Product overviews -- a tricky space where documentation and marketing overlap
Here’s the intro:
The product overview (usually the homepage of your product’s documentation) explains what you can do with the product, including the high-level business goals, the market needs or pain points it solves, who the product or other features are for, and other introductory information.
Although a seemingly simple page, the product overview can overlap into marketing domains, create redundancies with README’s, and pose challenges in connecting with a more diverse audience (both engineers and bizdev people) than the rest of your technical docs. Overall, the product overview is an area where documentation and marketing intersect in interesting ways.
Read more: API product overviews.
About Tom Johnson
I'm a technical writer based in the Seattle area. In this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, visual communication, information architecture, writing techniques, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out simplifying complexity and API documentation for some deep dives into these topics. If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the field, be sure to subscribe to email updates. You can also learn more about me or contact me.