“Proto replaces manual, undocumented spreadsheet processes with automated workflow dashboards that guide users through step-by-step screens to generate reporting and analysis results. Users complete routine tasks in a fraction of the time and organizations capture these processes in transferable, documented dashboards.”

Then it should be at least 50% shorter. Your case studies should be pages, not pdfs, and only the 2nd page matters. The 2nd one has the goods — “Hedge Fund CFO spends 90% less time on a monthly report since moving to Proto. Want to learn how?…” Your home page lacks contact info – put the phone number in big font at top… Put email address there too. The same content is repeated in several locations. No PDFs anywhere. Bad for SEO and a pain to view. Anyway, if you have a good product the site can be improved to help you sell more.

See, I like that. Its very information-dense: these guys make a database, big guys trust it for super-mission critical apps, and the type of app that might be is storing trades. Lots of people can get sold by that app, but at the same time, you don’t waste time/energy trying to lure worthless prospects into the sales process at the expense of really nailing the good prospects.

Our problem is our product is not a member of a category familiar to most of our target market. The whole ‘creating markets’ role that lots of tech companies try to do makes this exponentially harder. Check out our website: http://www.protosw.com. We’ve done like 3,000 revisions to the front page, etc. but we’ve never been completely satisfied with it.

Which would you rather be?

A. “The Ultimate Driving Machine” or

B. “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile”

Is it any wonder Olds is gone?

Good comment. You do have to have that umbrella of classification so people know what breed of animal you are. Beyond that, they need to understand how you help them. The main graphic on Sybase’s home page is a cluster-f@#*. It reminds me of their “Adaptive Component Architecture” circa 1998 that founder Bob Epstein pushed out. The result of that was a naming strategy nightmare that included “Adaptive Server Enterprise” (e.g. Sybase 11) and Adaptive Server Anywhere (e.g. SQL Anywhere, now iAnywhere…).

I’m a business guy – but I do recognize you have to have the goods handy for the engineers. Feeds and speeds are part of the decision process. Hey – even a line like “Sybase’s database solutions store more trades on Wall Street than any other SQL database” would be an accomplishment. Marketers might typically write this as “Sybase’s information management solutions drive strategic value for leading Wall Street firms.”

Two years ago, my firm re-branded itself and came out with a whole new feel, and a new brand, “Everything Matters”.

Duh. Really? I had no idea. And when Marketing showed me the new graphical feel for everything, I replied, “It’s fuzzy — do you want to tell our clients that we’re sort of fuzzy about who we are?”

The marketing person’s mouth dropped and she paled. She’d said the same thing and had wanted the sharp, crisp designs. She was voted down.

Check it out: http://www.dlapiper.com. We CAN get away with saying some things, as we truly are the largest firm in the world, with an enormous global reach. But still.

I think marketers have really oversold this whole “no one sells drills, they sell holes” concept. Most of these companies seem afraid to be like, “We make databases and database-related stuff.” Because the marketing team says, “hey, everyone makes databases. A database has no intrinsic business value. No one wants a database, they want to increase revenues or cut costs…how can a database do that?” and then eventually editing-by-committee leads to “using information”, which still stinks.

I think a lot of this though is engineer outlook vs. everyone else outlook. People with an engineering mindset want to go to a company’s website and learn what products they make and what’s special about those products. Everyone else seems to be more interested in learning what the benefits to their job working with the company may bring, which is where you get on the Ladder of Increasing Vagueness, especially as your company’s products and service grow more diverse. Like what does GE do?