Convert & fix
Measure launch performance
Watch a Product Hunt or Hacker News launch live, and learn which community sends buyers.
3 min read
Launch day is loud. The upvotes are public; what matters is private: who visited, what they read, and whether anyone paid.
Why this matters
A launch is a test of which communities care about your product. The right numbers tell you where to launch next time, and which message worked.
Why most analytics tools can't tell you
Most dashboards update slowly or sample data, so you see your launch the next morning. And without revenue, you can't tell a busy launch from a profitable one.
How Datasense does it
Datasense's Realtime page updates every second: who's online, which pages they're on, where they came from, and a live map. Revenue is attributed to the source, so news.ycombinator.com and producthunt.com get their own revenue numbers.
How to do it
- 1Open the Realtime page (or its full-screen view) when you post.
- 2Watch visitors arrive by source, and the pages they open.
- 3The next day, set the range to Yesterday and compare sources on the Sources card, sorted by revenue.
- 4Check the Errors page too: launch traffic finds the bugs your own browser doesn't.
Turn it into action
- Next time, launch first where buyers came from, not where upvotes came from.
- Fix any error that showed up under launch traffic before the next wave.
- Follow up with the pages launch visitors read most; that's what they were curious about.
In the docs:JavaScript error tracking →