Unexpected Launch on Product Hunt & Our Results

May 11th, out of nowhere, Kevin William David (founder of Walletkit) submitted our product, Bablic (easy website translation, try it here), to Product Hunt which made it to the top 10 for that day. We weren’t prepared, we weren’t even awake when it got submitted, in fact both of Bablic’s founders weren’t even members on Product Hunt when it happened yet we aren’t complaining. It would have been nice to get a heads up so we can expect the traffic and give the community the attention it deserves but either way, Bablic is thrilled with the results and it’s nice to see the power of the incredible community at Product Hunt. Here’s what came of our unexpected launch on Product Hunt.

Bablic made it to the top 10 which is quite an achievement in itself. 154 upvotes and 6 comments, comment count seems low but the product is pretty straightforward and anyone can try Bablic right on our homepage, for free, so maybe that explains the low comment count/questions.

We were also in the midst of A/B testing two landing pages (for the homepage), one asking for email + URL (A) and the other asking just for URL (C) in order to get instant access to the editor so visitors can immediately translate their website.

Stats from the ProductHunt launch/feature

Bablic was featured on May 11th, the results below are for the May 11th to May 15th dates. Let’s break it down to numbers and then we’ll discuss further.

• 693 New Visits to A (email + URL) landing page, 6.06% entered their email + URL and tried Bablic
• 664 New Visits to C (URL) landing page, 29.66% entered their URL and tried Bablic
• Time on site was approx. 3 minutes
• Pagesviews were about 2 pages/session (which makes sense since all of our information is on the homepage)
• Bounce rate was 23.5% for version A, 21.5% for version C
• 12% came from Mobile, which was a bit of an issue for us since our editor isn’t compatible with Mobile (no one’s looking to localize their website from their iPhone)
• An additional 432 new visits which are definitely from the Product Hunt feature since we haven’t done any other advertising. Stats were very similar to all of the above.

Immediately, we can see that asking just for the URL gave much much better results (thank you Product Hunt, now we know which page we should spend advertising $ on).

But, our goal isn’t for people to try Bablic, it’s for users to stay with Bablic, here are some stats regarding that.

• 1.07% clicked Save & Publish on version A (email + URL), meaning they went through the editor, made changes and got their Bablic code snippet
• 1.86% clicked Save & Publish on version C (URL), meaning they went through the editor, made changes and got their Bablic code snippet

The above numbers further confirm that our landing page asking only for URL performs better than the one asking for both email + URL.

Bablic also got some nice foreign press thanks to the ProductHunt feature. Here’s one article in Spanish. A mention on what seems to be an unofficial Chinese version of Product Hunt and another mention on what seems to also be an unofficial Chinese version of Product Hunt.

On top of that foreign “press coverage”, Bablic also got a friendly tweet in Spanish from a company who tried Bablic!

What’s worth mentioning as well, which usually no money can buy, and yet thanks to Product Hunt it was free, is the fact that serious people from the startup/tech world, including investors & writers/reporters, were exposed to our product, tried it and even upvoted it on Product Hunt.

On top of that, getting direct feedback from experienced internet users is an amazing thing. It being free is a bonus, the real value is that it’s unbiased and organic, basically priceless.

Final results from the Product Hunt launch

• 340 people tried Bablic
• 51 new users for Bablic’s website localization solution
• 118 new email leads
• Clear winner in our split-test (asking just for URL performed much better than email + URL)
• A bit of foreign press/mentions
• Approx. 2000 new unique visitors to Bablic.com
• New friends/followers & contacts on both Twitter & Product Hunt

If I could change one thing in our Product Hunt launch?

Everything about Product Hunt was perfect, it really is a community of savvy entrepreneurs, designers, developers and all around creative minds, and it shows each and everyday with only quality products ending up in the top 10.

The one thing I would have liked to change would be that Bablic really wasn’t prepared for a Product Hunt feature, nor were we online when it happened. Had we submitted our product to Product Hunt, we would have definitely had a custom landing page set up for the community with a unique design as well as a promotion/coupon for Product Hunt users. We did offer a coupon code on the comment section of the Product Hunt feature but it, of course, doesn’t have the same effect. I truly believe us being prepared could have made a major difference, I have no doubt Bablic could have made it to the top 3 spots for the day, it really is an innovative product and it’s just the kind of thing Product Hunters look for.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Either way, a big thank you to the Product Hunt team (founder Ryan Hoover) for creating such an awesome community, Kevin William David for giving attention to Bablic and submitting it, and most of all the great community of Product Hunters!

Enjoyed the post? Please share! There will be a follow-up post as well describing the exact strategy we used to turn an unexpected ProductFeature into a success and ending the day in the top 10 spots.

PS: Many are asking about the Product Hunt coupon code so here it is again, simply use coupon: producthunt on the billing page of Bablic.com & get 1 month FREEon any plan you choose.

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