There was a lot that we learned from our Betalist launch last year. Now, in April 2019, all this experience was to serve us during our long-planned Product Hunt launch. But did it?
These two launches were both the same and different at the same time. Thanks to our BetaList experiences, we managed to avoid some pitfalls. And yet, there was so much learn to from our Product Hunt launch.
We did our best to prepare ourselves and our product the day. And here’s how it went.
How did we prepare?
We worked on improving our product
Weeks before our Product Hunt lunch we were – honestly speaking – stuck in the vicious cycle of improving everything. We were constantly coming up with new and better ideas. We kept finding things that needed either fixing or polishing. We wanted to publish the best possible version of Taskeo (at the time).
Our users and partners played a big part in this process by providing their priceless feedback. Most of the new features that we introduced prior to our Product Hunt launch resulted exactly from these helpful suggestions.
But we won’t lie. There was a downside to all that fixing. We waited with our Product Hunt launch weeks longer than intended.
We work on our lifetime deal
We also wanted to spice the whole launch up. Working on making a good product was one thing but we weren’t finished…. yet. There had to be something more that we could add to the offer.
And we decided to go with lifetime access to Taskeo.
Setting up a landing page happened simultaneously with improving our platform.
We prepared everything in advance
Implementing user feedback and creating our lifetime deal was still only one side of a coin. The other one was to oil the cogs of our Product Hunt launch machine.
We reviewed our support files and links. We made sure our contact channels worked properly. In advance, we prepared all the visual content. Banners and videos were ready days ahead. Thanks to this, we could spend the last moments before the D-day on polishing all other launch-related matters.
What did we do on the Product Hunt launch day?
When the big day came, we considered ourselves prepared. From promotional materials to our sparkly LTD page, we were ready.
Here’s how it went.
We stayed online
The big part of our Product Hunt launch was to arrange our team shifts so we could answer doubts and questions. The fact that our team is globally distributed, with as much as six hours of the time difference, worked in our advantage.
We spread the workload. Instead of being online all at once, we logged to work at different times to answer comments in the PH thread and our website chat.
We reached out to our network
Product Hunt may have switched off some of the vital options that increased your product exposure but we still knew that our network would be the key to our success or failure.
As the Product Hunt launch day came, we reached out to every possible connection: friends, partners and users. We asked them to share their thoughts on our product and support us during the big day.
We participated in the discussions
And the discussions happened – both on Product Hunt as directly in our messenger. Part of our preparation process was to know exactly what we’d say when asked about Taskeo. And that, believe us, helped a lot.
Besides the questions such as “do you have X” or “can Taskeo do Y”, the most popular query turned out to be “what makes you different?”.
Luckily, with the bunch of features which Taskeo offers, we had no problems describing our USP and the real value which our product provides.
This is what we achieved
At the end of the day, our 24 hours on Product Hunt boiled down to these three metrics:
- we scored 458 upvotes which placed us among the day’s popular products
- we generated over 500 visits to our website
- about 75 new accounts were created in Taskeo
Furthermore, our Product Hunt launch left a mark in our search console as well, causing a spike of impressions and clicks:
Things we’ve learned from our Product Hunt launch
Here comes the best part. Things we’ve learned and conclusions we reached. Something we’ll definitely keep for the future. Our Betalist launch was a thing already but showing up on Product Hunt taught is even more.
- Networking matters. That shouldn’t come as surprise but the stronger your network, the better results you’ll get on Product Hunt. Start connecting months before you even think about getting on PH. Nourish these contacts so you have an ample base of people to rely on during the big day.
- Your USP got to be crystal clear. As we mentioned above, we’ve been often asked about our unique selling point. If we didn’t know how to talk about what makes Taskeo unique, we’d definitely come across as just another kanban board. Your key to success is to know exactly what makes you better than others and to talk about it the right way.
- There are things we need to work on. Well, it’s not exactly big news for us. While there’s always room for improvement, our Product Hunt launch taught us a lot about how our users perceive Taskeo. We learned more about what they need, what annoyed them, what troubled them and what they liked. Upvotes and traffic aside. It’s the feedback that was priceless.
Final thoughts about our Product Hunt launch
If we were to give you some tips on launching your product on Product Hunt, it would be exactly these three: create a good product, learn to talk about its unique points and grow your network. At the end of the day, we’ were satisfied with what we had achieved. And regardless of whether we could do better, we do consider our Product Hunt Launch a success in many ways. And above all else: it was an awesome learning opportunity.
