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Product Hunt launch checklist for your website

·4 min read

A Product Hunt launch sends a burst of visitors over a day or two, then drops off. Your website has to turn that short window into signups and shares. That means a fast page, a headline that says what you do, a link preview that looks right, a short signup and no broken links.

This checklist covers the website side. For the launch itself, read Product Hunt's current guidelines before you plan anything.

Before launch: website checklist

1. Make the page load fast

Run the Core Web Vitals Snapshot on the page you will link. It shows real-user Core Web Vitals when available, plus a Lighthouse lab snapshot and its biggest opportunities. New sites often have no real-user data yet, so work from the lab snapshot. Fix anything rated poor.

Test on a phone too. Many launch visitors tap through from a feed on mobile.

Your link will be shared on X, LinkedIn, Slack and in group chats. A preview with no image or the wrong title looks unfinished.

Run the Open Graph & Social Card Checker on your launch URL. It checks the og: and twitter: tags, downloads the share image and previews the card LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack and X build. Fix the title, description and image until each card looks right.

Our guide to Open Graph tags lists the tags every page needs. The post on OG image size gives the dimensions. Do this days before launch, because some platforms cache a preview and keep showing the old one for a while.

3. Write a headline that says what it does and for whom

Visitors decide fast whether to stay. Your headline should name what the product does and who it is for, in plain words. "Invoicing for freelance designers" tells people where they are. "The future of work" does not.

Under the headline, add one line with the main result or the starting price, and one clear button.

4. Make signup short

Ask for an email or offer one-click sign-in. Collect everything else later. Each extra field is one more reason to leave.

Sign up yourself on a phone and a laptop the day before. Check that the welcome email arrives.

Run the Broken Internal Link Finder on your home page and launch page. It lists links on that page that lead to broken pages on the same site. Pricing, docs and signup links matter most.

6. Make sure search engines can index the page

Some people who see your launch will search your name later instead of clicking. Make sure Google can show your site when they do.

  • Run the Indexing & Canonical Checker on the home page. It shows whether Google and Bing may crawl and index it, which signal blocks it, and the tag or header to change. A noindex left over from staging is a common blocker.
  • Run the Robots.txt & AI Crawler Checker to confirm robots.txt lets search and AI crawlers in.
  • Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console at least a week before launch, so Google has time to crawl.

7. Tie your brand name to your site

Add Organization markup to your home page with your name, logo and profile links. Then run the Brand Entity Checker. It checks whether your brand name, logo, Organization markup and profiles consistently tie your brand to your site.

Use the same name, logo and one-line description on your site, your Product Hunt page and your social profiles. People who search your name should land on you, not on a different product with a similar name.

Launch day checklist

  1. Read Product Hunt's current guidelines and follow them.
  2. Reply to every comment the same day. Answer questions plainly, thank people for feedback and write down feature requests.
  3. Share the launch with your network personally. A direct message to someone who knows you gets more attention than a broadcast post. Tell them what you built and ask for honest feedback.
  4. Post in communities where your users already are, if their rules allow it.
  5. Watch your site. Look for signup errors, slow pages and support emails, and fix problems as they come in.

After launch checklist

  1. Submit new and changed URLs. If you added pages or changed copy for the launch, run the IndexNow Checker. It verifies your key file and submits up to 100 changed URLs to Bing, Yandex, Naver and Seznam. Google does not support IndexNow, so use URL Inspection in Search Console for Google.
  2. Follow up with signups. Email the people who signed up within a few days. Ask what made them try it and what nearly stopped them. Their answers tell you who your users are.
  3. Keep the launch page working for you. Your Product Hunt page stays up after launch day. Keep its description current, point its links at the right pages on your site and link to it from your site.
  4. Plan the next channel. Launch traffic fades fast. Read how to get your first 100 users and how to get traffic to a new website for what to do next.

Check your launch page before you post it

Run the Open Graph & Social Card Checker on your launch URL to see the cards LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack and X build. A run costs 5 credits, which makes it easy to re-check after every fix. For a wider check, our website check reviews your home page and up to two more pages for crawling and indexing, on-page SEO, structured data and content, with one fix list sorted by priority. The home page preview costs no credits and needs no account.

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