Coda is an all-in-one digital workspace for team collaboration. This SaaS offers a complex product with multiple functionalities, but it fails to convey its value right off the bat.

On Coda’s homepage, visitors can access four CTAs leading to different product assets. These assets are packed with information. However, they make it difficult for visitors to understand the platform’s value.

Let’s explore these CTAs and the content they link to. Brace yourself for complexity.

1st CTA: Explore Zoom’s decision doc

This CTA links to an extensive document made with Coda that includes:

• An explanation of Zoom’s decision-making process
• A Root-Cause-Reasoning (RCR) template for teams
• A problem-solving template based on the Double Diamond model
• A template for keeping track of all RCR across the company

2nd CTA: Explore Coda’s team hub

This CTA leads to a document made with Coda that includes:

• An engineering team welcome page
• A feature roadmap template
• An OKR template
• A template for keeping track of weekly team meetings
• A list of design docs
• A task tracker template
• A knowledge base template
• Dashboards
• Integrations

3rd CTA: Explore Figma’s product roadmap

This CTA links to a document made with Coda, which includes:

• An explanation of Figma’s approach to product roadmapping
• A product roadmap template, requiring visitors to sign up for Coda to access it
• A template for team meetings
• A shared page for the prototyping team

4th CTA: Explore Pinterest’s OKR tracker

• A detailed explanation of Pinterest’s approach to tracking OKRs
• A template of the Pyramid OKRs
• A second OKRs template

Each CTA leads to assets dense with information.

In some cases, the info is irrelevant to visitors’ immediate needs. These assets require substantial time and effort for analysis, understanding, and digestion.

Linking them to the homepage may have a negative impact. Website visitors are looking for a clear, quick understanding of the product’s value. What happens when they don’t get it?

• When accessing these 4 documents, Coda’s visitors may feel confused, unsure of what they’re looking at.
• Visitors may also feel lost, not knowing what conclusions to draw from what they’re seeing. Is it the versatility of Coda’s platform? Or should they focus on Coda’s template design? There’s no clear takeaway from simply viewing the 4 documents.
• The amount of information each document carries may overwhelm Coda’s visitors. Confusion and information overload are never good. This may lead to disengagement.
• These documents explain detailed processes or methods used by other companies. They don’t help visitors immediately understand why Coda is the solution they need. This disconnect can result in a loss of interest.
• Linking these documents to the homepage may distract visitors from the main CTAs. They will pay less attention to ‘Request a demo’ and ‘Get started.’

It’s worth noting that visitors can choose to copy the templates. If they do, they’re required to sign up for Coda. However, the selection of document types seems strange. Coda offers a wide range of options, from sprint planning to Gantt project management. I wonder why the team chose these specific use cases. It feels random.The homepage should focus on expressing the product’s core value concisely. It should also guide users towards key actions such as requesting a demo, getting started, or exploring specific features.

If I were part of Coda’s team, I would:

• Remove these 4 CTAs from the homepage.
• Highlight Coda’s document creation capabilities. Show features like designing and sharing templates. Also include commenting, collaboration, and adding graphics or dynamic elements. These basic features are missing from Coda’s current page.
• Include key success metrics from Zoom, Figma, and Pinterest. For example: “Figma’s team doubled their feature delivery speed by centralizing all processes with Coda.” I would also link these testimonials to short case studies that highlight the benefits companies gained by using Coda.
• Progressively disclose information by relocating these 4 documents to the template gallery. Create a ‘Featured’ section and include templates created by different companies with Coda. By removing these assets from the homepage, visitors won’t be distracted by unnecessary information. However, leads interested in diving deeper and exploring different Coda options, can browse these information-rich documents in the template gallery.

I would focus entirely on removing complexity from Coda's homepage.

I would distill the information to make it clear and easy to understand. My goal would be to explicitly show the platform’s value right off the bat, without forcing visitors to access documents that say very little in terms of actual value.