Launching a product on ProductHunt can be quite a challenging endeavour. The choice of hunter, the engagement of the community, and the effectiveness of outreach strategies all play pivotal roles in the outcome of the launch. We recently launched Weavely, a tool that turns Figma designs into working web forms, ranked #9 for product of the day and #4 for product of the week in the “Design tools” category. We’re now ready to share our experience and some tips with those who only plan their launch.
Our Takeaways from the ProductHunt Launch
Finding Your Hunter
Some people opt for hunting their product on their own. But if you're totally new to ProductHunt and it's your first launch, we would highly recommend to get a professional hunter. Their reputation and influence within the PH community can have a great impact on the visibility and reception of your product.
As Weavely is a tool that is mostly used by designers, we were looking for a hunter related to UX/UI design and Figma. Fortunately, we found the perfect match: a top hunter who had a track-record of hunting successful products in the no-code/design space. While there were no guarantees of securing his commitment (popular hunters are often involved in numerous projects), a creative approach helped us convince him to hunt Weavely. A big shoutout to KP for his great assistance during our launch 💜
All in all, support from the hunter means a lot, and it is definitely worth aiming for one that expresses real interest in your product. However, having a hunter isn’t an absolutely necessity for a successful launch.
Outreach Strategy
One of, if not the most important part of the preparation for your launch on ProductHunt, is user outreach. Before getting started, you need to ask yourself a question: what is my primary goal for this launch?
Everyone measures success differently. For some companies, becoming the product of the day or at least finishing in top-5 is the only desired outcome. For others, like us, extending the user base goes first.
We cared about true engagement, and focused more on relevant users rather than just anyone who'd give us an upvote. So, choose your target audience within the PH community and reach out to relevant people asking for feedback. Yes, the scope is much smaller but you might get genuine feedback and support — and that’s what matters the most, especially to such a fresh product like ours.
Of course, we did a bit of both. While our main focus was on Figma users, as Weavely is a form building plugin for Figma, we also reached out to makers from absolutely different industries. However, we're a small team with only 2 people working on the outreach, which imposed certain constraints on efficiency of the process. Therefore, if you want to guarantee a high ranking, consider having more “hands”. For example, limitations on the number of messages and connect requests you can send on LinkedIn can really slow down the process.
To sum up, decide on your priorities. Is it a “product of the day” at any cost? Or ranking doesn’t matter to you as much as new active users for your product? If the former is the case, reaching out to people in ProductHunt communities at a very high volume is a must.
Geographical Aspect of Your Audience
Something that helped us a lot to structure our outreach on the launch day was tracking geographical locations of our contacts. No stalking, just noting down their continent. With 24 hours at our disposal, we had the opportunity to strategically time our outreach across different time zones. The goal was to optimise response rates by reaching out at the most convenient times for our audience. For instance, launching in Europe meant that our American contacts would likely be asleep. Although it seems like an obvious tip, paying attention to these details can significantly improve your result.
ProductHunt Day X: Outreach and Social Media Presence
As we were preparing for our ProductHunt launch, we read numerous blog posts, much like this one, where fellow makers emphasised just how hectic launch day can be. Initially, the prospect of being active for a full 24 hours seemed somewhat irrealistic, but it quickly proved to be a reality. To maintain momentum and keep boosting support, our team remained engaged in outreach and social media posting practically round the clock. It is crucial to remind your followers about your progress, share updates on your placement, and of course, to reach out to more and more people that could be interested in supporting you. Above all, you want to make sure that you foster dialogue with the PH community by engaging with people that comment on your launch.
The Power of The First Hours: Myth or Reality?
You might have heard about the phenomenon of the first four hours. According to this rule, the first hours after the launch are the most important, as it's when a product gets the most upvotes. In our case, this rule indeed held true. Although we did receive the largest portion of the upvotes later in the day, the pace was much faster during the first few hours. As soon as the rankings were unveiled, we found ourselves at ninth place (at which we also finished).
While some companies experience a surge in momentum towards the end of the day, in our launch our initial positioning influenced the overall performance. However, if this was the case for Weavely, it doesn't make it a universal rule. And as we mentioned above, some companies manage to accelerate towards the end of the day and totally change the game for themselves.
It is also important to remember that not everything is in your hands. Referring to our section about geographical aspects of your PH audience, the timing of most of your upvotes largely depends on where your most active audience comes from. In addition, there is always a degree of luck and some things are simply our of your control.
Conclusion about our ProductHunt Experience
Overall, our experience with ProductHunt left us with mixed feelings. On one hand, it brought us a boost in installations and valuable feedback. It also nudged us to tackle projects we had long postponed, such as updating our website design and investing in animations and visuals that will benefit us in the long run. However, the amount of effort we put in the launch vs the result seem disproportionate, at least for now.
As many would agree, today ProductHunt is not the same as it used to be. The initial excitement around launches now feels somewhat artificial. Finding genuine product enthusiasts who discover your product organically on PH has become increasingly rare. Success on Product Hunt largely depends on the homework done before the launch.
Nonetheless, we're pleased that we gave ProductHunt a try. Our tool Weavely secured a spot in the top 10 and received tons of positive feedback, which makes us proud of our product and motivates for further improvements. Time will tell if Product Hunt has a long-tail effect on our visibility and SEO as well.
