I launched this week and had no way to tell if anyone actually used the product
Around 100 people visited the site on launch day. I still cannot tell you what a single one of them did.
Not because analytics are hard. Because I never wired up one event. I knew how many people landed and roughly where they came from, and absolutely nothing about whether anyone got value out of the thing I spent months on.
The uncomfortable part is that on launch night, traffic felt like a result. It is not a result. The only number that would have told me anything is how many visitors completed the core action, and I did not have it.
I spent hours live fixing it. Tiny table, anonymous events, "did the product do its job" and nothing more. No login, no cookie banner, no identity. Took an afternoon. Should have existed before launch day, not after.
What surprises me is how little this shows up in launch checklists. Everyone talks about the hunter, the timing, the first comment, the gallery assets. Almost nobody says: make sure that on launch night you can answer "did anyone use it", not just "did anyone visit".
For context, I build SpecPilot, a spec-driven development tool that works fully without an account. No login is great for conversion and terrible for measurement, which is how I ended up in this hole.
Two questions for people who have launched here:
What is the one number you actually watch after launch day, and did you have it ready beforehand or learn the hard way like me?
If your product works without signup, how are you measuring activation without turning it into a tracking exercise?
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