Problem-agitate-solution-outcome for Lists Kit

I wrote about why I built Lists Kit but the post ain’t no marketing copy.

Now that my landing page is finishing, I realised I need copy that’s more smooth and succinct that communicates the value of the product clearly, and hopefully, converts better.

One of my favourites when it comes to copywriting formulas is the Problem-Agitate-Solution (PAS) framework, and this site added an “O” (for outcome) to it:

For an imaginary holiday website:

PROBLEM: Finding the perfect hotel can be stressful. Almost too stressful to bother.

AGITATE: Hunting down all your options, working out how far away the local hotspots are and reading reviews from other ‘guests’. Then, of course, there is the price.

And all within your lunch hour? Impossible!

SOLVE: Not impossible. Awesomehotels.com makes finding the best hotel deals quick and easy. We compare hundreds of travel sites for you so you get the best hotel deal available. And all faster than you can say “ham, cheese and pickle on rye”.

ADDED OUTCOME: In just a few clicks, you’ll have your ideal accommodation secured – at the best price – leaving you free to daydream about how to treat yourself with the money you just saved.

“I was overwhelmed by hotel choices and the prices seemed to differ on each website. Awesomehotels.com did all the hard work of searching online and they really did have the cheapest prices!” Lara Taker, Holiday Maker.

PASO. I love this way of writing. To me it’s clear and powerful. The Agitate part is a great way to demonstrate empathy and understanding for the user’s painpoints.

So how does PASO for List Kit read like?

PROBLEM:
I hate dependency hell and endless security updates for my websites. It can be Wordpress, or it can be <insert your latest fancy Javascript framework>. Especially for simple, single-page sites that gets maybe 10 visitors to 10,000, having all that maintenance work feels like over-engineering, a technology overkill. The cost-benefit is low, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

AGITATE:
Is this you?

“I want to build things for people. Not constantly update my tools because other developers are bored.” - r/webdev

“Big regrets using Typescript for my latest project. Feels like 90% pain for 10% gain.” - @philostar

“But PHP and WordPress particularly are driving me nuts. I feel like I’m patching up broken shit constantly that wasn’t designed the right way from start. I hate all those 3rd party WordPress plugins and they are giving me a headache literally… It’s like making a Frankenstein.” - r/webdev

Maybe you can relate to these situations, and the associated anguish:

• Waking up and getting a long list of Github dependabot or Wordpress security updates for your site.
• Your favourite framework/library decides to re-envision itself from ground up, makes many major new releases and changes how it works fundamentally, and expects a ton of unlearning and people to invest in learning the new way. And mid-way through upgrading the version, you regret big time.
• Your web host just introduced updated it’s infrastructure and your site no longer works, even though you didn’t do nothing.
• You left your site untouched for too long, want to make small changes, and now npm run dev doesn’t even work.

Why should another developer working at Github, React or Wordpress be allowed to give us to-dos? Why do we have to work for them?

SOLVE:
If you’re building an info directory and all you need is a simple website, a few pages, then Lists Kit is the answer. A simple kit to build simple info directories. Everything is in plain vanilla HTML, CSS and Javascript. No frameworks. No dependencies. You edit the repo for color, images and copy, drop the file into almost any web host, and it’s live. And likely to stay live forever.

OUTCOME:
Save countless days for high effort, low ROI work of maintaining websites. Most importantly, save yourself the emotional anguish and pain of updating and upgrading your websites. So that you can focus on the content and the business.

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What do you think?