Ladder · B2C · strength training app
Give a check mark per workout and a weekly streak for 3 of them
Guest says it reinforces the 3-a-week habit; no numbers
What they did
In their words
The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder
David BarnardI mean, pretty typical kind of like a streak mechanism, but it's so powerful sitting on my home screen. So, tell me about those and the impact it had on retention.
Ben GammonYeah. I think one of the key parts of building on a product is you have to figure out the game that exists within the product. And it has to be very, very simple. And again, if you go back to the getting results and the consistency, it was all built around that north star of like three workouts. And so, these are what we call reinforcers, right? So, you have the check mark is what gives you like for a completed workout, you have to get three of those. And three of those equal a streak for a week. And then the widget is what takes that outside the app to, again, reinforce that. So, as you're scrolling your phone subconsciously or consciously, you're seeing that and has a huge effect to say like, "Oh, I need to remember to go do my third workout." Or there's that sense of pride.
Ben GammonAnd I think one of the things that's underrated about the widget too is other people see that, right? It might not happen often, but there's times where you're seeing as other people are swiping their phone, they see that widget and they're like, "What is that?" And that can drive conversation and referrals in a way as well.
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More from this episode
- Read your five-star reviews to find the result users want, then target 3 workouts a weekBecame the goal the whole product is built around; no retention numbers given
- Let users log reps and weights, then suggest next weights and show their progress70-75% of users now log every workout; guest sees it correlate with retention
- Have coaches tell users to log their weights mid-workout, not in a help pageJournal use climbed to 70-75% of workouts; guest calls it 10x more effective than FAQs
- Add a home-screen calendar widget that lights up workout days, and show how to install itAbout a third of users have it; guest sees it correlate with retention
- Run a big yearly user survey and use AI to read the answers7,500+ responses in a year; led directly to the nutrition feature
- Add nutrition tracking to a workout app after users asked for it in the surveyEarly read: users doing both convert and stay much more; no numbers yet
Tags: streaks, gamification, weekly-goal