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Why Launch on Product Hunt?
Product Hunt, a unique platform where creators showcase their products, offers a dynamic space for exposure and growth. For Dokin, launching on Product Hunt was an opportunity to tap into a community of early adopters, tech enthusiasts, and professionals. The platform provided Dokin with a chance to present its innovative approach to data reporting automation to a diverse and open-minded audience.
Our decision to launch on Product Hunt echoes the success stories of industry giants like Notion, Slack, Zapier, Loom, and Stripe, all of whom refined their products early with Product Hunt.
Should you launch on Product Hunt?
The decision to launch on Product Hunt depends on various factors, including the nature of your product and target audience. I would say there are 3 main reasons for launching a product on Product Hunt:
1) To gain new users, receive feedback and ultimately generate new leads. Getting to the top 5 products of the day, ensure maximum exposure and could lead to great user conversations and new leads. In general, though, Product Hunt is mostly suited for developer tools. Marketing and Sales tools don’t receive as much traction.
2) To gain a useful backlink to your website: Product Hunt being a high traffic website, getting a re-direct link to your website or product can help improve domain authority and increase traffic, ultimately helping your SEO performance.
3) Vanity: finally, I’ve seen plenty of “vanity” launches. These are launches that are just done to gain top spots of the day or week. For example, I see products launching on weekends or low traffic days only to have a better chance at winning the #1 Product of the day. While this may be cool, it’s completely pointless if that launch translated into 0 useful conversations with users and no sign-ups.
Dokin's Launch Experience
1. The Preparation
First disclaimer: Product Hunt doesn’t equate to Marketing. If you are relying on Product Hunt to generate your first users or revenue, think again. It’s not the place for that. Think of it more as an initiative to showcase and drive more website traffic for a few days. And for that, you should aim to end in the top 5, which takes some effort.
I started being interested in Product Hunt at the end of last summer (2023) and became more active in early September, about 3 months before our launch. By launch day, I was on my 100 days streak on Product Hunt. This means, 100 consecutive days on connecting to the platform and interacting with others. This gave me the occasion to acquaintance myself with the community and see plenty of launches, engage with fellow founders and strengthen my network.
I was sceptical when I first started, cause it looked like a crowd of self-promoting founders, it seemed so big that I thought it would have been difficult to really strike out. However, as I started interacting with other users and engaging in the forum discussions, I saw that the platform still had that “product nerdiness”, it was a great place to get tips for products to use in our daily works, like finding the ideal product to record demos, or tips for the best marketing strategy on day 0.
Being active on Product Hunt well ahead your launch really is the #1 tip for a successful launch. It is a great opportunity to learn from fellow founders, gain useful launch tips and gain the support of active users of the platform. What I loved the most was connecting with successful founders that had launched on Product hunt and that spared their time for a chat with me. It was a great way for me to learn from experts and also gain their support. The support of such members will also be super important on launch day. Indeed, the Product Hunt algorithm is not built around the concept of a democracy! Upvotes are not all equal, gaining the support of more active users can help you stand out and gain a leap on launch day.
In the weeks leading up to the launch, Dokin I put time and effort in preparing every detail, from crafting a compelling maker's comment to creating visuals that effectively conveyed our unique selling propositions. I also shared our “Coming Soon” teaser with as many people as possible, to make sure as many people as possible would have been notified on launch day. I also took some time to record a video, with some fun twists in order to grab the attention.
2. Product Hunt Launch checklist
As mentioned, the most important objective of a Product Hunt launch is to increase the number of users, gain feedback and new leads. To do that you should have a compelling tagline, good visuals on your launch page and most importantly, a clean landing page that drives engagement to your CTA button, and a smooth onboarding process on your product. To visually help:
- Create a coming soon “teaser” page for your product on Product Hunt, well ahead of your launch. Share it with network, product hunt groups and users.
- Find an attractive product tagline. This will appear as a tagline of your product on lunch day. For Dokin, we used our motto “The Canva of Data Analytics”. This worked well cause it showed quickly what we were about and intrigued readers.
- Build nice visuals and a clear messaging on your Product launch page. People need to be interested in finding out more by visiting your website and trying your product
- Keep your landing page clean. If users see you on product hunt and decide to learn more, they will be re-directed to your website. Keep it neat and clear. You wanna drive as many people as possible to click on that CTA button (Sign Up, Try for Free, Join waitlist or whatever).
