Create a custom widget for your website in minutes
Widgets are just about everywhere the days, in the form of chat widgets, embedded content and feedback forms. But there's a lack of tools to create custom widgets. Sometimes all we want is a simple but flexible widget.
(From my blogpost about my launch: https://medium.com/@logicalicy/my-first-product-hunt-launch-816c98c6b7cc)
tldr; It’s surprising I hadn’t launched on Product Hunt (PH) before, having worked on many products over the years. Here, I share some lessons from my first PH launch.
The product is called See Memo. Partly inspired by my previous work in a similar space (widgets for UX analytics, for those curious), it helps you create a custom widget quickly.
There are many widgets out there, in the form of chat widgets, embedded content, feedback forms and pop-ups. Most of them serve a specific purpose and it may be hard for you to customise them to the degree you’d like. This is what See Memo attempts to solve by offering you simple and highly customisable widgets. You can brand them in the right colours, position them where you want and specify the exact copy you’d like.
Test, fix, test, test… in the week before launch, I was constantly identifying bugs and areas for improvement. Of course, I couldn’t do this without a few friends chipping in their thoughts. Copy shortcomings were the easiest to fix. The app looking awful in mobile was a good reminder for me to invest some time in responsive design. An Examples page was added after multiple pieces of feedback of not knowing exactly where to start. I also quickly made a marketing/landing page to outline the value props of See Memo, which seemed to be clear enough to my early testers. I was ready for launch.
When I was confident I could release the product with minimal defects and shortcomings, I started setting up a Product Hunt page. It turns out you can schedule your launch! From a brief search around the Internet, I got a sense that early on in the day (California time) was the best time to launch. So, I set my launch time to 8am European time and went to sleep.
By the time I woke up, I had a few upvotes already. Over the course of the next hours, the number started ticking up and I shared the PH page with a few of my friends. I also made sure to post the landing page (not the PH page) on Show HN and relevant Slack communities. What was surprising was that upvotes in PH don’t necessarily mean a higher ranking. Where you rank on the PH front page will be a function of other factors too, including comments, engagement, etc. As the upvotes trickled in, sign-ups did too.
When I looked at the metrics during the day, I found that I had sign-ups but not many were activating (one AAARRR! Pirate metrics). And it struck me that I didn’t have a Help page for anyone who might be getting stuck. So, I quickly made a public Notion doc to serve as a Help page.
By the end of the day, I had a very modest ~40 upvotes but I was perfectly happy with it for my first launch. 😊
Things I identified as areas for improvement and lessons for future launches:
Widgets are just about everywhere the days, in the form of chat widgets, embedded content and feedback forms. But there's a lack of tools to create custom widgets. Sometimes all we want is a simple but flexible widget.