Presenting Your Web Product Summary

How would you present your web product to a venture capitalist or journalist in 60 seconds?
an example of a saas home pageIt’s a well-publicized fact that visitors to a website will only spend a few seconds judging whether it suits their needs before either engaging further or moving on.
Presentations of your web product to VC’s and journalists are often similarly brief: impromptu opportunities appear suddenly and test your ability to pitch your product all the time, especially if you make an effort to network.
Regardless of whether it’s on a web page or in a live presentation, be sure not to make these common mistakes.
1. Not showing the interface
Effective explanation trumps sales tactics. Visual information is processed readily by our minds, which is why product screenshots or a product demo are capable of answering a hundred questions in a matter of seconds.
Nothing feels worse than visiting a SaaS site and not being able to see screenshots or a video instantly. If this is a mistake you’re making right now, put a screenshot of your product’s interface up-front-and-center. You’ll undoubtedly see an instant drop in your bounce rate.
And just because an in-person meeting is unanticipated doesn’t mean you’re up a creek without a paddle: be sure to have a couple of images of your key features easily accessible on your smart phone or tablet.
2. Over-selling
A good explanation is a great sales technique. Assuming you have a quality product, it will sell itself, so long as you present all the right details succinctly.
When you’re having a face-to-face meeting it’s likely that the person you’re presenting to has listened through their fair share of product pitches. Keep the pleasantries in moderation, don’t beat around the bush. Being indirect suggests that you may be hiding something.
3. Forgetting to demonstrate growth
google-analytics-growth
Both VC’s and regular product users love to feel like they’re early adopters of something big. Show a VC a chart that suggests rapid growth, such as rapidly increasing traffic in Google Analytics, and they’ll be hooked.
In doing this, you’re proving that there really is a market for your product. It’s feasible. It’s tested. It’s reliable.
4. Being mundane
If someone’s pitching you on what they think is a great idea and they’ve supposedly been pouring their soul into developing it, wouldn’t they be absurdly enthusiastic?
When I summarize a project I’ve been working on to someone who wasn’t a part of it, I get excited about little details that normally seem unexciting because they’re tied to memories of how I overcame challenges.
A hurdle that sometimes derails people is unfamiliar circumstance. When you’re not comfortable presenting without preparation or in a foreign environment you’re likely to stifle the expression of your true emotions. Don’t let this get the best of you. If you make it sound like you’re in love with working on an amazing product, your enthusiasm will power others’ focus on what you’re saying.
On the web, excitement can be communicated with clever copy that expresses both your message and re-enforces your brand with genuine qualities by demonstrating wit, humor or insight.
And after all, who doesn’t love to be strategically prepared. Why not assess your home page right now with these four points in mind. Can anything be improved? Can you easily access screenshots of your product from your phone right now? Are you prepared for a quick pitch at any time?
These rules of thumb should be permeate deep into the business. Even if you’re the one who created the product, if it’s successful you quickly find the need to hire sales, administrative and operations staff. The workforce is returning to the state it was in before the recession—and that’s a good thing. Often times, expansion makes sense. Just make sure that both your web developers and sales staff are fully versed of how you would pitch a product (both in written form and verbally) so that you can rest easy, knowing that there aren’t any gaps.