My users taught me how to describe my own product

I spent two years trying to explain what my product does. Different copy, different angles, different frameworks. Nothing landed the way I wanted.

Then a user described it to me in passing. One sentence, in their own words, using language I would never have chosen.

It was better than anything I had written.

I have started collecting those sentences now. Every time someone describes the product in their own words, I write it down. Not to use as copy, but to remember what the product actually is in the world, outside my head.

The gap between how you describe your work and how your users describe it is the gap between what you built and what you think you built. That gap is worth knowing about.

Has a user ever described your product better than you could? What did they say?