Hi and thanks for the post, I'm the founder of Sourcevoid.

Long time reader but have not posting anything here before. Happy to answer any question if someone would like to discuss or ask something!

Regards, Robert

There is a lot of written material on the web site. Yet, I still don't understand the value proposition or how or when I might use the service. Usually, I try looking at the documentation but I could not find any.

Curious if there is a short description or a "Hello World" tutorial available.

Hi Ben,

The value proposition simply put comes down to getting more done in less time. Easy deployments and managing of apps, more focus on coding and less on server admin stuff. Before I try too much here and create a wall of text, do you understand the value proposition of competing services like Heroku, Bluemix or App Engine?

On documentation, I get where you are coming from, we do have a getting started page just after you have signed up and logged in talking more about getting started. We have plans for a more dedicated docs/developer site, I think that is the type of site you were looking for.

On our Github org we have a repo with Hello World samples for shelf, redstone, express, hapi, angular-dart and angular-js (the first two are Dart server frameworks). There is a step by step list of how to create and deploy an app. There is no screenshots at this point but maybe I should add that?

We like the whole onboarding experience to be a good as possible, so I really appreciate that you are taking the time to share your feedback!

Regards, Robert

For what it's worth, I think it might be worth A/B testing a

  +--------------------+
  |      Hero          |
  +--------------------+
  | Step | Step | Step |
  |  1   |   2  |  3   |
  +--------------------+

layout against the "wall of text." Even if for no other reason than it would be an exercise at the other extreme of explanation. My gut is that the optimum is in the middle. But I think that a sales pitch that gets to a clear value proposition relevant to the lead's current knowledge has value.

Interesting thoughts, it is a bit of challenge I must admit to explain something big and complex in a good simple way, maybe especially when you know all the engineering behind it, easy to get lost in all details.

I have been thinking that maybe a video can do a lot, a screen recording with some voice over (I have an okay English accent even if it's not my native tongue) explaining the concepts and UI. The casual visitors might be able to get through a video like that whereas few really takes the time to read a long text.

Thanks again for your feedback!

To a first approximation, good videos require good scripts. So writing a script for a 90 second 1,2,3 video might very well also be the design for a 1,2,3 call to action on the landing page.

It may be a case where paying for a good professional designer/technical writer/explainer offers a high return on investment. Personally, I've always found writing copy about myself uncomfortable and I often tend toward long a more winded completist approach when I write. So that's where I'm coming from.

That is a good thought, we have discussed to maybe hire someone to do short video like that. I might be similar in that sense when it comes to writing, I'll see what we can do, but it would take some time.

Shorter term I should probably try at least to provide some screenshots and maybe a basic video of the UI where I create an app and deploy it, depends on how good of a video I can make.

I came across this article.

https://medium.com/@scottbelsky/crafting-the-first-mile-of-p...

My impression of your product is that it requires much less explanation than is given. It seems that one of the biggest differentiators of the product is an emphasis on Dart.

Hi, sorry for the late reply, I had a busy day yesterday.

Thanks for the article, it was an interesting read. I think Sourcevoid is not quite as complicated to explain as photoshop but at the same time a bit more complicated by nature than something like a social consumer app.

I do believe the "in app" onboarding experience is important, we have tried to do that in a similar way as it is suggested in the article. I want to make it even better and I think we can and should continue to improve the onboarding experience over time.

You do have a good point, it might become a little bit too verbose maybe. On Dart emphasis, the beta page might give that impression, and we do have a lot of Dart experience, but at the same time the service does support Nodejs just as much.

What I was trying to express is that there are few sites catering to the Dart community relative to the number of sites catering to Nodejs users. My impression is that the Dart community is more closely knit than that of Nodejs.

Perhaps supporting Dart is something that can differentiate Sourcevoid among many somewhat similar sites?

I understand, that is a good observation. The Dart community is more closely knit, however the Nodejs community is a lot bigger and in a way is built up of multiple subcommunities around various frameworks and tools.

I like to think that it does yes, but I also like to think that we differentiate ourselves in more ways than that. Making that clear to the customer is of course a challenge but we are working on it and feedback like yours are valuable in that process.