What should you do in the quiet month after a launch?

Talk to the people who signed up. One by one, with one question: what made you try it, and what would make you stay? The quiet second month is when a small product tells you what it's for, and you only hear it if you ask.

What I did instead

In my fifth year I launched a scheduling tool "for small teams". The second month was flat, and I made all 3 of the classic wrong responses in a single month.

I rewrote the landing page in week 3, and again in week 4. I added 2 features nobody had asked for in weeks 5 and 6. Then I relaunched it to the same places as before. Every one of those was something I could do alone, at my desk, without talking to anybody. (That's why they're so tempting.)

The few people who'd signed up were the whole customer list for 4 months, and I spent those months doing everything except asking them what they thought.

Why the flat month happens

A launch is a morning. The people who arrived that morning try the thing, and most of them leave quietly. The graph goes flat because launches end, and that says nothing yet about the product. What matters is what happens next, and that depends on the few who stayed.

What to do instead

1. Write to every person who signed up. One question each. Read every answer.
2. Find the 2 or 3 who use it. Ask what they use it for. It's often not what you built it for.
3. Fix the first 10 minutes. Most people leave before they've seen the thing work. Watch somebody try it.
4. Leave the landing page alone until somebody tells you it's the problem.

On the product I still run every Sunday, the flat second month led to 10 conversations, and a month spent on its first 10 minutes. It's still running.

Ship Alone has the full chapter on the second month. Nobody Bought It has the scheduling tool's autopsy.