For Developer Tools, the Docs Are the Marketing SiteFor Developer Tools, the Docs Are the Marketing Site

A developer decides in the reference, not in the hero. For a developer tool, that changes where nearly all of the effort should go.

How the decision actually happens

Someone hears your name, searches it, skims the landing page for about four seconds to confirm what it is, then goes straight to the docs and looks for the thing they are trying to do. If they find it, they try it. That is the funnel.

Which means the page that closes is your quickstart, and the page most teams polish is the one nobody reads carefully.

What a good quickstart looks like

• Working code in the first screen, copy-pasteable, with no placeholder to go and find first.
• One path only. Options belong further down, after something has worked.
• The output shown, so a reader knows whether it worked.
• No account required to read it.

npm i your-tool
npx your-tool init
# → wrote your-tool.config.ts

Three lines and a result. If a reader has to assemble that from four sections, most of them will not.

Treat them as one site

Docs on a subdomain with a different design read as a different company, and the search result that brings someone in usually lands in the reference rather than on the home page. One application, one design system, one deploy — so a developer arriving from anywhere never crosses a seam.

Your marketing site introduces you. Your documentation is what people are actually evaluating.