- Keep your product onboarding flow as smooth as possible. Reduce the number of clicks before the aha moment, and make sure you don’t have any bugs.
3. Achieving #3 on Product Hunt
I’ll be honest: Dokin's launch on Product Hunt resulted in what was an unexpected outcome for us. We launched as a joke, doubting our ability to even make it to the top 10. Instead, we secured the #3 spot on the Products of the Day list, accompanied by a significant boost in website traffic and a surge in daily signups. This was of course not a smooth sail, as during the first 5 hours of the day, the Product Hunt algorithm did not show us among the featured products of the day. This meant lost visibility during the most important hours of the day. A real issue that few founders that had launched before us had already lamented on X or privately. Right after the 1st 4 hours I contacted the Product Hunt team via Intercom and X, and even tagged PH’s founder Ryan, in order to get us to show up. We finally appeared after almost 5 hours, claiming spot #5, rapidly making to #4 and then engaging in a head to head battle with Corbado’s team and made it to #3.
Overall launch day is really intense. In our case it was a whole 24 hours of replying to comments, involving our users community, posting on Socials, reaching out to people via LinkedIn and email, and answering questions in our chat. If you are a small team, consider asking a few friends to help out on that day. That’s probably something I would do next time! That non-stop 24 hours took a toll on me!
In general, the experience taught us lessons, emphasizing the importance of engaging with the communities in general and adapting to problems. Our launch was a success, as it not only elevated our visibility but also helped is gaining more trust in the data connectors space.
Tips for a Successful Product Hunt Launch
4.1 Best Time to Launch on Product Hunt
There’s not an exact answer to this, but the middle of the week tends to gather most of the traffic on the platform. We strategically chose Thursday, the busiest day of the week, for our launch. More visibility means also more competition. Many of the most competitive products launch on Wednesdays or Thursdays. As the aim is getting as much exposure as possible, I think it makes sense to launch on these days. Navigating the competition and user traffic dynamics requires a thoughtful approach to maximize exposure and impact.
As a general rule, I would avoid Public holidays (particularly US ones) and weekends. On such days it’s easier to gain top spots, however the traffic is so low that I really think it’s a waste.
4.2 Is Launching on Product Hunt Free?
Launching on Product Hunt is free, making it an accessible platform for startups and small businesses. However, the investment lies in the preparation and execution of a well-crafted launch strategy. As I mentioned above, you will need to have at least one person of your team sparing time to prepare the launch strategy and actively
4.3 How to Promote your Launch on Product Hunt
Engage and have fun. On launch day you should be really active on socials and on Product Hunt itself. Ask for support and feedback, reach out to people and share how it is going. In our case we posted regular updates on both Product Hunt and LinkedIn. First at launch, then an update after the first 6 hours and then a couple more as we scaled from position #5 to #3 and entered in a head to head battle with the folks from Corbado. People started becoming interested in our “battle” for spot 3. This was also the occasion to get to know Corbado founders in a friendly competitive spirit. We connected via LinkedIn, had some banter and supported each other. This was probably my favourite thing about our launch. At the end it’s all it is about, promoting your product while having fun and engaging with great people.
4.4 The negatives of launching on Product Hunt
As I said before, overall launching on Product Hunt was a positive experience. If I have to sum up the “negative” points of launching on Product Hunt, I would say:
- There’s a lot of Upvote for Upvote going on. Some of the most active users are other makers launching soon, which show interest often only because they are expecting a return of favour when they launch. That is not always the case, but it still hinders the experience of getting honest feedback and interest.
- Paid upvotes are a real plague. On launch day and the ones before you will be literally harassed by paid upvote agencies. My two cents on that: firstly, if Product Hunt finds out, you will be banned and secondly, what’s the point? You are looking for real users, not fake ones.
Conclusion
Launching on Product Hunt is a fun experience and a great way to promote and showcase your product for a day. Our experience with Dokin helped us increase visibility and user base. Reaching the #3 spot on Product Hunt's Products of the Day was a success for us in terms of traffic, new users, leads and product insights.
Many established companies launch every time they drop a new major feature, to showcase it to the wide public and get first validation. We will probably do the same, and launch again in the future.
If you haven’t done so, follow us on Product Hunt to be updated on future launches, and if you are a user help us by leaving a review!
Also, if you are launching soon on Product Hunt, feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to help!
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