Built With Science · B2C · science-based fitness coaching app
Build free calorie and macro calculators that rank in AI search and lead to the quiz
Working well, founder says; tools convert slightly better than blog posts
Workedseoweb-to-app
What they did
SEO from old blog posts once drove 30-40% of traffic but declined with AI search. In 2026 they hired an external AI-search consultant, optimized existing content, and built free web tools (calorie calculator, macro calculator, etc.) that give real value and transition into the web quiz. Tools tend to rank well in AI search.
What happened
Working well; tools convert slightly higher than blog posts; results slow like SEO.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science“we decided to invest in hiring an external consultant to help us with some of this AI search”
“a calorie calculator, a macro calculator, a bunch of these tools that users could use in the web that not only added value”
“for the most part, the tools have a slightly higher conversion”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Built With Science: Spend a year fixing trial-to-paid and retention before buying any adsFounder says it lifted the floor for every channel; paid traffic later converted at 25%
- Built With Science: Hype the app launch to your YouTube viewers, course members and email listA launch spike, then a steady trickle; not a growth engine on its own
- Built With Science: Mention the app softly mid-video, and tell user transformation storiesStory videos bring more trials than broad educational ones; old videos give steady monthly trials
- Built With Science: Hire clippers to post long-video clips on Reels and TikTok, then reuse winning hooksSome clips go viral; their hooks now shape new long videos
- Built With Science: Scale Meta ads without the famous founder: B-roll, testimonials and AI image adsScaled from zero to ~$100K/month (host figure); 25% trial-to-paid
- Built With Science: Spend the first month of ads just learning your paid trial-to-paid rateTook about a month to get a baseline to set the allowed cost per customer
- Built With Science: Judge ads by how many trials pay, not by how cheap the trials areClickbait ads brought cheap trials but a huge drop in trial-to-paid
- Built With Science: Build a dashboard that confirms which trials came from Meta, and send Meta your best users
- Built With Science: Send ad clicks to a long personal quiz on your website, not the App StoreQuiz beat direct-to-store; now gets ~90% of traffic; same quiz in the iOS app did worse
- Built With Science: Sell the app as a trainer in your pocket, not a tracker, at $189 a yearKept $189/year since launch; 35-40% organic and ~25% Meta trial-to-paid
- Built With Science: Offer 15% off each if users add a workout buddy to their plan15% of trial starts add a buddy; higher order value and better retention
- Built With Science: List every reason a page fails before brainstorming fixes, and write each test down~70% of tests fail first time; written notes turn failures into later winners
- Built With Science: Release new features quietly, and announce only once usage proves themFounder says it gives cleaner reads than email-hyped launches; no numbers
- Built With Science: Build an AI coach trained on the creator's videos that reads each user's own dataOne of customers' favorite features, founder says; no numbers
- Built With Science: Team up with researchers and run studies with your own app usersFounder says it adds credibility; no numbers
- Built With Science: Show only the yearly plan first, with a day-by-day trial timeline and reminder promiseAnnual picks rose from ~60% to 75-80%, with no price change
- Built With Science: Add more explanation to the pricing page to make the value clearerHurt conversion; extra text overwhelmed buyers who were ready to start
- Built With Science: Offer 20% off to pay now, with a toggle back to the 14-day free trialQuite negative, even with a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Built With Science: Make both the free trial and the pay-now discount sound goodVery strong lift after a few weeks, vs the version that shamed the trial
- Built With Science: Film a months-long science experiment video with real people in a rented studioOne of the year's top videos; decent but not major app conversion