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How do you actually measure the success of a Product Hunt launch?

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One question I always have around a Product Hunt launch is how do you actually measure whether it was successful?

Teams spend weeks preparing for launch day and coming in the top 5 is obviously one way to look at it but I am curious what other signals people pay attention to. For those who have launched before, what did you look at afterwards to decide whether the launch was actually worth the effort?

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It depends on the primary reason why you’re launching on Product Hunt.

When we launched and , we measured success differently depending on what we wanted to achieve at that stage of the product.

For our first AppLozic launch, the goal was to find early adopters. We got a number of signups and, more importantly, one paying customer directly from the launch. For us, that made the launch successful.

When we launched the same product again later, the objective was different. We had built new capabilities and wanted to understand how people reacted to them. So instead of focusing only on signups or upvotes, we looked at the feedback and discussions the launch generated.

Some of the things I find useful to measure from a Product Hunt launch are:

  • Did we get the right early adopters?

  • What objections or concerns did people have?

  • What integrations or features were people asking for?

  • Did people understand the value of the new capabilities?

  • What ideas or discussions did the launch generate?

  • Did any of that interest eventually turn into active users or paying customers?

Upvotes and ranking are good to have, but I wouldn't use them as the only measure of success.

The real question is: What did you want to get out of the launch, and did the launch help you achieve that?

 What I am getting is different success criteria at different stage of the product - makes sense! Thanks for sharing

Couldn't agree more with —defining the objective first is key. Beyond signups and feedback loops, a great metric is how accurately new users understand your core value prop during onboarding without getting confused. It's the ultimate test for your product messaging.

we havent launched yet, going on the 18th. one thing we did do is pick the number before the day, mostly so we couldnt argue with ourselves afterwards. ended up being 30 day retention on whoever signs up on launch day. upvotes we can obviously push with outreach so that one doesnt tell us much

 that makes a lot of sense. Curious though - why did you choose 30 day retention specifically over something earlier like activation or week-one usage?

 bcoz week one still catches people who are only curious abt the launch. and activation we can push up ourselves by changing onboarding, without the product being any better. 30 days is the first number i'd actually believe.

 hmm.. makes sense. Just a followup though - in case your 30 day retention is weak, how will you separate a product problem from simply attracting the wrong users through Product Hunt?

Same experience here. Launched ComplaintForge in July, landed around number 130 for the day, which sounds unremarkable and mostly was. What actually mattered came after: how many of the people who upvoted that day came back a week later with no nudge from me. Almost none did. The traffic that stuck was two people who found it through a Reddit thread I never posted, someone else had linked it there. That told me the launch day audience and the audience the product is actually for barely overlap on PH, which is fine, it just means I stopped treating day rank as a proxy for anything past that day. What I track now is unprompted return visits, closest thing to Nivy's retention number without waiting a month to check it.

 Interesting - does that mean PH is mainly useful for an initial burst of awareness while the stronger signal is where people keep discovering you organically afterwards? How do you sustain that momentum post launch?