Creating the Perfect Page for Your Bot
As the owner of Bots on Discord, one of the largest Discord bot lists, I’ve seen hundreds of bot pages. Some are decent, a few are great, but most are just bad. Remember, your bot page is what converts a viewer to a user, so it’s very important that you represent your bot well. This guide will teach you how to make a great bot page using real examples submitted to Bots on Discord.
This guide is intended for Bots on Discord, but the advice can carry over to other websites as well.
Summarizing Your Bot With the Description
Your bot’s description is the first meaningful thing people will see when they look at your bot. Its purpose is not to tell people how to use your bot or to list all of your features in detail. Its purpose is to grab the attention of people seeing it on another page or in search results and make them want to go to your page to find out more. What you put here is up to you, but I’d recommend starting with a summary of your features and expanding out from there.
Do:
- Tell what your bot can do for the reader. Avoid vague text that makes your bot seem generic or feature-lacking.
Don’t:
- Make your description too long. This could cause people to skip over your bot. Keep your description concise for people skimming over. Remember, if they want to know more about your bot they’ll look at the full page.
- Make lists in your description. Descriptions are meant to be in paragraph style, and we enforce this in approval.
- Pad with unimportant information. Remember, the description should be a few sentences max. Detailed information should be given on the full page.
- Include a “created by” or “made using” sentence. This is part of the above point but I felt the need to emphasis it. The full page shows the bot owner already, and listing the back-end tech isn’t important information for the end-user.
Examples
Let’s look at some examples from Bots on Discord. First we’ll examine this description from DealsBot:
DealsBot, on a week-to-week basis informs users about the best and the most recent gaming and non-gaming deals available on the internet.
This is a good description. Looking at the points above, it tells the reader what it does, it’s short, and it doesn’t contain information the reader doesn’t need to know. The only main issue is readability. It would work best if rearranged like so: “DealsBot informs users about deals on games and electronics on a week-to-week basis. Save money and search a wide range of digital platforms for the best deals available!” This description is easier to read and also tells users about the search feature that was unmentioned before.
Next let’s examine Meljin’s description:
Melijn is a multipurpose bot with over 100 commands.
Music, Moderation, Logging, Web Panel, Disable commands and Fun 😮
While this description does tell you a bit about the bot, it doesn’t really give many details about what it actually does other than it being multipurpose. What I think should be done is to keep the first line, but replace the rest with some sentences mentioning the most notable features.
Now let’s look at Sprinto’s description to see what happens when you put too much text.
SPRINTO HELP
Write with your friends! Run a sprint and compete with your writing group! Focus on your writing, share word counts, write the most you can!
Sprinto is very easy to use, has been trained to understand most reasonable (and unreasonable) input, and gives helpful responses at all stages of a sprint.
Includes wpm in the final scoreboard.
Sprinto loves big writing groups, nanowrimo & camp nano, fanfic writers, zines, and people just trying to be productive.
Now first I want you to know that due to the line breaks you can only see the first actual “section” before scrolling down. Two of the seven visible lines are taken up by “SPRINTO HELP” which serves no actual purpose. Along with removing that and the line breaks, this would really benefit with being trimmed down. When reading a description this long I tend to just skim over it instead of reading it all. There’s not much competition for this kind of bot, so it’s safe to assume the interested readers will visit the page and see the details anyways.
For the last example let’s look at FredBoat.
Super easy to use music bot for all your listening needs. Works with no configuration, and doesn’t get in the way for when you need to limit access on a larger server.
Supports YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and so much more.
The music bot section is very competitive with hundreds of bots trying to gain users, so it’s very important to capture the reader’s interest. You should notice that the entire description is focusing on grabbing attention by talking only about the main things they think users are looking for in a music bot. There’s so much they could have talked about in the description, and it wouldn’t be wrong for them to, but they focused on grabbing the attention and then letting the full page deal with it from there.
