Words don’t appear out of thin air. They are borne of ideas and values, and painstakingly combined, chosen, then refined. Over, and over, and over again.

The right words, in the right order, in the right place, at the right time, sets off billions of neurons in the reader’s brain. The brain says, “A-ha!” Aware of the power of words, Slack founder Stewart Butterfield writes that their mission is important, but “our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of Slack into their terms.”

Here are five techniques that every CEO, marketer, and copywriter need to consider for their websites:

1. When to Sell Features Instead of Benefits

There’s a fundamental sales and marketing idea, that everyone is best off selling a benefit instead of a feature. Most people treat this like a hard and fast rule, a timeless best practice. Copywriter Bob Bly has written, “ In consumer advertising classes, we are taught that benefits are everything, and that features are unimportant.”

In a memo to his team, Butterfield adheres to this principle, affirming that selling valuable results like “a reduction in the cost of communication” will enable Slack to find many more buyers than if they’d only written about their software product or specific feature set. That’s exactly what they do in the first version (V1) of their website, “Be less busy.”

V2 of their website doesn’t have as many words, but the main story in the explainer video is how communications limits growth (“I told him my company runs entirely on email and Dropbox, and we were doing just fine… This wasn’t sustainable as I wanted my company to grow. Something had to change”).

The question the website tackled was, “Does Slack really work?” The website would serve the answer, also ideally compelling readers to take action.

And yet, Slack takes an unexpected, hard, right with V3 of their website. The headline might make you scratch your head:

Rather than selling a result, Slack sells a software product and a list of features:

“A messaging app for teams.”

“All your communication in one place, integrating with the tools and services you use every day.”

I don’t believe this is a step backwards or an oversight. In V1, Slack started off with a benefit (“Be less busy”). In V3, Slack wanted to take greater control of how people described them.

For example, Slack took care to frame itself as “a messaging app,” instead of a “chat app” like The Verge and Time’s descriptions of Slack. The connotation of “messaging” sounds more professional and modern than “chat” (AIM, ICQ, etc).

More importantly, Slack also promoted their feature, which first appeared in V1, to a lead feature in V3, “All your communication in one place.”

Both these sentences are deliberately put there for people to easily remember and share through word of mouth.

Investor Marc Andreessen tweeted this chart to show Slack’s unprecedented viral word of mouth growth. To capitalize on this buzz, Slack’s team made sure other people could describe it in a concrete way. “Be less busy” describes the result, but doesn’t describe what Slack really is, so people are forced to freestyle some clumsy version of, “Group chat, but better.”

In that situation, the conversation might’ve ended with, “Oh, we’ve already tried that.” Slack would be better served having as many people as possible share an easy-to-remember message. In V3, Slack sells a product and lead feature because it’s easier for customers to understand, remember, and share through word of mouth. They’ve established the results they can generate, the messaging that resonated, and they want to pour fuel on the fire with word of mouth growth.

I also suspect this copy was positioning Slack to honor specific customers, a variation of how Nike honors athletes and Apple honors creativity. This is hinted at in an incremental update, which builds on this website…

In this half iteration, which we’ll call V3.5, the page starts:

““A messaging app for teams”

And the animation then types out, “who put robots on Mars!!”

“NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is one of tens of thousands of teams around the world using Slack to make their working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive”

The original “A messaging app for teams” makes more sense now. I could see Slack highlighting other clients. For example, NBCUniversal, “A messaging app for teams who entertain millions of viewers.” It makes for strong social proof, names which larger buyers in enterprises are interested in. (“If it works for NASA, it’ll work for us.”)

Image by Dwayne Nesmith

Such is the nature of these larger buyers, what Geoffrey A. Moore describes as “pragmatists” in his seminal work, “Crossing the Chasm.” He describes pragmatists, saying, “References and relationships are very important to these people, and there is a kind of catch-22 operating: Pragmatists won’t buy from you until you are established, yet you can’t get established until they buy from you.”

Slack’s goal with this site was to disseminate an upgraded sentence easy for readers to share, infused with the social proof that NASA brings them. Whenever one of these pragmatist readers get frustrated with their email or their current group chat solution, they’ll remember Slack not just as “a messaging app,” but “a messaging app used by NASA.”

2. Tell Emotional Stories Through Testimonials

Here’s how Slack first introduced itself in V1:

“Slack brings all your communication together in one place. It’s real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams.”

Their testimonials, accordingly, come from people in modern teams:

Now, damn near every company uses testimonials. But with their testimonials, Slack gets into highlighting specific situations, solutions, and feelings. Notice an early one from Medium’s Design and UX Lead Dustin Senos:

“We were looking for something to help with team communication, and nothing really stuck until we started using Slack. It looks good, feels right and search just works: being able to trust that I can find things again when I need them is good peace of mind [emphasis added].”

Or, in the second version of Slack’s website, About.me founder Tony Conrad says, “I am basically in love with Slack. It took us less than 24 hours to get everyone on board (as you know, people are resistant to change), and it is amazing.”

Naturally, chances are Slack might’ve had a hand in crafting these testimonials as well — similar to how authors get busy people to write book blurbs.

As people build familiarity and trust with the brand, they are no longer interested in the solution’s credibility. The higher priority in the product capabilities. Slack eventually moves these testimonials deeper into their website.

3. Prune Feature Descriptions Carefully

I’ve noticed that Slack follows the Rule of Three very closely (“omne trium perfectum”). If you look above at the testimonial screenshot, they’ve spread out three descriptions amongst the testimonials (“It’s like an infinite brain for your whole team,” “Make better decisions, faster,” and “One search box for everything”).

Their adherence to this rule extends to their description of features. Here’s how these features evolve: