A good product shouldn’t be complicated to explain. With a few words you should be able to convey the core value and use of the thing you’re describing. The language doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be descriptive.

I always imagine myself describing a product at a crowded cocktail party. In just a few words, can I convey not only the purpose of the product, but a clear and obvious use case for it? Will the person who I’m telling about it leave a very short conversation remembering the app and knowing why someone would use it? Assuming I only have 1–2 sentences to describe it before someone interrupts, can I get the clear point across?

Here are some quick examples:

Google: The fastest way to find content on the internet

Facebook: A place to connect and communicate with friends

Kayak: Search flight availability and prices across all airlines at once

Uber: Get picked up by a prescreened driver in less than 10 minutes

Spotify: Get access to tons of music without having to buy anything

Dropbox: Exceptionally easy file syncing between devices

None of these descriptions are official. I just wrote them all in under five minutes. But they were simple to write, because the value propositions of those companies is so unbelievably simple.

One place that forces this clarity is a growing community on Product Hunt. To submit a product to the daily flow, you have 20 characters for the name, and 60 characters for the description.

When you look at the products listed, you can get a sense of what each product does just by scanning the list.

Putting this into practice at Cluster

For the past year or so, I’ve been explaining what Cluster does at social gatherings. It initially sounded like this: “Cluster lets small groups of people share meaningful content privately with each other.” Concise, sure, but the next question was always: “Like what?”

Then I started tailoring my description to the person I was talking to. If I was talking to a new mom, I’d say “Cluster lets new parents privately share baby photos with the people who care the most.” (Response typically: “Oh so I don’t have to annoy all my Facebook friends!?”) Or if I was talking to a teacher, I’d say “Teachers use Cluster to set up private classroom photo albums they can share with students’ parents.” (Response typically: “So I don’t have to send mass emails anymore?!”)

In fact, the simplified, direct descriptions for different use cases led us to create entire apps for our most popular verticals. Our current portfolio includes:

Homeroom: Private classroom albums for teachers and parents.

Tripcast: A living travel journal for your friends back home.

Daily Kiddo: The best way to share with your kid’s biggest fans.

So far, this direct messaging is working very well for these apps. When testing tag-lines using Twitter Ads and Google Adwords we saw 2–5x more clicks than a more generic tagline. This also leads to more users immediately understanding what the app does, and more successful invitations to friends to come sign up as well.

In summary

Take the time to make sure you can describe what is unique about your product in just a few words. If you can do that, I guarantee marketing and explaining what you’re building will be infinitely easier.