Welcome to the SPOT. Your weekly newsletter of the top 3 strategy, product, operations, and tech articles from around the web for PMs at small software companies. Here are this week’s articles:

The most important part of your design is actually the text

Product copy is not typically top of mind when we’re designing a product. And when it does come time to write it, what comes out is generic error messages, boring descriptions and fuzzy instructions. We don’t mean to product copy this way. but we do. Maybe we figure we’ll replace it later, but we know how that goes…

But a lot of bad copy adds up. Spending just a little extra brain juice when writing copy can give your product clarity and personality that sets it apart from every other product out there.

Are there 5 errors messages you can add more clarity to right now? How about some description text that’s a bit more descriptive? Or some onboarding copy that needs punching up? It doesn’t take long but can make your user’s experience much more pleasant.

I got 400 signups with a video of a product that didn’t exist

Usually, you’d use screenshots and captures of your existing product to create a demo video, but this guy created a video using mockups generated in Photoshop and added some motion graphics. It looked like the product existed and was amazing, but it didn’t exist. It got a lot of interest and some signups.

But what happens when you actually go and build the “product” you already devised and it doesn’t live up to what your video could do?

50 Short Product Lessons

Ok, ok, some of these aren’t necessarily short per se, but there are some good ones in there. You’re sure to resonate with at least one that fits into where you and your product are at the moment.

I liked the “The critical moment of realizing intuition needs testing” one. I recently did a 5 second user test on the homepage copy and it was eye-opening to say the least. Let’s just say that once Speckled is making some money, a decent chunk of money is going to be set aside for user testing.