Matt Gemmell on App Websites

Most apps have accompanying websites. Matt Gemmell shares some ideas on how to design them:

The first thing your customer wants to know is what the app does. Again: tell them what it does. That’s your tagline, right below the product’s name (or even above/instead-of the product’s name, right at the top of the page). The customer doesn’t care about your arty background-image or your creative vision; they want to know if this app does the thing they want.

This seems kind of obvious, but it’s astonishing how many developers get this wrong. They fill their websites with overwrought adjectives describing how incredibly awesome their application is, rather than simply explaining what it actually does. Always keep the user’s goal in mind.