After publishing “Why Does Your Startup Sound Like a Startup?” and “The 2-second ‘Rule’” a couple weeks ago, several commenters on Hacker News and elsewhere requested I write a followup with examples of companies doing homepage copy the right way.

The examples below are just good examples. In other words, I’m not saying they’re perfect or that their approach should be codified into a set of rules. I’m also not endorsing the entire site itself, but simply focusing on the headlines themselves (hopefully those are enough caveats for the HN crowd).

All examples illustrate an approach to copy that does a few things well, including:

communicates a benefit to the visitor, not just a logical appeal based on the feature set

goes beyond what to say, and has clearly thought about how to say it in a meaningful way

entices the reader to read more of the page, armed with the context of the headline

Below you’ll find the good headlines and their source, a brief explanation of why I think they’re effective, followed by a few less compelling headlines that list features or state what the product does (which is what you’ll find on too many startup websites).