Hero Section Breakdown: Coda

In this article I'm going to break down Coda's old home page hero section: why it works so well, and a major weakness. Let's get to work. 👇

For context, Coda is sort of like a superpowered Google Doc. You can put all sorts of calendars, tables, etc. in it, connect it to things like Figma, Jira, and put everything in one place.

But "all in one place" is a value proposition that approximately 3894238942398 companies run with. To really connect with their audience, Coda has to go a bit deeper.

With that in mind, check out their hero section headline: "Enough of this sheet." It's paired with a picture of a defeated-looking lady smushing her face against a printed-out spreadsheet.

I love this because rather than just say "all in one place," they've gone a step further and zeroe'd right in on the actual problem: silo'd teams working out of a million different spreadsheets with lists of tasks, deliverables, launch dates, etc.

Anyone who's worked in a mid-to-large organisation knows how excruciating this can be. EG:

• You're a marketer, but you have no real visibility over when the product team is looking to launch new features, and what's going to make it.
• You're running a regional sales office, but have no idea what the centralised marketing team is sending to your leads, and when it's going out. And when you ask about something, you get told "oh, it was in the spreadsheet."

(These are just two examples from my own previous career).

So "enough of this sheet" is a clever play on words that neatly captures this pain: and gets people to keep reading.

And that brings us to the subhead. The subhead's different from the headline. Where the headline was a clever play on words that captured attention, the subhead then needs to do something with it and explain the nuts and bolts of how it actually delivers value.

So that's why we have "For teams whose best work is scattered across documents, spreadsheets and apps, Coda is the doc that brings it all together."

It's telling us who Coda is for and what Coda does - the headline told us why we should care.

What I love about this is how the headline is clever, while the subhead is clear. Too many companies go too far in one direction or the other with both - but Coda recognises that these two chunks of a hero section have very different jobs.

The headline captures attention. The subhead does something with it.

But you'll remember that I mentioned a major weakness of this approach. That's the "alternative to spreadsheets" positioning.

For some people, a spreadsheet is just an annoying list of tasks, deliverables or whatever.

But for others, it's a powerful piece of software more associated with pivot tables and VLOOKUPs. They don't want to give these up!

Reality is, Coda isn't really an alternative to those spreadsheets - it's an alternative to the "list of tasks" spreadsheets.

But by just saying, "enough of this sheet," they risk positioning themselves as an alternative to something some people don't want to give up.

(Shouts out Twitter user JH Sherck for pointing this out to me last week).

But all that said - I think it was a great example of how a headline and subhead need to work together in a hero section.

The headline captures attention. The subhead does something with it and explains who you're for and what you do.

Simple in theory, extremely difficult to nail in practice.