🗞 What's New: Building beautiful products

Design should be concise, intuitive, and...beautiful?

• Keep it simple. Don't over-complicate things, prioritize consistency, and combine different colors that complement each other.
• When launching on Product Hunt, build your network weeks before. Engage in discussions, vote, leave reviews, and make friends!
• $5M ARR from an adventure travel booking platform. Mark Whitman follows the "ready, fire, aim" philosophy to validate products quickly.

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by Martin Baun

Software developers rarely design the most aesthetically pleasing software, but these principles can help you change that!

Keep it simple

Beautiful designs can be created from the simplest ideas. Sometimes, good ideas become useless due to over-complication.

It does not matter how good your software is if users can't find their way around it. A simple, beautiful design is more beneficial than a complicated one.

Avoid reinventing the wheel

Use existing, proven solutions. Get inspiration from other creations, and make it your own by adding your twist. We used this principle to enhance the aesthetics of Goleko. We took inspiration from MacOS, customizing our buttons and features using that as a guide.

Avoid tunnel vision

Tunnel vision makes it hard for designers to see the holes or weaknesses in their designs. The result is a design that’s pleasing for them, but not for their target audience.

Prioritize consistency

Clients prefer a product that remains consistent in delivering what they need. Design a product that works, and delivers as advertised.

The Law of Continuity

Incorporate consistent paddings and margins, as it helps to make a site clean and easily readable.

This also follows the Law of Continuity, which states that we tend to see continuous patterns and lines. These create a sense of flow and hierarchy in designs by using continuous lines or color gradients, creating a sense of movement. This guides the user's eye towards important information.

Proportions

Excellent designs have elements of different sizes that fit nicely together to create coherent proportions.

Implement different proportions to create emphasis. You can use smaller proportions for less critical content, such as images or videos. This builds a hierarchy of importance.

Colors

Combine different colors that complement each other. This statement sounds simple, but it is a science.

Colors brighten everything, and pairing them with their ideal partners is the first step to creating a masterpiece.

For more, check out my blog!

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by Dima Maslennikov

We launched PitchBob, a generative AI tool for early-stage solo founders on Product Hunt, and hit number one Product of the Day, and number one AI Product of the Week! Here's how.

Setting goals

The first thing I did was to set some general launch goals. Based on our goals, we chose the most conversion-friendly, competitive day for us: Tuesday.

The results

1. Status: Being the top Product of the Day is a significant achievement, enhancing many key metrics, from website conversion to response conversion in cold outreach.

2. Traffic and sales: Our launch brought a few thousand additional visitors to our product. Many of them made purchases.

3. Impact on SEO: Organic traffic is our main sales channel, and the launch helped boost these metrics.

4. Reviews: Reviews of our tool appeared on YouTube in different languages.

5. Stepping out of your comfort zone: It can be uncomfortable to ask people to support your product, but once you start getting out there, you'll be surprised at how much support you will have!

The strategy

1. Start pumping your account a few weeks (or better yet, months) before the launch. Engage in discussions, vote, leave reviews, and make friends. This will come in handy.

2. Get a hunter. They cost about $200 for the launch. I'm unsure if it actually helped us, but I didn't want to launch without one.

3. Join launch support groups. Also, connect with everyone in LinkedIn groups with the name "Product Hunt."

4. Prepare all texts, messages, pictures, and posts in advance so they're ready to go.

5. Assemble a team that can dedicate the entire day to outreach and support.

6. Open all personal chats in messengers. Set aside doubts, embarrassment, and other feelings that bind you. Be prepared to write to everyone you have communicated with in the last year or two, sending them at least 2-3 messages on launch day. Ask them to vote, ping them if they have not voted, and ask them to share their request to vote.

7. Don't buy ads through dubious accounts with dubious people who try to lure you in with gigantic numbers of subscribers. These are all bots; there is no real traffic there. Going this route could cause you to be banned for violating platform rules.

If you're interested in more resources, download our Product Hunt Launch Checklist and Product Hunt Launch Resources here!

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from the Growth Trends newsletter

🏛️ TikTok is officially suing the US government.

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💻 When to use custom conversions.

🌟 Turn new signups into power users with this technique.

📝 Using product attributes in marketing.

💌 Amazing welcome emails for new customers (templates included!).

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

by James Fleischmann

Mark Whitman bought an adventure travel booking platform, Skyhook, and grew it to $5M ARR. On the side, he's constantly testing and pivoting new ideas; the ideas he's currently testing are bringing in $35K+ MRR.

Ready, fire, aim

I'm a big fan of the "Ready, fire, aim" principle. It means taking action fast, failing quickly, and adapting on the fly. This is why, before going all-in, I usually test ideas in the real world without spending too much time or money.

If I see an idea is getting traction, I invest more time and money until it's clear that the business can stand on its own. I know I've reached that point when the business is generating enough revenue to recruit a small team and scale, without too much continued investment from me.

I don't see many founders validate and iterate to success. Most either get stuck at the idea stage and do nothing, or spend way too much time and money on things that don't matter, like their logo, website copy, social media presence, or perfecting their product.

Going from zero to one

In the beginning, all that matters is getting a customer. This is real validation. To do this, develop a clear proposition. Ask yourself, "what problem am I trying to solve, and how does my business solve it?"

Once I have this, I clearly articulate the proposition on a landing page with a nice, shiny (but quick) logo, pricing, and the basic elements that help drive conversions, like social proof, case studies, testimonials, FAQs, etc.

I often don't have the product or service at this point. I might have an MVP of the product, or the basics of how the service will be delivered.

This is where a waitlist or some other low-commitment offer is great, as all I'm looking for is validation.

Then, I drive traffic to the landing page using ads, paid sponsorships in newsletters and podcasts, and cold email.

At this point, my idea makes contact with reality and, if I've done a good job on the proposition, I get sales or expressions of interest (i.e. people joining a waitlist, joining a Facebook Group, or downloading a free e-book).

This whole process can take 4-8 weeks, and costs ~$5K. If enough people show interest, I know I might have something. I then invest more money and time to develop the proposition, and we're off to the races!

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by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Martin Baun, Darko, Dima Maslennikov, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing