PH asks for feedback: What helps you the most when considering new products to try?

I favor open source projects, without particular allegiance in terms of licensing (for other people's work, that is. All my code I place in the public domain where possible). This is both for transparency and a proxy for potential for quick turnaround in bug fixes and improvements. It's hard to beat the ability to find a bug, open an issue, fork, fix, and open a pull request within a few hours. There are no perfect products, but that's less important than how amenable and able they are to fix issues. I'm not so naive to think that there aren't obvious shills to get around it but I prefer actual discoveries of obscure but useful products. A way to filter maker-submitted or user-submitted projects would be cool if at all possible. There are a lot of ambitious projects here, some are genuinely great, but some suffer from obvious feature creep. Anyone can talk up their grand plans but I'm far more interested in products that already exist and have simply been neglected. This I feel goes with the original ethos, insofar as there was one, of the site, and I like surprising discoveries more than pomp and fanfare. (And for that matter, when there's obvious shilling, let us report it. I've attempted to do so multiple times and nothing has been done. I'm pretty sure asking a telegram channel full of people to sign up just to vote a project up so they can pump up a coin's value is shilling and against both the rules and possibly the law. It's frustrating to see that sort of obvious behavior being legitimized and make the front page) I also believe that empty platitudes are easier to write than in depth critiques. Sometimes I'd try a product in spite of the critiques because it doesn't affect me or I feel that the critiques are either unfair or based out of expectations and not what the product actually promises. But other times it shows sketchy to straight up illegal behavior. They are arguably worth more than simple messages of encouragement which tells me nothing. Of course if someone I'm following or more importantly, someone I know irl and trust irl is recommending a product it gives it far more credence, but my friends aren't all in my line of business so while endorsements are important, critiques, and an actual response addressing the critiques, mean so much more. Lastly, I'm sure we've all had a few crazy years and much of it unpleasant, whether your personal health was affected or the health of someone you know, mental or physical. I'm fully cognizant that at best this is a lull but I would really appreciate projects that are, well, fun, or absurd, Dada, meta for the sake of meta, or some sort of description that reflects that a project might not be super useful (although it can be) but a project that is ridiculous in a self-aware manner, ludicrous on its face but actually has a purpose, too clever by half, or anything that actually makes me chuckle would be greatly appreciated. We all need a laugh at some point. Rube Goldberg solutions to simple problems might not be efficient, but look, you don't watch a comedy movie for the heartwarming ending, right? As long as it's clear that a product is like this by design and not some post-hoc justification for a poor product. That's definitely more than I meant to write so I'll just end it here. Cheers.

Just the product description. If something sounds interesting, I’ll visit the website and read the PH comments to learn more. The main things I look for: - screenshots and product demo - features - use cases - pricing

I think testimonials & reviews from the current customers should be emphasized much more. Also adding a video format for testimonials would be a great option.

I think some soft categorisation / tags would be worth exploring. Ie ‘Indie Dev’ ‘Enterprise SW’… Let makers define themselves into categories and maybe if we want to get complex some simple click / voting by the community to add affirmation where needed. Might create another method for people to discover more related products too..

Hi Daniel 👋 Congrats on your new role. Excited to have you on the team. I have PH mobile scrolling incorporated into my morning routine. When I wake up, I scroll through the list of new apps. The one-liner is perhaps the most interesting thing that catches my eye. If it seems interesting, I'll click on the description, go to the website, and scroll through the comments. Hope this is helpful. -Susie

Feedback on whether the features are really useful

Thanks for sharing, Daniel. I find that the product's relation to my interests/needs makes it most likely for me to use it. It could be interesting to filter the product feed based on specific filters or have a comparative system where you can view alternatives to current products.

