How do you actually measure the success of a Product Hunt launch?

One question I always have around a Product Hunt launch is how do you actually measure whether it was successful?

Teams spend weeks preparing for launch day and coming in the top 5 is obviously one way to look at it but I am curious what other signals people pay attention to. For those who have launched before, what did you look at afterwards to decide whether the launch was actually worth the effort?

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It depends on the primary reason why you’re launching on Product Hunt.

When we launched @Kommunicate and @AppLozic - Chat & In-App Messaging SDK, we measured success differently depending on what we wanted to achieve at that stage of the product.

For our first AppLozic launch, the goal was to find early adopters. We got a number of signups and, more importantly, one paying customer directly from the launch. For us, that made the launch successful.

When we launched the same product again later, the objective was different. We had built new capabilities and wanted to understand how people reacted to them. So instead of focusing only on signups or upvotes, we looked at the feedback and discussions the launch generated.

Some of the things I find useful to measure from a Product Hunt launch are:

Did we get the right early adopters?
What objections or concerns did people have?
What integrations or features were people asking for?
Did people understand the value of the new capabilities?
What ideas or discussions did the launch generate?
Did any of that interest eventually turn into active users or paying customers?

Upvotes and ranking are good to have, but I wouldn't use them as the only measure of success.

The real question is: What did you want to get out of the launch, and did the launch help you achieve that?

How do you actually measure the success of a Product Hunt launch?

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