Ask HN: Metaphor for describing how an online product works

[dome82]

Need to describe how an online product works in plain english (servers, requests, frontend, cloud, backend, APIs, etc..) to non-tech people.

How would you describe it? Is there a good metaphor that I could use for this?

:) Thanks! :)

[brudgers]

Describe the user's interaction from the user's perspective. If it's press a button and get a hamburger, that's the right description.

The next level down is to describe the API to developers.

Beyond that, it doesn't matter much to anyone external...e.g. non-technical investors will care about the business model more than the difference between HTTP and UDP.

Good luck.