Explain My Product

The trough of sorrow is coming...

I feel like I am experiencing the phases of this product at light speed--it's not a new feeling, because I have been through these phases with my other ventures, but honestly never this quickly.

QUICK RECAP:

I only started coding https://explainmyproduct.com on Saturday and bought the domain for this product on Friday. I didn't prepare, and launched on Product Hunt on Monday--I am currently at 184 upvotes and finished as the #11 product for the day.

WHAT I'VE VALIDATED:

The concept has resonated with a lot of people and the response has been phenomenal. People quickly grasp the value, and the signups and quality feedback that people are receiving is proof that the model works...(if I have a steady stream of traffic). The point is, I feel very confident that people are getting value from this.

CURRENT STATE:

Now, on Monday and yesterday, I was riding high--I was getting a consistent stream of signups (website owners listing their sites for feedback) as well as a consistent stream of feedback responses for those website owners. I even got my first paid, promoted site that signed up to get a guaranteed number of feedback responses and he hit that limit within 12 hours (36 hours faster than expected).

But now that launch day has come and gone, and PH hides products below the #10 spot under the "Show More" accordion, my traffic has been completely decimated.

CURRENT CHALLENGE:

How do I set up the mechanism to build that steady stream of traffic rather than the spikes from announcements?

If I can solve this, I think this product will actually be a relatively self-sustaining, valuable resource for startup founders and marketers alike.

In case you're curious how it panned out:

• Made it above the "show more" accordion on PH front page yesterday
• 130 Upvotes
• 82 sites listed for review
• 140 pieces of feedback given for sites (roughly 80% of the feedback is high quality)
• 2 inquiries for paid, accelerated feedback capture
• 1st paying customer from the 2 inquiries above
• 1st paying customer requested 20 response package, and just over night has about 13 pieces of feedback towards the 20 he paid for.

I'm very pleased with this, especially because it is my first solo PH launch, and I really didn't prep for it--I didn't line up friends to upvote, and even once I did launch I only shared on LinkedIn and here. I was more interested in seeing how it did without a lot of the inorganic upvotes from friends/family and really happy with the results.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Bought the domain Friday afternoon. Coded the product Saturday.
Tested it and tied up loose ends Sunday.
Launched on product hunt today!

I’m feeling good and happy that I didn’t hold this up or get stuck in analysis paralysis!

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/explain-my-product

I just launched https://explainmyproduct.com earlier this afternoon, and I'm already getting people listing their sites and providing feedback to other site owners!

That said, I am realizing that there is a certain percentage of people that need reminders to provide quality feedback--the type of feedback they'd like to receive from the community. The success of this product relies on people giving and receiving quality feedback, so I realized early on that I need to remind people that this is not a one-way transaction.

I added a "confirmation" and reminder note to give people a second to make sure they feel good about the feedback they are providing to others.

At any rate, I'm excited that people are already using this--I literally bought the domain on Friday and build the product yesterday!

This as a high-level concept was something I have been thinking about for a few weeks. But I never really put pen to paper, until this Friday afternoon when I needed a break from my other projects.

My goal was to keep this simple, and have a product built, tested and launched by the end of the weekend.

THE CONCEPT:

The idea is that with as little context as possible (a source of feedback bias), a stranger will only have a link to your website and will have the goal of explaining what it is your product or business does. If your website is designed well, they should be able to quickly explain it. But there is always room for improvement.

That said, I wanted to make a virtuous community, where in order to get feedback on your product or website, you had to give another person feedback on theirs. This was a core feature requirement that I think will ensure the success of this product.

THE MVP AND INITIAL BUILD:

I kept the tech stack very simple using a serverless architecture and modifying a landing page template from https://cruip.com

I spent a bit of time today (10/20) testing what I built and working out the kinks. And I feel pretty confident releasing it out into the wild.

THE NEXT STEPS:

Announcing the launch on Indie Hackers and hopefully getting a lot of people to sign up and list their websites.

I'm considering a future option for paid promotion offering a website owner a guaranteed amount of feedback in a short amount of time, but haven't really thought about the mechanics of that and I don't want to delay launching to figure this out.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!