Most product copy is boring, you know: fast, intuitive, powerful, and built for teams like yours. You could swap the logo for any other and it would read the same. The copy people remember reads like an editor who spent an afternoon with the product and found one thing worth talking about.
Start with what you know
Before you write, look at how much detail you have. A detail is something a reader can picture happening, so it's specific and tangible, and it has depth. "Easy to use" and "AI-powered" don't, because nobody can picture them. Find your details by using the product and asking the team why they built it and what they love about it.
1. Find the point
Ask what's interesting about the product, which is a different question from what it does. The answer might be a hard job that suddenly feels easy, a tiny interaction that shows how much thought went into the details, or the thing the team decided to leave out. Open with that, since nobody finishes a sentence that starts "Acme is a platform that enables…"
2. Describe what happens
Describe what happens when someone uses it. Be specific, and pick one aspect: what they see, what it does, or, if it helps explain why it works, the technology underneath. For example: "We built a new menu that shows your favourite lists based on the day and time you check them. But we don't discover anything new by always revisiting what we're used to, so it adds something extra, a new but familiar item."
3. Save the small detail
Most products have one small thing that changes how you see everything else. Everyone focuses on the big picture, but we fall in love with the small details. It's the back of the cabinet that's finished even though no one will see it, the cherry on top. And if the product doesn't have one, don't worry, and don't invent one.
4. End on what it means
Close by saying what the details add up to, whether that's what they say about the team that built it or what they change for the person using it.
Add personality
Most of the writing should be precise. Don't be simple, be smart, be human. To get there, inject some humor, break a rule, add an em dash. Like any special ingredient, use it sparingly, or not at all.
- A quick aside in parentheses that says what the reader is already thinking.
- "And get this:" right before a detail that deserves it.
- Understatement, because "pretty good" often convinces more than "revolutionary."
- One everyday word ("messy," "weird," "tiny") inside careful prose.
- Praise by subtraction, where you describe what's no longer there.
- Slang that makes 'business' writing sound like a message to a friend.
You don't need to follow all of this advice. It's a guide, and you're the tastemaker.
Before and after
Before
"Acme Notes is an intuitive, AI-powered note-taking app built for modern teams."
After
"Highlight any sentence in your notes, tag whoever should answer it (your co-founder, your boss, or the one engineer who actually knows), type your question, and it's DM'd. They reply right in the DM, and the answer lands in your notes beside the sentence it belongs to, which still holds up when dozens of people are asking questions."