Welltory · B2C · heart-rate-variability wellness app
Show new text and visuals, based on the user's own data, every time they open
Gave the initial retention boost; built by hand before gen AI, which was very painful
Workedretentionfeature-development
What they did
Before generative AI, built an in-house 'infinite content generation system' that changes the text and visuals users see as their data changes: about 45 message types, each with near-infinite variants (enough text for four volumes of Lord of the Rings). The guest advises using generative AI today rather than building this by hand.
What happened
The guest credits it with Welltory's initial retention boost: people kept coming back because they saw something new each time.
- Effort
- Years of in-house work; 'aged me like 10 years'
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Why Duolingo’s Engagement Strategy Won’t Work For Every App — Asya Paloni, Welltory“It was basically an infinite content generation system that would change the text and visuals that people saw depending on how their data changed.”
“But really, that's what helped us get that initial retention boost, is that people kept coming back to us because they were seeing something new every time they opened the app.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Welltory
All 22 Welltory tactics- Ask users to sync their Apple Watch data on the very first screenOver 90% connect their data; intro screens before it did worse
- End onboarding with 'Stress is building right now' instead of promising more energyBeat an ending that promised more energy with a progress chart
- Ask to turn on notifications right away, before showing much valueWorked best in that spot, against best-practice advice; no numbers
- Keep basic and possibly life-saving health tracking free; charge for deeper analysisOver 60% of conversions happen after day one, over the next couple of months
- Ask 'How do you usually feel?' with both 'drained' and 'stressed' answers50-70% of women pick low energy; men pick stressed or fine
- Build onboarding as a six-step pitch that ends on what users lose todaySucceeded after repeated failed onboardings; no numbers given
More from this episode
- Welltory: Make your wellness app something people open when bored, instead of TikTokBecame the company's final big pivot to reach the mass market; no numbers
- Welltory: Show heart data as a color-changing liquid that updates with no user effortBecame the core feature; guest says people really love it; no numbers
- Welltory: Tell users how their habits affect things they care about, like next-day work output
- Welltory: Replace raw stats with a home screen that explains what each step and heartbeat meansJust launched; guest says users seem to really love it
- Welltory: Build smarter, personalized Apple Watch-style move rings and daily goalsDidn't drive retention: missed goals made users feel shamed; worked only for a small group
- Welltory: Give users a personal daily plan to follow and check offDropped: health tasks happen outside the app, so users fall off and feel shamed
- Welltory: Make users' results pretty and easy to post, so they can show offGuest's example: a friend posts his results and keeps coming back; no numbers
- Build one standout interactive widget before adding the basics every rival hasDrove a lot of installs and retention; some bad reviews for missing basics
- Welltory: Check each big feature idea against the mission, main persona, trigger and user jobGuest says the team has used it successfully; scoring features with points didn't work