Product Launch Checklist: What to Check Before, During and After Launch Day

Below is the checklist I'd hand to a product team, ordered by time, with the soft launch vs hard launch decision at the start and the release notes at the end. It also covers the basics of a Product Hunt launch, since that channel has its own rules.

What Is a Product Launch Checklist?

It's a pre-flight check for the moment people notice the product. Pilots run one before every takeoff because experienced crews skip familiar steps, and launch teams have the same habit. Medicine measured the effect: in the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009, a 19-item list in eight hospitals cut deaths from 1.5% to 0.8%.

A launch checklist works the same way at lower stakes. Each line has an owner and a date, and nobody relies on memory in the busiest week of the quarter. See the short definition of a product launch checklist in the glossary.

Soft Launch vs Hard Launch: Decide First

The first item on any checklist is the launch type, because it changes every other line.

Running the loud one before the quiet one is how launches blow up in public. For finding usability problems, the soft group can be tiny: Jakob Nielsen's research at NN/g found that about five users reveal around 85% of them.

The Product Launch Checklist, Step by Step

Two weeks before launch

• Launch type chosen and the soft launch group invited.
• One sentence agreed on who the release is for and what they can now do.
• One success event named, such as “first report exported”, and asked for in tracking.
• Owners written down for the date, the message, tracking, support and the first-run experience.

One week before launch

• First-run experience tested with real people from the soft launch.
• Every empty state and error message for the new feature written.
• Screenshots on the marketing site, app store and help articles updated.
• Release note drafted in plain words, starting with what the user can now do.

One day before launch

• Every link in the announcement clicked on a phone, logged out.
• The success event checked on staging.
• Support given the new flows, screenshots and the expected first questions.
• Someone named to watch errors and answer comments on launch day.

Launch day and the week after

• Announcement sent through the two or three channels that fit the audience.
• Every support ticket and comment collected in one document.
• Activation and day 7 retention for the feature reviewed after a week.
• Learnings written down for the next launch.

How to Launch a Product on Product Hunt

A Product Hunt launch adds its own items to the list, all from Product Hunt's launch guide. Launches go live at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time because the homepage runs on a 24-hour cycle, and a post can be scheduled up to one month ahead. The tagline allows 60 characters and the description 500. The gallery needs at least two images, with 1270 by 760 pixels recommended.

Two more details change the plan. The product URL can't be a shortened link or a link with UTM tags, so measure arrivals on the landing page. And Product Hunt reports that 70% of products that became Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment by the maker, which works best when it asks for feedback. More in the glossary entry on the Product Hunt launch.

Release Notes After the Launch

The checklist ends where release marketing starts: telling users what's new, release after release, so the product never feels stalled. “Bug fixes and improvements” wastes that chance; “You can now export reports to PDF in one click” uses it. The open convention Keep a Changelog sorts changes into six types (Added, Changed, Deprecated, Removed, Fixed, Security), which helps decide what deserves a plain sentence. See release notes in the glossary.

Common Product Launch Mistakes

• Loud first: a hard launch with no soft launch shows every rough edge to the biggest audience.
• No success event: without tracking wired before the date, nobody can say whether the launch worked.
• Unbriefed support: the first confused customer gets a confused answer.
• Old screenshots: the landing page shows an interface that no longer exists.
• Silence afterwards: improvements ship and users never hear about them.

Where to Start

Do you know who gets your next release first? Is the success event already tracked? Could someone else run your launch plan without asking you anything?

The free course Launch & Release Marketing covers soft and hard launches, release notes and the launch checklist, and ends with a 40-minute practice where you plan a real launch. The plan around it lives in GTM Strategy and Marketing Channels. For the terms, see product launch and go-to-market strategy in the product and business glossary, then see where business skills fit on your personalized UX design learning path.