Lose It! · B2C · calorie tracking app
Ask more questions in onboarding, even ones you don't use, to lift trial starts
Trial starts up double digits; free-user retention also improved
Workedonboardingpaywall
What they did
Starting in 2018, after noticing health apps' onboardings getting longer with questions that could not be used for setup, Lose It! A/B tested adding more questions to its onboarding beyond the age/height/weight/goal needed to set a calorie budget. The answers were not necessarily used at first. They kept making onboarding longer until returns diminished. Onboarding is never touched without an A/B test. They also tracked free-user retention to make sure the free experience was not hurt. The rationale: most users have failed at weight loss before, and the longer flow gets them into a committed mindset.
What happened
Trial take rates went up double digits as onboarding got longer; free users who went through the flow also retained better.
- Stage
- Scale (Mature freemium app, ~40-person company)
- Effort
- Iterative A/B tests since 2018
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Achieving Mission & Profit with Freemium — Erin Webster-Shaller and Paul Apollo, Lose It!“So what we started testing was, "All right, what happens if we just ask people more questions? We don't necessarily care what the answers are. We just make onboarding longer." And we found huge success from that.”
“Our trial take rates went up double digits as onboarding got longer. And we basically just kept making it longer and longer and longer until we got diminishing returns, which is how we got where we are now.”
“we actually improved retention for free users who went through that flow as well.”
Related topics
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More from Lose It!
All 24 Lose It! tactics- Retest higher prices you once rejected; double the yearly price if it breaks evenTest broke even for the first time; rollout matched tests and gives room for paid ads
- Build in-app sales timed to each user's journey, with deeper discounts off a higher priceHigher base allows 25-75% discounts to more users; no conversion numbers
- Keep the free version good enough to reach the goal without payingRetention very stable after doubling the price, per guest
- Raise the price only for new users; keep current subscribers on their old priceAvoided an untestable churn risk; no numbers on the effect
- Add ads to the free app, one-off purchases, and affiliate partner deals
More from this episode
- Lose It!: Let people set up premium features in onboarding, then show what they'd loseUsers who opt into the calorie-cycling feature convert more; no exact numbers
- Lose It!: Ask new users to set a carb goal during onboardingLost badly in A/B test; many premium setup steps clogged the flow
- Lose It!: Lock all macro-tracking features behind premium as a testEarned little extra money and made users angry
- Lose It!: Keep basic calorie counting free; put macros, keto and fasting in premiumPremium grew to 40+ features; carbs and device syncing drive most upgrades
- Lose It!: Talk about how much people save, not about features, in upgrade messagesDiscount messages beat feature messages in tests; no numbers
- Lose It!: Spend big on paid ads to stop relying on organic users~10% predicted ROAS at scale; money burned and the push was dropped
- Lose It!: Charge about half what rivals charge, since you don't need ads to pay backPrice set by testing on organic users; about half of the main rival's price
- Lose It!: Market the free app through app store search and word of mouth, not ads50M+ users over 15 years, mostly organic
- Lose It!: Email users when they hit weight-loss milestones and ask for their storyStories feed social, email and in-app marketing; impact not measured
- Lose It!: Give users a $10 gift card when a friend they refer upgrades to premiumRoughly broke even but didn't scale; exposed users had lower LTV; killed after a year
- Lose It!: Offer steeper and steeper discounts to free users who haven't paid after 30 daysTurns cohorts that almost never convert into some revenue; no numbers
- Lose It!: Offer a deep premium discount to users on a 30-day logging streakA/B test win; big efficiency gain on a small group
- Lose It!: Show sale offers as in-app messages instead of sending email blasts10x more money for the same offer
- Lose It!: Show upgrade messages after people finish logging, never in the middleMid-task messages caused drop-off and fewer upgrades; after-task messages did better
- Lose It!: Aim in-app sales at new and returning users, with a warm 'welcome back'These users are half of bookings; first-time sales do really well
- Lose It!: Pin a 24-hour sale countdown to the top of the main screenKept the sale visible after people closed the pop-up; no numbers
- Lose It!: Try network ads inside a free app that earns from subscriptionsNot much money and a pain to manage; not worth it for a small team
- Lose It!: Pay staff bonuses only if both revenue and user weight-loss goals are met