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Launched on March 21st, 2024
A few of us at Product Hunt are putting on our most brutally honest (but helpful!) hats and roasting landing pages for the next two days. Want in? Drop your link below, and we’ll give you real, no-BS feedback on:
🔥 Clarity – Does your message make sense or sound like corporate soup?🔥 Calls to Action – Do we feel compelled to click, or just… leave?🔥 Design & UX – Smooth experience or rage quit territory?🔥 Anything else – Tell us what you want feedback on.
No ego, no fluff—just straight-up advice to make your page better. Drop your link below 👇
Hi everyone, Gabe here! I lead curating Product Hunt's leaderboard.
First thing I will say is that if I could feature every single product that works, I would. I love supporting makers and demoing products. I actually try to test every single thing that gets hunted every day... which is A TON. But I view our job as to surface the most interesting, novel, useful, and innovative products - daily. Now we may not always get it right, the process isn't perfect, but we're trying to do right by the community.
Hopefully, you've noticed that over the past months the quality of the leaderboard has felt really good. (Please share your thoughts!) Some of the things that I've been doing aside from testing and reviewing products is reaching out to makers to help them with their launches, provide feedback on why something may not be featurable, and help makers craft their best launch as possible. Scalable -> no. Huge impact -> I think so. I'm working with the team on how to create a more scalable version of this but for now just know I try to make myself available to you all.
Top mistakes I've seen
Product is waitlisted
People schedule a draft.... (we have a draft function!)
Maker's profile is their product/business and not an actual user account
Tagline does not describe the product ie. "Best way to earn users" vs "Capture user data with a single button in your iOS app"
Too much marketing jargon, not enough product description / story
NO PRODUCT SHOTS/VIDEOS -> just marketing fluff images
Only one image that is a low quality screenshot
Using a paid service for upvotes/hunters -> this will get you unfeatured or severely impact your launch
Some other notes to consider:
We've gotten stricter on keeping true to our Featuring Guidelines.
We highly recommend making a draft and sharing with folks to make sure it passes the "mom test" -> do they get what you're launching?
If you can quickly Google a solution that similar to what you're launching then really make sure your launch stands out. Focus on highlighting what's special about your product vs being too general.
Highly recommend having a loom or some sort of visual that showcases the start process, the end result your product produces, and what's special about your product.
Be honest, authentic, and have fun.
With all that being said, AMA! I'll try to answer as much as I can without getting fired
One challenge for Makers launching on Product Hunt is getting in front of the right audience—especially for first-time launchers.
I think it would be helpful if Makers could notify followers of similar products about their new launch. Just like how we get updates from people we follow, users who are interested in similar products could receive a friendly notification about a new launch.
Example Notification: "Looks like you're interested in no-code web builders like $Bubble! Check out $SlashPage—a game-changing no-code tool where you can create everything from blogs to communities with just a click!"
Since Product Hunt members are generally enthusiastic about discovering new products, many would likely appreciate receiving these notifications rather than seeing them as spam. Of course, an option to turn off these notifications would be essential.
How this Could Work:
When registering a product launch, Makers could select a few similar products. A launch notification would then be sent to followers of those similar products.
This could be a paid promotion or something redeemable with Kitty Points.
The feature could be available only to Makers who reach a certain engagement level on Product Hunt (e.g., Silver tier or higher), encouraging more active participation on the platform.
Things to Consider:
Product Hunt would need to ensure that the selected similar products are relevant.
A decision would need to be made whether to notify all followers of the similar products or just a subset.
Notifications should be limited to users who have been recently active to ensure higher engagement.
This approach could reduce the "I upvoted your product, so please upvote mine" type of exchange, as it would offer a more organic way for Makers to reach users who are genuinely interested in their product.
I’d love to hear what others think about this idea. Would it be useful for the community?
