How to measure a Product Hunt launch

A Product Hunt launch produces a number everybody can see: your rank at the end of the day. It is a satisfying number, and a poor description of what the launch did for your product. A launch that finishes fifth can bring more customers than one that finishes first, depending on who came and what they found.

The measurement has to be set up before launch day, because afterwards it is too late to add it. This guide walks through what to prepare, what to watch on the day, and what to read in the weeks after.

Decide what a good launch means for you

Write down, before you launch, what you want from it. The options are not equally measurable, and they pull in different directions:

• Signups or trials. The usual goal. Measurable the same day.
• Paying customers. Slower. Many people who sign up on launch day decide weeks later.
• Feedback. Comments, replies, bug reports. Count them, and more importantly read them.
• A reference. A page that ranks for your name and a badge on your site. Real, and hard to put a number on.

Pick one as the main goal. It decides where your link points and what you look at afterwards.

Prepare the page according to Product Hunt's own guide

Product Hunt publishes a launch guide, and its section on preparing for launch is specific about the assets. At the time of writing, it asks for a tagline of 60 characters at most, a description of 500 characters at most, a square thumbnail and at least two gallery images, with an optional video. Check the guide itself before you launch, since these details change.

Three points from that guide are worth repeating because they affect measurement:

• The day runs on Pacific time. The guide explains that the homepage works on a 24-hour cycle based on Pacific time, and suggests 12:01 am Pacific for makers with no other constraint. Your "launch day" in your analytics should use the same window, or you will cut it in two.
• Write the first comment yourself. The guide recommends a maker comment that covers what the product is, who it is for and your story.
• Ask for feedback, not upvotes. The guide says so in those words. It is also better for you: feedback is the part of the launch you keep.

Set up tracking before the day

Four things, in this order of importance.

1. A tagged link for the launch page

The website link on your Product Hunt page is the one most visitors will click. Give it a tag:

yoursite.com/?ut=producthunt

Without it, some of these visits will still show Product Hunt as the referrer, and others will arrive with no referrer at all and be counted as direct.

2. Different tags for your own promotion

On launch day you will also post on X, LinkedIn, in communities, and email your list. Each of those links points to your Product Hunt page or to your site. For the ones that point to your site, use a different tag each time:

• yoursite.com/?ut=x-launch-day
• yoursite.com/?ut=newsletter-launch-day

Otherwise you will not be able to separate what Product Hunt's audience did from what your own audience did, and your own audience is often most of the day.

3. A landing page that matches

Visitors from Product Hunt have just read your tagline. Send them to a page that continues that sentence. Some makers add a short welcome line or a launch offer for these visitors. If you do, keep the same tag on that page's address.

4. Signups and payments connected

Make sure your site reports signups, and that your payments are connected, before the day. A launch whose visits you can count and whose signups you cannot is half measured. In upTake, a signup is one line on your site, and payments are read from Stripe or another payment connector, then matched to the visit behind them.

One note on upTake itself: a Product Hunt connector that reads your launches directly is built, and is waiting for Product Hunt's approval of its API access. Until it opens, the tagged link does the measuring. The integration page says where it stands.

What to watch on the day, and what to ignore

Watching the rank every ten minutes does nothing for it. Three things are worth your attention:

• Comments. Answer all of them, quickly and specifically. This is the one thing you fully control.
• The path from visit to signup. If visits are high and signups are low after the first hours, something on the landing page is unclear. You can fix a headline or a button on launch day; it is one of the few days when a small fix reaches hundreds of people within the hour.
• Errors. A broken signup form on launch day is the most expensive bug you will ever have.

Ignore, for now: the rank, other launches, and the urge to message everyone you know. Product Hunt's guide is clear that authentic engagement is what it wants, and campaigns to gather votes are the kind of thing communities punish.

Read the launch in three time windows

A launch is not over when the day ends. Read it three times.

The day itself

• Visits by tag: Product Hunt against your own channels.
• Signup rate for each.
• Comments and what they asked for.

The following week

Product Hunt keeps sending visitors after launch day: from its newsletter, from people browsing past launches, from other sites that list new products. These arrive with the same tag. Compare the week to the day. A launch whose week is as large as its day did better than its rank suggests.

The following month

This is when payments arrive from people who signed up on launch day. It is also when you see who stayed.

Compare it with your other channels

A launch is a large, visible effort. The useful question afterwards is what it was worth next to the small, repeated things you do.

Put the launch in the same table as your other posts: visits, signups, payments and revenue per tag. Then look at the cost. A launch can take two weeks of preparation. If it brought as many customers as three ordinary Reddit posts, that is not a failure, but it tells you something about where your next two weeks should go.

The guides on turning a Reddit post into customers and the Show HN checklist cover two channels that makers often compare a launch with.

Common measurement mistakes

• No tag on the launch link. The most common, and impossible to fix afterwards.
• One tag for everything on launch day. You then cannot tell Product Hunt's audience from your own.
• Using your own time zone for "launch day" when the launch ran on Pacific time.
• Judging on day one. Payments come later. Wait a month before deciding whether it was worth it.
• Counting upvotes as an outcome. They are attention. Attention is an input.

The short version

1. Decide the one outcome you want.
2. Prepare the page with Product Hunt's own guide open.
3. Tag the launch link, and tag each of your own promotion links differently.
4. Make sure signups and payments are connected before the day.
5. On the day, answer comments and watch the path from visit to signup.
6. Read the result after a day, a week and a month, in the same table as your other channels.

The rank is the part of a launch you can show. The table with signups and revenue per source is the part you can use.