First launch I have ever done. Day zero was 4,100 uniques and it felt incredible. Day four was 210. It has been sitting between 165 and 190 for a fortnight since, with one small bump.
I knew there would be a drop, I did not expect 95%. Is this the normal curve or did I do something wrong after launch day, and what is the number I should actually be watching now instead of the traffic graph?
The emotional version of this is predictable enough that you should plan for it in advance. Decide what you are working on for the two weeks after launch before launch day, while you still feel good, and write it down. Otherwise you spend those two weeks deciding what to do while feeling flat, which is the worst possible state in which to make a roadmap.
Learned this the hard way. Spent the fortnight after my launch rewriting the landing page four times because it was the only thing that felt like progress.
Three launches, same shape every time: big day, half of it, a quarter, then a floor at roughly 4-5% of peak by day five. Yours is textbook.
The useful thing to do during the slump is not marketing. It is talking to the handful of people who actually activated. You will never again have this many recent, motivated strangers who tried your thing and can remember why they stopped.
The shape is normal but read it honestly: if the floor is 180 and your pre-launch was 150, your permanent gain is 30 visits a day and an email list. That is not a failure, it is just a much smaller number than the 4,100 you are anchored on. Most launches are worth roughly one good blog post, spread over one exciting day.
Break the floor traffic down by source. If it is direct or branded search, you built a small amount of brand and that compounds. If it is one directory listing sending you 90 a day, then that listing is your distribution channel and your next move is obviously to find four more like it. Very different conclusions from the same 180.
That graph looks like every launch graph anyone has ever posted. You now have 210 people a day you did not have a month ago and a list of people who know your name. That is what a launch buys.
@pomodoro_pat · 3w ago · 3 replies
Completely normal, and the peak was never the number that mattered.
The number that matters is the floor. Compare your current 180ish a day with whatever you were doing the week before launch. If you were at 40 a day and you are now at 180, the launch permanently multiplied your baseline by four and a half and that is a genuinely good outcome. If you were at 150 before, launch bought you a mailing list and thirty visits, which is a different conversation.
Second thing: launch traffic is the lowest-intent traffic you will ever receive. These are people who clicked a link on a list of new things. Judging your product by how they behaved is like judging a restaurant by people who walked past and looked in the window.
So stop watching visits. Watch what the launch cohort did at day 7 — how many activated, how many came back twice. That is a small number and it will tell you more than the graph.
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@blistermaps · 3w ago
Pre-launch baseline was 35 a day. Put like that the floor at 180 is a fivefold permanent lift and I have been sulking about the wrong graph for two weeks.
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@harlan_voss · 3w ago
Also look at the launch cohort's week-4 retention separately from every cohort after it. Launch cohorts always retain worse — curiosity signups, wrong ICP, people who will never come back — and if you blend them into your overall retention number you will panic about a problem you do not have.
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