The initial scroll is buggy, it's like the scroll jumps. Also, it's almost never a good idea to overwrite the default scroll behaviour
• The header is a bit "The All-in-One platform for agreement management". All-in-one makes me expect the platform to also handle payments. What exactly does all-in-one mean? What does it provide that a simple PDF doesn't?
• The initial hero gif looks like. One small concern is that initially when you scroll down the page is empty, so it looks a bit dull/sad. Maybe showcase editing an existing form instead? So it doesn't start from blank.
• There're a lot of sections (when scrolling) but they all seem very similar to me, I don't really understand exactly if each section is about benefits, features, your company, problems, etc. Having some title like "Features" or "Why paperless?" would help the user understand what each section is about.
• There's a lot of features showcasing, but not a lot of benefits showcasing. What does this help me achieve that I am missing with my current solution? Save time? Increase productivity? Increase security? Reduce clutter? Reduce costs?
• There's a "Xing" text in the "Follow us" footer scetion, but it's not hyperlinked and I have no idea what Xing is.

If you want to give feedback on my landing page, check out https://www.usertrack.net
Also DM me on Twitter if you want to try userTrack for your landing page, it can help you improve the design. I can provide you with a discount, as a fellow IH.

Hey Garries,

Design is fantastic and like everyone else, love the videos!

I think the header is a bit general and should do more to speak to/empathise with the user pain point. It does describe what the product is, but I think it should focus more on what Paperless gives the user i.e. can you quantify a productivity improvement or improvement in customer experience? I guess with something like this you can talk about getting rid of back and forth emailing/word version control etc, think of the worst way it is currently done and then frame Paperless as the antidote to it.

If you have time would love to hear what you think on https://www.supersimplesignup.com (not quite up to your design levels I'll admit!)

Mike

I'm not going to repeat what others have said, but honestly, the landing page is too long.

I got the point of the product after watching the graphical slide then reading the other panel, I phased out the rest of the information from my mind.

You got to the point quickly, the next talking point should be security and collaboration and you either sold the person on your product or you did not. It's that simple.

Hey Garreis,

the website looks really nice and you can quickly understand what the product is about. I have used a few times other similar services like hellosign.com, so as a client, if I had to decide which service to use, a comparative would help.

PS.: please, write me an email or tweet, I can't dm you. I'd like to propose you something.

Hey Garreis!

my review is design related.

You will find it here:

https://app.usebubbles.com/caXXPEm3biEquEHS2o33ah/hey-paperless

this is my site if you are up to:

https://wickedtemplates.com/

Bro, the videos are so good. So fucking good.

I am so impressed by them. Not only are they easy to consume but it actually shows you in the most simple way what and how you saas works.

What did you use to make them? Or did you hire someone? :)

Design-wise the website is very nice, looks the part!

The hero text on the landing page is very vague:

More than electronic signatures

This doesn’t really explain anything to someone first visiting the page.

The All-in-One platform for agreement management.

Again doesn’t really explain what the product does to the uninitiated (what is agreement management?).

Paperless lets you create, sign, and manage documents. For more productivity and a better customer experience.

Finally we begin to understand what the product does, this information should be more prominent.

Remember, sell the solution not the features.

E.g.: “Create, distribute, and manage all your digital agreements with just a few clicks”, “Save hours of time by managing all your legal documents in one simple platform”. Something along those lines should be the first thing the user sees.

Congratualtions Garreis!

I love your ideas and would love to participate in the testing round if needed as I'm doing remote works and have a lot of documents to sign on a daily basis.

The UX is brilliant and easy to understand https://paperless.io/#c1649 (not sure about the c1649 means?)

A quick question: is your product support different languages? What're your thoughts on adding the session of FAQs to save time for customer queries?

----
I'm an independent content creator who has this website to introduce who I am and previous works I've been done https://www.camelliayang.com/. I'd love to seek advice on my blog page since I write in English and Chinese. What's your UX and any suggestions? https://www.camelliayang.com/blog Thanks a lot and all the best!

Hi Garreis 👋,
First of all congrats, I liked your page a lot. Looks very legit. Here are my 2 cents:

• I agree with other fellow IHers here in the comments that hijacking the native scroll feels weird. With that sad I like the animation and stuff, maybe you can borrow from Vercel Commerce's page for inspiration on how to edit your current approach?
• I don't know if this is intentional, but your Xing link in the footer is just a text.
• I'd experiment with some kind of fixed header so that if a visitor is sold on the product while scrolling on the page they can immediately sign up (right now I'd have to intercept a CTA either above or below where I am at).
  ---
  As for myself, I've been busy building Adflow. Feel free to check out my landing page and full product as well (it's 100% free – not just the trial). I'm starting my grill ready for some roasting 🔥.

Context: I’m on mobile Safari, iPhone 12 Mini. No experience with signing digital documents.

Here we go:

• The initial forced(?) scroll is very awkward.

• I like the demo video, it seems to make perfectly clear how the service works.

• I don’t know what “agreement management” means.

• “For more productivity and a better customer experience.” seems that would be true for any service?

• I like the logo. Less Paper. Nice. But it does look familiar, can’t put my finger on it, maybe it’s the color scheme but very much makes it feel like a Google service?

• Compression on the collaborative image is a bit much. Go PNG?

• I love the look and feel but the page lacks identity? It’s a bit forgettable.

—

You can find the product page for my Image Editor SDK below, but honestly focus on your product first, and only roast mine if you have time to spare :)

https://pqina.nl/doka/

1. Please don't hijack the native scroll! Checking from Chrome on Mac and my very first impression was "Whoa! So slow!" (You can still do cool animations, just let me scroll at my own pace).

2. Do you really do booked demos? Feels so corporate and ancient. Isn't your app supposed to be cool and easy to use? I'd ditch that.

3. Given what you do, I'd try to get a bit creative with early access thingy and convert visitors into users right away. For example, you could say "We're happy to give early access to anyone who signs an NDA". Of course, signing NDAs is boring but that's the point. You give them an NDA that is not boring, you have already signed on your end, and I can get it done in seconds (if I can really sign it in seconds, that is). It could be a minimized version of your actual product, no need for sign up and other irrelevant stuff.

4. Do you have pre-made templates? I didn't find any information on this. It's cool that I can convert existing documents, but what if I have none? If you do have templates, I'd mention it on the landing page. If you don't, consider having a few basic ones at least.

Overall, looks solid 👏

PS - I don't have a landing page for you to roast, but I recently posted my very first product here on IH and feel free to burn it to the ground.

honestly, it's pretty.

... "more than electronic signatures" sounds cool but doesn't tell me anything. agreement platform also suffers from the same thing.

hey @Garreis_Jonathan, you still offering this?