Product Hunt, the best site for discovering the next big thing, is getting a brand new look
Since its launch just over two years ago, Product Hunt has quickly emerged as the go-to place for those in the tech and venture capital space to discover what people are buzzing about, whether it's a new app, startup, service, or device.
Thanks to the new design, Product Hunt's landing page now offers a more diverse selection, and its founder Ryan Hoover says it's part of the site's push to make it more accessible to its ever-growing audience.
"We started with an intense focus on tech early adopters with strong conviction that this model can apply to different kinds of people and types of things," Hoover wrote in a Medium post delving into the reasons behind the site's redesign. "...We knew limiting the Product Hunt homepage to tech wasn't sufficient for where we're going?-?we needed something more modular that could be personalized for people with varying interests."
The site's new look does away with the vertical Reddit-style links in favor of horizontal sections that showcase what's trending in the world of tech, games, books, and podcasts. And while Product Hunt has featured sections covering games, books, and podcasts for some time now, they were nestled away in their own landing pages. Now, every section of the site is represented on the homepage with its own horizontal ribbon - much like the horizontal sections on Netflix - where people can click to cycle through the most popular submissions.
There's also sections devoted to showcasing some of Product Hunt's curated "Collections," or groups of products or services centered around a unifying theme, as well as banners to alert visitors to upcoming talks and Q&As that are part of Product Hunt Live.
Here's what the new version of Product Hunt looks like.
But with any major redesign comes the risk of angering the core userbase who might have gotten used to the old-school look of Product Hunt, and Hoover acknowledges this.
"This is the biggest single change since Product Hunt began," Hoover writes in his Medium post. "It's also the riskiest thing we've done. Change is nerve-wracking and in the words of Arnold Bennett: 'Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.' But we're confident we're heading in the right direction."
To make the transition as smooth as possible, Hoover included a large number of Product Hunt's most active users in its beta tests for the new design, taking feedback along the way. But for those who prefer the old look, Hoover points out that the new design will be opt-in, so people will be able to choose which version they'll see.
You can visit Product Hunt 2.0 starting on Thursday.