It would help if we had at least some crude categories for products so that we can follow a certain category we are interested in. Not sure this would be doable though... :)

It would be great if you could have an icon to indicate whether the product has a coin associated with it. This could be a centralized web2 token or an onchain web3 token. And how these coins/crypto can be earned. This would help the products who want to share the upside of their project's potential with their users, early adopters, collaborators, and more by flagging that there's more to gain for those who visit and try the product than just the utility of the existing build. Most products on PH sadly sink to the sediment layer of the internet because they fail to expand behind an early cohort of fans. Coins/tokens/crypto fixes this by making the projects/products play-to earn/learn/use/own. You could start with your own coin-powered community. HMU if you want to hear my thoughts on that. Great work on PH and I love these posts that solicit feedback for improvement.

A detailed explanatory video- whether it is illustrative or a human talking- about how the product works, what are the benefits, and how can we use it.

If there is something that is strikingly new or innovative -- also things related to social impact!

Would love like a values alignment feature for products too -- identifying products that resonate with you and are trying to solve some meaningful problems for society!

Process on PH: I quickly go through the day's top list and click on products that might interest me. If I find something interesting, I usually look at the carousel, website, comments and similar products first. If I'm invested, I'll look at the reviews & do more research! What I look for: - Feedback - from people I know is best, but I also like to see reviews online in general (Reddit, Twitter, comparison blogs, videos, etc) - Clearly showing the features on PH and the website - live demos and videos are also handy! - Pricing - i'm far less likely to sign up for a trial unless I have a task I need to do, since I like to evaluate a product at my leisure before I upgrade. If I have to subscribe to use it, I do this if the task is critical and/or the subscription is cheap and set a reminder to reevaluate it within the month. - How much it locks me into the product - I also consider what leaving the app would be like; do they offer exports? Can it be integrated to related apps? What about competitors?

Agree with others on the feedback feature! I'd also add something like a filter. Let's say I want to see what's new in the area I'm really interested in. Yeah, it's good to see all the newest products but after seeing those I really would like to filter out and take a more detailed look at them. Btw, we’re launching in late May. Check out our upcoming PH page: www.producthunt.com/upcoming/eff... Our project is called: Effecto. It’s an app for detailed habit, health, symptoms, and meds tracking. Pretty much for everything that is related to your physical or mental health and every daily factor that can affect you.

I think PH is great as it is, with user community comments and reviews of the products. What would be a plus is, probably, if you have a PH team that reviews some products that might be useful for the community. Something like: - Top 5 / Top 10 upcoming products that PH think could be a hit. - Top 5 / Top 10 upcoming products that could be worth checking out. - Top 5 / Top 10 upcoming products for your family. - Top 5 / Top 10 upcoming products for your pets. - Top 5 / Top 10 upcoming products for your mobile device. These are off the beaten path of upcoming products and launches that doesn't know how to promote on PH, but PH thinks that they could be good. I know PH has thousands of upcoming products and launches, but picking a few here and there, could be beneficial for all :)

Most products I find are through the main page and related products. Besides that, I try a lot of products that people ask for me to try here in the discussions section.

It would be helpful to see if people I follow have upvoted or commented on a product!

Hey Daniel, Welcome to the team 🥳 For me i would have to say that its actually the photo / video along with the text from the maker/hunter that speaks to me the most. I did PH is already doing great job of everything around it. Also while its tempting to make thinks better and better and I have not doubts that there is plenty to work in PH but I would like to just mention that I hope the simplicity of getting around PH should stay as is. The other have pointed out many other things thats worth your attention. I hope this helps as well 👍

Word of mouth is the most powerful without a doubt, making finding a hunter more streamlined could be an interesting feature since it seems to be one way traction can be had, maybe a hunter "match" feature? Welcome Daniel! Hope the onboarding has been as frictionless as one could hope for

Besides the word of mouth, I believe it depends on the product itself if you are able to test the product through free samples or freemiums, it will be the best way to be convinced. If not, I believe in reading more about the products through blogs and content. It is proven that customers tend to read at least 2-3 content or visit different websites before deciding if it is worth trying or not. I hope this helps!