It's been a week since the launch (2nd of the day). Here are some tips for you!
Gabriele Mazzola 🧭
70 replies
Hey everyone!
Like the title says, it's been exactly a week today since we launched Touring here on Product Hunt, and the results have been really impressive. A few numbers:
- more than 3000 unique visitors to the website (from more than 100 countries)
- featured in 18 different newsletters around the globe
- more than 600 signups to become early adopters
- 800 upvotes and more than 150 comments on PH
This is crazy, but I'm not here to brag or anything, I just wanted to let others know how useful a launch on Product Hunt can be, and how much exposure it can give you if you plan and arrange for it!
Lots of people contacted me on X and Linkedin to ask how to get these good results, so I decided to try and create a useful discussion here!
Disclaimer: I am no expert, and this was my first launch, so if I managed, you can too!
And now, for the useful part of the discussion. During this week, we kept bumping into things where we thought "Ahhh, damn it. We should have done this before!", so I want to share with you a few things that I wrote down in my notes (most are about questions we should have included in the survey people had to fill in to become early adopters):
- We should have asked which social networks people used and ask for their handle, so we would know how to reach them other than their email
- We should have asked where they learned about Touring: attribution is always useful
- We should have looked better at the limits of the free plans of the tools we were using: we used Mailchimp to collect emails, and we did not even think we would ever get above the 500 limit of the free tier. Well, we did, and we did it quite fast, so we were super happy to learn that mailchimp still collected emails but did not show them to us until we paid. If they didn't, we would have lost several early adopters.
- We should have connected on LinkedIn with people we deemed possibly interested in Touring a few weeks before the launch, so that they would get updates when posting about the launch and the following updates. We only realized this a few days before the launch, so we did not maximize this effect.
- We realized - almost at the end of the launch - that we would have loved to know how much people would pay for a day pass of Touring. Results? By adding it at the end of the survey we only got 100 datapoints instead of 600+, a big difference - statistically speaking.
- We should have asked which city people lived in: this would be crucial to select the first early adopters, but we lost this information: tough luck, a learning lesson!
A few other things that helped with the launch (these ones we did :D)
- track EVERYTHING: we used mixpanel and mouseflow to track everything useful regarding the interactions of visitors with the website: 70% of the early adopters played around with our online simulator! This is a good nice pat on the shoulder for us, made us happy!
- engage A LOT with the community the weeks before the launch: I have been active every day for more than a month here on PH, always trying to bring some value in the discussions and never being purely transactional: the "I upvote you if you upvote me" only gets you a nice number on the launch page but nothing more than that, I believe.
- Search for channel to post about your launch: there are several slack groups, linkedin groups, facebook groups, subreddits etc etc. Just do a few searches and you'll easily find them. Most of them need approval to let you in, so do it in advance!
- Write to people! People in these groups are usually interested in new products. Don't insist, but just let them know about your product and ask them to check it out if they are interested. You'll be surprised by how many will actually do it and give you feedback!
Reach out for any question, I'd love to help you out the best I can!
You can follow me on X (Twitter).
Let me know if I forgot something, let's create a useful launch tips&tricks discussion for everyone!
Cheers,
Gabs
Replies
Slim Geransar@slimmy82
REI Litics
Thank you for sharing this. Super helpful. I also appreciate you adding the things you Should have done instead of just the good stuff. Thanks!
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thanks a lot, you brought me on Slack again, I guess Slack is for the builders and Discord for the Gamers, smile...hanging out pretty much only on Debox and bi.social but both solutions are not perfect for a good conversation, product hunt becomes more and more, to my second home, and posts like yours make this platform way more valuable, thx a lot for sharing your insights
Wow amazing insights Gabriele and once again congrats on these amazing results.
Luckily, I haven't launched yet. I'm still in, what I would say, Popcorn Mode (sitting back, watching and learning from others). Your tips will definitely help me when I go for launch. Saving this for later reference
@zuhaib_ashfaq hey thanks! Haha love the “popcorn” mode! Wish you the best for when you decide to launch!
What an amazing post! We just launched and I definitely relate to a lot of the points! Congrats on a successful 🚀 launch
Love this insight! Appreciate your hard work!
Thank you for sharing valuable insights.
Unofficial Product Hunt Chrome Plugin
Great summary @gabriele_mazzola
I always had the impression that Product Hunt was strict and scary but to my surprise the experience has been the complete opposite so far.
Super insightful discussion Gabriele, I will learn from this and do my best on my December’s launch.
Love the insight thanks @gabriele_mazzola - I think everyone is quite focused on getting emails during launch but getting socials is also a good idea too and following the page on LinkedIn for updates!
@gabriele_mazzola 600+ 😮💨 In your next comms to everyone make sure you do a shoutout to social and (if possible?) maybe an incentive to follow your socials that is linked to Touring?
@carolmoh Yes, that's a good idea. I've already sent out an email to everyone to thank them for signing up, but several people notified me that the email went to spam, so I've no idea of how many were actually delivered in normal inbox.
To be honest, I'm never gonna trust emails in the future and try to rely on something else :D
Hey Gabs, thanks for sharing this. Really cool read! What you're building with Touring is awesome and I'm excited to follow your journey on Twitter.
Im thinking of ways to add analytics to my app but dont want to add too many different services (Google analytics, Firebase, Vercel etc). What are your thoughts on mixpanel and mouseflow?
Thanks again!
@iskandarchacra My experience with those two was veeeery smooth: I made an account, added two tags to the Google Tag Manager associated with touringapp.eu and it was done. Literally done in 10 minutes.
Disclaimer: I might be biased on Mouseflow - my wife works there - but I've tried also HotJar and I felt that Mouseflow allowed me to do more things and worked better (I could not see all the recordings on Hotjar, not sure why).
I would recommend to EVERYONE to install these things on their website, it's so vital. For example, without them we would have never known about all the newsletters that featured us.
Thank you for this Gabriele! This is super helpful especially we are launching very very soon!
Thank you this is really useful!
This is super resourceful. ThankYou for sharing 🩵
Scade.pro
Hey @gabriele_mazzola, congratulations on the impressive stats! 🎉 The part that caught my eye was tracking everything and engaging with the community weeks before launch. Do you feel these were more successful because they were specific to your product niche or they are universal strategies? Your post is definitely a game changer for many upcoming founders. 👏
@builov84 Hey Alexandr, thank you for the nice comment! I appreciate it!
To be honest, I don't think this worked because the product had a niche as a target (self-guiding explorers), and I've seen it working also for products that are more high-end. I think - in general - making meaningful connections with other people will help you, one way or another.
If you have any questions both about engaging with the community or tracking, feel free to reach out on Twitter!
Scade.pro
Thank you for your story and advices!
Super insightful post @gabriele_mazzola! Most launch prep tips revolve around getting lots of engagement on PH - being fully prepared to make the best use of that increased traffic is not covered often. Definitely got some to-do's out of this ✍🏻
@dilara_basaran Hey Dilara, super happy that you got something useful out of this: that was my goal! 🚀
Best of luck for the launch of Flowla, and reach out if you need anything!
AI Researcher
@gabriele_mazzola @dilara_basaran Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @gabriele_mazzola! It's definitely important to not just focus on getting engagement, but also being fully prepared for the increased traffic. Glad you got some actionable tips from the post. As for launching your own product soon, my advice would be to make sure you have a solid plan in place for not just the launch, but also post-launch. And don't forget to engage with your audience and gather feedback to continuously improve your product. Best of luck!
Scade.pro
Useful information, thanks!
Lebesgue: AI CMO
Really insightful about the tracking. Makes me wish we implemented more of it, but it might be too late now on launch day ;)
@leon_novacki trust me, you can do it in 10 minutes with Mouseflow, let me know if you want to do it and I can help with it!
Lebesgue: AI CMO
@gabriele_mazzola We already do some tracking, but I was thinking of polling, that we could've used from the start.
Love the insights, appreciate it @gabriele_mazzola. It's always inspiring to see examples of how carefully planning a PH launch can take a small startup global. Stories like yours further prove the power of that platform for getting valuable feedback and pushing important discovery metrics like unique visitors and signups. Thanks for letting others learn from your process :)
@viona_sequeira Hey Viona, I'm glad you found it useful!
I love this comment: this is EXACTLY what I wanted to show to other makers.