The pre-launch feedback checklist: 10 things to test before you ship
A practical checklist of what to test before launch day, from your homepage and pricing to your launch post, and how to get feedback on each in a day.
Launch week compresses months of work into a few days of attention. People will look once, decide quickly and move on. The cheapest time to fix what makes them leave is before they arrive.
This checklist covers the ten things most worth testing before launch, what to look for in each, and how to get feedback fast.
1. Your homepage's first impression
Can someone who has never heard of you say what you do, who it's for and why it matters, within a few seconds? This is the single highest-leverage thing to test.
Look for: vague headlines, jargon, a missing "for whom".
2. Your landing page's call to action
If you're sending launch traffic to a dedicated page, check that the main button says what happens next and that nothing competes with it.
Look for: generic button labels, several equally loud actions, a CTA that only appears at the bottom.
3. Your pricing page
Pricing pages raise the most objections. Test whether visitors can tell which plan is for them, and whether the price feels fair for what they get.
Look for: confusion between plans, missing limits, surprise costs, no free way to try.
4. Your launch post
Your Product Hunt, LinkedIn or X post is often the first thing people see. Does the hook make the right people stop scrolling?
Look for: a slow opening, features instead of outcomes, no reason to click now.
5. Your onboarding
What happens in the first two minutes after signup? Someone arriving from a launch post has low patience and high curiosity.
Look for: empty states with no guidance, too many setup steps before any value, unexplained permissions.
6. Your trust signals
New products have to work harder for trust. Check what a sceptical visitor would look for and whether they can find it.
Look for: no information about who's behind the product, no data-handling explanation, vague security claims.
7. Your objections and FAQ
List the top five reasons someone would hesitate. Check that each is answered somewhere on the site.
Look for: pricing questions, compatibility ("does it work with X?"), fit ("is this for a team my size?").
8. Your app store or directory listing
If you're listed in an app directory, the listing is a landing page you control less. Test the title, short description and first screenshot.
Look for: screenshots without context, descriptions that repeat the name, no clear outcome.
9. Your outreach message
If you're messaging people directly, test the message on the kind of person who'll receive it.
Look for: messages that are about you rather than them, no specific reason you're contacting this person, an ask that's too big.
10. Your audience assumptions
Finally, test the assumption under everything else: are you talking to the right people? Show the same page to two or three different segments and see who it actually resonates with.
Look for: the segment you expected to love it being lukewarm, and a segment you hadn't considered being keen.
How to get through this in a day
Doing ten rounds of real user testing before launch isn't realistic for most teams. A practical approach:
- Run each item past AI personas of your audience. With betaproof, each study takes minutes and covers 18 content types, from homepages and pricing pages to Product Hunt launches and app store listings.
- Fix the issues that come up repeatedly.
- Show the three most important pieces (usually the homepage, pricing and launch post) to a handful of real people in your audience.
- Launch, then watch real behaviour and keep iterating.
If you're launching a Slack app, the same idea extends to the product itself: Slack beta testing runs AI testers through simulated workspaces that install and use your app.
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- Homepage: clear in five seconds
- Landing page: one obvious next step
- Pricing: right plan is obvious, price feels fair
- Launch post: hook stops the right people
- Onboarding: value in two minutes
- Trust: who, what happens to data, specific claims
- Objections: top five answered
- Listings: title, description, first screenshot
- Outreach: about them, specific, small ask
- Audience: tested on more than one segment