Symmetry · B2C · gym workout tracker
End onboarding with a screen where users pledge to work out
~3% better retention in an A/B test
What they did
What happened
In their words
How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App
… you must A-B test everything. You have your control version, the version of your app currently, and the new version being A-B tested. And after at least two weeks of running the experiment, you then analyze the data and really know what is happening to the users. For example, this is what we call Evelyn, Experiment Velocity Engine List in your numbers. Here we have all of our A-B test tracks. This is a database that comes from user interviews.
it's user interviews that show us the user problem then we do the hypothesis and then we do the experiments these experiments are being tracked in postdoc so here we track everything and we can see how everything is running for example this was an experiment i mentioned earlier about the page you see after the onboarding where you see your workouts you see here we tested two different variants apart from the control and they moved nothing the metrics absolutely nothing and they were completely different designs this tells us hey let's not focus on here again this is an inconclusive test this focus on other areas of the app. For example, this experiment is just one screen at the end of the onboarding, where you commit to like workout.
So you're like signing, hey, I'm going to work out. That's it, one screen. Just look at how the metrics move. It's increased 3% retention, adding one screen. That is why you have to A-B test everything. Yeah, I was going to chime in with a quick thought, which was like, I didn't start building anything until all these AI coding tools came out. And I definitely fall into the trap of like, oh, that would be cool. That'd be cool if it existed without any information. And so listening to you talk here, I'm like, OK, there's a lot of good things to keep in mind. Cool. Let's switch topics a little bit. So you talked to us about all the things you analyze and all the tools you use.
Maybe just walk us through the tech stack you've used to build this app or the tech stack and tools you use on a daily basis to run this app. Well, obviously I use, me and my team, we use Cloud everywhere. We love to use Cloud with MCPs and we connect to this analytics tool like PostHoc or SuperWorld or RemedyCat with MCP and see all our data from there. I also use Whisperflow a lot. I like to speak with my computer and that way I'm faster than …
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Post ~80K creator videos a year from 500+ accounts; track which formats win~1B views in a year; main driver of ~3M downloads
- Pay creators nearly half of revenue so they keep posting
- Launch to the founders' own YouTube fitness audienceOnly a tiny download spike
- Try influencer marketing for a gym app
- Build a gym tracker for Spanish speakers instead of the USDescribed as the fastest-growing fitness app in the Spanish market
- Test two new designs for the first screen after onboardingNeither moved any metric
- Start each test from a real user problem and A/B test for two weeksCredited for reaching $160K/month; most tests don't move the needle
- Test the screens most users hit, like the paywall, before minor features
- Set big 90-day goals, bigger the newer the app
- Add ranks, streaks and a friends feed to workout trackingRanks are the most-liked feature
Tags: commitment-device, ab-test