Hero Copy: Finding the Right Headline
This is the most opinionated change I made. I believe a design engineer's role at a small team like Unkey extends to copy — if a user reads it, it's design. The existing headline is a conscious platform play, broad by design. I went through several iterations, first toward feature specificity, then realised that approach excluded too much of what Unkey does. The final headline tries to hold both: clear enough to self-qualify, broad enough to cover the full product.
A hero headline has one job: help the right developer recognise they're in the right place in two seconds. The original headline, 'The Developer Platform for Modern APIs', is a considered positioning choice, but it's too broad to do that job quickly. Feature-specific alternatives fix that but introduce a new problem: they exclude every use case they don't name.
- -Developers need to self-qualify fast: The moment of recognition ('yes, this is for me') needs to happen in a second or two. Broad platform language delays that moment. It doesn't mean the platform story is wrong, just that the headline is carrying the wrong job.
- -Platform language front-loads ambiguity: The word 'platform' covers too much range. It could mean a gateway, an auth provider, an analytics tool, a hosting service. Specificity builds trust faster than category claims.
- -Feature-specific headlines have their own trap: Going too specific excludes use cases. 'API Keys and Rate Limiting' leaves out the credit system. Exactly the kind of thing an AI app builder searching for usage billing wouldn't connect to Unkey.
Hero headline
"The Developer Platform for Modern APIs" (original)
Could describe any API tool. A developer reads it and still doesn't know if this is for them. The intent is right but the execution is too broad.
"API Keys and Rate Limiting, Simplified"
Specific enough to earn attention from developers searching for those two things, but it leaves the credit and usage billing system invisible. Unkey does more than the headline implies, and feature-specific headlines penalise the features they don't name.
"API Keys as a Service"
Accurately describes one feature but drops rate limiting and analytics entirely. Undersells what Unkey actually is.
"API Auth and Rate Limiting, Simplified"
"Auth" points to user authentication, which is Clerk and Auth0 territory. Unkey does key management, which is a different concept. Wrong mental model from the first word.
"API Management for Developers"
"API Management" reads as enterprise. Kong, Apigee, MuleSoft. It signals heavyweight tooling and procurement cycles, not the lightweight developer utility Unkey actually is.
"The API Control Plane for Modern Products". Names the category Unkey occupies without locking into a single feature. Developers who know the term understand immediately. The subtitle carries the specific feature list.
It covers keys, rate limits, credit budgets, and analytics without naming any of them individually. The subtitle does that job instead: API keys, rate limiting, usage analytics, and per-user credit budgets. The headline sets the category, the subtitle fills in the specifics.