I sign up for a lot of new services. The homepages I find convincing usually:

• Supply a hook. Uniqueness is great, obviously, but specificity can work just as well. Show concrete numbers or examples to back up claims.
• Provide a clear and compelling path to the call to action. Display information in a logical order that helps, not hinders, the decision-making process.
• Tell a story of happily ever after. Describe the user as having a problem or goal and present the product as a solution.

The homepages that confuse me the most lack a strong visual hierarchy, don’t clearly indicate what their core product is, or use generic copy that could apply to almost anything.

Some homepages that get it right: Basecamp , Posterous

Some homepages that don’t: Tweetdeck , Gravity Bear

The most important sentence in an article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”

– William Zinsser, On Writing Well

Users might not get a product for various reasons but here are the main ones.

1. The how is clear but the why is unclear.
2. The how is unclear but the why is clear.
3. Both the how and why are unclear.

Twitter is a good example of the first case. The core functionality is straightforward — it’s not terribly hard to grasp how 140-character status updates or following works. People just aren’t sure why this would be interesting or beneficial.

The recent Twitter homepage redesign tries to address this by focusing more on possible uses (it’s a discovery engine!) and top tweets. (Although it seems at first glance that Justin Bieber is all anyone talks about on Twitter. Displaying user-generated content in real-time on the homepage comes with its own set of issues.)

In the second case, where the underlying mechanics are complex, a step-by-step guide is usually a good solution. It’s become common to see infographics, video demos and slideshows for feature-rich online applications or services with little precedent. It’s less common to see these things done well.

For instance, video demos need to be accompanied by text summaries. Not everyone will want to turn off their music to sit through a five-minute tutorial. (Summaries for audio/video are usually a good idea. Like so.) Slideshows should indicate progress and infographics must add clarity that cannot easily be achieved through text alone. (See “Infographic” for an anti-example.)

As for the third case, where the mechanics and value are both unclear… I wish you the best of luck.

I’m seeing a plethora of articles on iStockPhoto’s 10-year anniversary — retreads, for the most part. Good tools are affordable. Consumers have turned into creators. Crowdsourcing is changing production and distribution models. The amateurs are rising.

In other words: cheap, fast and good. You can have all three.

Or: Scarcity is scarcer.

But even better:

We are the monkeys. We have typewriters.

We are typing away.

Once upon a time, I relied on writing for clarity and discipline in thought. And because people paid me to write, I wrote a lot.

But then I started to produce more sites and less words. Articles became entries, entries became updates. 140-character updates. There was no room to explore ideas or work through concepts or think about logic. I tweeted about my dogs. I became lazy.

So I created this blog.

I’ll still tweet about my dogs.