Traffic analysis of the most upvoted product of the day on Product Hunt.
Written by Chris Frantz — chrisfrantz.me
We went from never launching a physical product to clearing $1K in revenue in a couple days through our Carrd and Shopify-powered site. I launched Sick Day Box with my amazing girlfriend on Product Hunt on October 10 and quickly shot to #1 for the day. Here’s a look at what the numbers actually showed.
But first…
What is a Sick Day Box? The worst time to go shopping for anything is when you’re feeling under the weather. Sick Day Box is a box full of shelf-stable essentials guaranteed to help you pull through a sick day so you don’t need to run to CVS in sweatpants and scraggly tee just for some tissues and cough drops. If you’re the prepared adult person that already has tissues, a theremometer and chicken noodle soup ready to go:
- That’s amazing, you’re doing the adult thing way better than most of us.
- But…you probably know someone who isn’t as prepared as you. → 🎁
Quick Note: It turns out you can wire together a “hardware” Minimum Viable Product almost as easy as a software project these days. From Packlane to Moo, there’s a massive underpinning of startups allowing the same type of easy access to physical product creation that was previously unattainable outside the digital landscape. Ramp up time is lightning fast for physical product development with the right tools.
The Product Hunt Post
Product Hunt is an amazing community and the last thing I wanted to do was get banned for “growth hacking” my product. There are plenty of services that will offer upvotes, engagement or even post your product for you, but I don’t recomend using them. Why would you? I don’t have a huge network, a relatively small follower count and I posted it myself with little fanfare and it still was able to successfully climb the charts. It is certainly is possible to do it without emailing Product Hunt high-achievers to have them post your product (more on that later). I recommend following the excellent guide here.
Ok, ok, the numbers.
The Numbers
Overview
I didn’t do any other promotion besides this post, so we’re looking at just a pure Product Hunt launch and what came out of it.
The date range of data is 10/9/2017 through 10/18/2017.
It’s pretty crazy seeing hundreds of users on your site in realtime. It’s even worse when nobody is buying! Based on the feedback I was getting in the comment section, I was tweaking the language on the site as the launch was happening. The conversion rate actually started increasing as the day went on, which is always a good sign.
Total Sessions: 6,763
Unique Users: 6,252
Pageviews: 7,585
New Users: 90%
Returning Users: 10%
Locations
We’re swapping the date range to just the day of the launch, 10/9, now. This is where it really gets interesting. Can you guess where the majority of traffic came from? Only 41% of traffic to the site came from the US on the day of the Product Hunt launch!
I was surprised to see the wide variance in geo’s from the launch, but mainly because we only shipped to the US and we said that in the description of the post. So 59% of the traffic we received was unable to buy our product. Ouch. Here’s a list of the top cities order by sessions.
Age & Gender
Looks like I’m aging along with the rest of Product Hunt! 😅 Ages 25–34 representing strongly.
Sessions by Mobile Devices
In every comment section of a mobile app launch I read, “When’s the Android app coming?” Based on this completely unscientific sampling, it makes sense to still build iPhone first. 📲 No iPhone X on that list yet though…
Acquisition Sources
So anyone that has spent any time in Google Analytics knows the plight of dealing with “Direct” traffic. Without going too far into it, it’s a black hole that will encompass large swaths of your traffic without showing you where it’s from. Cue the graphic…
Average Time Spent on Site (Session Duration)
Referral sources via Facebook is great traffic. When people share and personally endorse something, you’re in good shape.
Whew, that was a lot of info. Still with me? Then lets jump out of Google Analytics and get into some more casual numbers.
Less Trackable Insights
💰 2 meetings requested by VCs
🙈 7 orders from VC firms
📨 17 Spam emails (I SAW YOUR LAUNCH ON PRODUCT HUNT, [insert form message])
🙀 4 Requests to post others Product Hunt submissions
🤝 1 Partnership offer
Wrapping it up
Product Hunt still is an amazing community. Where else can you get this level of opportunity and constructive feedback at zero cost? It’s user testing, market validation and a giant pivot indicator if things go south. But then again, even Product Hunt came in fourth when it debuted on Product Hunt. ⇣
Questions about this post?
💌 chris@sickdaybox.com
Interested in what’s next?
I’m building in the Product Hunt Global Hackathon! Signup for updates:
🔜 https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/press-kite
Thanks to…
Product Hunt of course!
Also, the amazing community Online Geniuses for their help in getting this article out the door. 🙏
