Lessons from launching my tool on product hunt ✅

If I had to use one word to describe our product hunt launch, it would definitely be a “rollercoaster”.

As a thanks to all of you for supporting ruttl and making it the #2 Product of the Week, we are going to share all our learnings and how you can prepare for your own Product Hunt Launches.

First things first, let’s start with the exciting stats of the launch -

🚀 #1 Product of the day
🥈 #2 Product of the week
⚡ Over 2500 website traffic
🙎 200+ sign ups
💵 10+ paid new subscribers

Things we did right

1. Your product is never going to be perfect enough to launch. That’s what we did and as a result, launched after 2.5 years. (whereas we technically were ready to launch 6-7 months back)

2. No matter how much you test, things are going to break on launch day. So just keep calm and focus on doing the best

3. Double check if tracking systems are in place. Any type of launch generates lots of traffic. If you don’t have proper analytics, you will lose out on that data. You can also integrate tools like Hotjar to make this better.

4. Chase customer feedback. Product hunt is a perfect place to get real time feedback from your customers. In the coming days after launch, study your product usage data. See which features are not being used. Are there any drop off points in the product? Is there anything that your users want? etc.

5. Setup a task tracker. Add three lists - Before launch, During launch and After launch. Then add all relevant tasks as cards. This way you won't miss out on anything. (We initially tried doing this with docs, but realized that we were missing out on a lot of important tasks. So we just created a simple sheet instead. Every time a task was done, we just changed it's color from red to green. Simple and effective.)

Tips if you're launching soon

• Preparing marketing materials (email sequence, social media posts, PH posts) before hand. If you keep this for last minute, chances are you might deploy things with error.
• Gathering support from communities. I can't emphasize more on the importance of this tip!
• Testing if the coupon code is working properly. If you choose to give visitors from Product hunt a discount, make sure you yourself test it's payment processing. You don't want a failing coupon on the D-day.
• Ensuring there are no "major" active bugs. Test brutally 2 days before launch and then don't deploy anything new, which can potentially break the product. We did this mistake but luckily fixed it just before launching at 12.
• Seeking the help of a hunter, who can push your product to their audiences. A special thanks to Kevin, who helped us launch!
• Investing the time for making good content
• Shooting a simple yet custom video ad can go long way in increasing engagement.

I hope this post helps you launch effectively! But, if there's any doubt or you need advice, feel free to drop it in the comments and I'll help you out. 🙂

Cheers,
Harsh! 💯