I feel your pain. It's hard to find the balance between saying what problem you're solving vs how you're solving it.
This is what I suggest you do. It might cost you ~$50 or so. Go to a coffee shop like Starbucks and offer someone to buy them their coffee in exchange for some feedback on the "new website you're building". Try to find normals (not super technical folks, unless that's your target audience). Explain to them what you're building, let them play with the site (hey this is also a nice UX test), take your notes whatever but in the end, ask them to explain to you what your site does. Maybe if you do this with 10 or so people you might see a pattern emerging (bonus: get pretty good feedback on product too).
I am not saying this will work, but this will not be a waste if the people you talk to are anything close to your target audience.
P.S. What Emmett is saying above is to give him a one sentence description that brings him as close as possible to cloning your site. Also, do you really need "externalize opinions"?
Different pitches for different people/situations. The problem is, people don't all have the same pain. It gets worse. Some people have gone numb from the pain and aren't conscious of it any more. The irony is that our rating system would be perfect for matching the right pitch to each person.
I've more or less mastered the 1-minute demo, hard not to since I've done it a thousand times (and a thousand different ways too). Trust me, I used to suck a lot more.
As for the "externalize opinions" line, just trying something new.
This is what I suggest you do. It might cost you ~$50 or so. Go to a coffee shop like Starbucks and offer someone to buy them their coffee in exchange for some feedback on the "new website you're building". Try to find normals (not super technical folks, unless that's your target audience). Explain to them what you're building, let them play with the site (hey this is also a nice UX test), take your notes whatever but in the end, ask them to explain to you what your site does. Maybe if you do this with 10 or so people you might see a pattern emerging (bonus: get pretty good feedback on product too).
I am not saying this will work, but this will not be a waste if the people you talk to are anything close to your target audience.
P.S. What Emmett is saying above is to give him a one sentence description that brings him as close as possible to cloning your site. Also, do you really need "externalize opinions"?