Getting Specific with Tag Descriptions
While it’s important to have a good general description for your bot, sometimes users want something more specific. This is where tag descriptions come in. For every tag you assign to your bot you can (and are required to) write a description telling the reader how your bot fits that tag. Here are some tips for writing tag descriptions.
Do:
- Only tell the user about features under that category.
Don’t:
- Neglect these descriptions. They will be shown in place of your normal description on tag pages, in tag searches, and on your page. Having a low effort description will turn away users by giving off a bad appearance for your overall quality.
- Just list command names. Tell them about the command(s) and what they do.
Examples:
First, let’s take to the moderation tag page and look for some bad examples.
Starting with Mee6, their description for the moderation tag is “Moderation plugin w/ Automod.” This tells me almost nothing about the bot, other than that it has moderation features. The tag already told me this though, so there’s no point in the description being here.
Another bot, Wick, has this description: “Wick has basic moderation yet needed commands only available to the server owner.” Once again this doesn’t really tell me anything. The description needs to tell me what moderation features it has for me to use.
Now let’s look at some good examples.
Mewbot uses this description for its game tag: “With Mewbot, you can duel others for credits, exp, you can even organize tournaments with Mewbot!” This quickly tells me what to expect from the bot. It could use some grammar improvements though. If I’m looking for a bot that allows me to battle users in my server this would attract my attention.
Lastly, Vexera has this description for music: “Vexera is the most advanced discord music bot which plays from over 8 audio sources and has over 20+ commands!” This is a decent description which tells me I’ll be able to play music from many sources and heavily control the player through many commands. It could tell me what those commands are or some of the sources that are available to improve though.
Writing and Laying Out the Content
The body of your page is the place to go into depth on your bot. Don’t be afraid to write lots of text telling them everything you think they should know. When creating your page you should lay it out in a way that’s easy to comprehend and search through. For example, if you’re explaining your commands you should have already told the reader how to use your bot. A good general layout that works for most bots is this:
introduction → how to use → features → where to go next.
Do:
- Separate content into clearly defined sections so the reader can jump around to quickly find information. This also makes your bot look more professional and well put together.
- Tell the reader everything they need to know to use your bot.
- Include a “How to Use” section (this is required for approval).
- Give lots of detail on your features.
- Tell the user what you want them to do next at the end of your page.
Don’t:
- Repeat your description. You can still start with a summary which includes a feature preview. Just don’t copy and paste, which can make the user ignore everything thinking it’s repeat information.
- Force the reader to go to another website to learn about your bot. Assume they won’t go to your website at first when you write the page.
Examples:
Here are some example bot pages I’ve picked out to give you some ideas for how to format your page.
Formatting
No matter what content you have on your page, if it’s hard to read they might not read it. Paragraphs of text should be a last resort on bot pages. Just look at any product page on the internet and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Use lists, tables, headers, emphasis, and other methods of displaying information to more easily convey it to the reader. Here’s a list of tips to help you out.
Formatting tips:
- Turn long comma separated lists into actual lists.
- Make sure your page works well on mobile. More than 25% of the traffic on Bots on Discord comes from mobile devices.
- Don’t over-do it. Don’t turn your entire page into a mess with tons of bold, lists, headers, quote elements, and spacing. It has the opposite effect and might make it harder to read.
- Use keyboard and code elements to highlight command usage and options for settings.
Examples
Here are some pages I’ve picked out that are well-formatted. You can use these for reference when formatting your own page.
Adding Character / Representing Your Brand
With how many Discord bots there are out there it’s important to put your own spin on things. There are multiple ways you can do this. If your bot has a “character” you can write your page in-character. You can also style your page with CSS to match your branding (fonts, colors, images). In the end, whatever you choose to do is up to you.
If you need help with adding CSS to your page check out our markdown guide (look at “Attributes” near the bottom) or ask for help on our Discord server.
Examples:
This bot, created by one of our moderators, use a heavy amount of custom styling (probably too much) to stand out.
This bot page is written as if the bot is telling you about itself.
Lastly, I want to mention PatchBot again for their very professional-looking page.
