Built With Science · B2C · science-based fitness coaching app
Release new features quietly, and announce only once usage proves them
Founder says it gives cleaner reads than email-hyped launches; no numbers
Workedfeature-development
What they did
Previously announced every feature by email to all members, which inflated the engagement metrics they wanted to measure. Now: tell a beta pool (~100 long-time former course members plus ~1,000 beta testers) about the feature, collect feedback and iterate, then release it publicly with no announcement and watch the metrics. Only once there is signal it adds value do they announce it.
What happened
Cleaner learning from releases.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science“this often inflates a lot of the engagement metrics that you obviously want to measure when you launch a new feature. So we've actually taken the opposite approach where we'll roll out a new feature, we won't say anything, and we'll just see how the metrics do on its own.”
“the beta pool is what we're telling them about the feature. We want them to test it, we want feedback, then we're iterating on that feedback, then we're quietly launching it”
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More from this episode
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- 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: Build free calorie and macro calculators that rank in AI search and lead to the quizWorking well, founder says; tools convert slightly better than blog posts
- 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: 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