Ladder · B2C · strength training app
Add a home-screen calendar widget that lights up workout days, and show how to install it
About a third of users have it; guest sees it correlate with retention
Workedretentionnotificationsword-of-mouth
What they did
Calendar widget lights up each day a workout is completed and launches workouts. Not shown as the first thing (trust not yet earned); positioned later, made to look good, with step-by-step install instructions since most people don't know how to add widgets. Acts as a home-screen billboard reminding users of their third workout, and strangers who see it ask about it.
What happened
~1/3 of users have the widget; retention correlation observed; some conversation/referrals from others seeing it.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder“it can't be the first thing that you show. You haven't earned that trust, but we've tried to position it and try to build it out where, again, it looks cool. You give them the instructions because it's not exactly intuitive for the majority of people.”
“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?"”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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More from this episode
- Ladder: 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
- Ladder: 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
- Ladder: 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
- Ladder: Give a check mark per workout and a weekly streak for 3 of themGuest says it reinforces the 3-a-week habit; no numbers
- Ladder: Run a big yearly user survey and use AI to read the answers7,500+ responses in a year; led directly to the nutrition feature
- Ladder: 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