Ladder · B2C · strength training app
Run a big yearly user survey and use AI to read the answers
7,500+ responses in a year; led directly to the nutrition feature
Workedfeature-development
What they did
Three feedback buckets: (1) acute pain via in-app feedback forms that flow into Slack; (2) ad hoc plus recurring surveys, including an end-of-year survey of 80-90 multiple-choice and open-ended questions taking 45+ minutes, parsed with AI; (3) dogfooding by staff (encouraged, not required). Gives little weight to 5-10 person interviews in a diverse consumer base; takes care to write unbiased, non-leading questions.
What happened
7,500+ responses to the annual survey; clear signal for nutrition.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder“we do one at the end of the year and we have an insanely productive community. There's 7,500 plus responses this past year. It takes over 45 minutes. Thank God for AI to be able to parse it out and understand what they want.”
“if you talk to five or 10 people, they might weigh in on a part that gives you a little bit of insight, but the problem is you can't over-index to that because they still only represent N of five or N of 10.”
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Ladder
All 47 Ladder tactics- Offer non-converted trial users their first month for $5, then $29.99About half stay into month two at full price; consistent across cohorts
- Ask new visitors 15 fitness questions, then recommend three matching programsA million people have taken it in 18 months; fixed confused cold-traffic users
- Survey 500 users on price and talk to 100 non-payers, then cut $60 to $29.99Clearing price was ~$29 across cohorts; January 2022 became the best month yet
- Run a new coach's TikTok for them, using only videos already on their phone250K followers in 45 days, with million-view videos every week
- End TikToks with on-screen text like 'We start Monday, link in my profile'Founder says viewers follow explicit instructions; no numbers
- Send every TikTok ad click to a web quiz and track answers that mark ideal usersTargeting tightened within a week; payback in low single-digit months
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: 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
- 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: 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