Welltory · B2C · heart-rate-variability wellness app
Make your wellness app something people open when bored, instead of TikTok
Became the company's final big pivot to reach the mass market; no numbers
Workedpositioning-nicheretention
What they did
Realized mass-market users have no daily 'job' or real-life trigger to open a wellness app (unlike athletes or sick people). Targeted the boredom trigger instead (standing in line, on the couch before Netflix): made the app as entertaining as a social feed, showing something new on every open, and removed goal-setting and shaming metrics that make users feel worse. Keep accurate information, but not as the only thing users see.
What happened
Guest describes it as Welltory's final big pivot, enabling a mass-market app; novelty content gave an initial retention boost. No numbers.
- Stage
- pivot
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Why Duolingo’s Engagement Strategy Won’t Work For Every App — Asya Paloni, Welltory“the only way that we can make a health and wellness app for the mass market is if we use this trigger and somehow convince people that instead of opening like Instagram or TikTok, they can open a health and wellness app and it would be just as fun and just as entertaining, but also good for them.”
“It has to show people something new every time they open the app. And it has to really avoid shaming people.”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Welltory
All 22 Welltory tactics- Ask users to sync their Apple Watch data on the very first screenOver 90% connect their data; intro screens before it did worse
- End onboarding with 'Stress is building right now' instead of promising more energyBeat an ending that promised more energy with a progress chart
- Ask to turn on notifications right away, before showing much valueWorked best in that spot, against best-practice advice; no numbers
- Keep basic and possibly life-saving health tracking free; charge for deeper analysisOver 60% of conversions happen after day one, over the next couple of months
- Ask 'How do you usually feel?' with both 'drained' and 'stressed' answers50-70% of women pick low energy; men pick stressed or fine
- Build onboarding as a six-step pitch that ends on what users lose todaySucceeded after repeated failed onboardings; no numbers given
More from this episode
- Welltory: Show new text and visuals, based on the user's own data, every time they openGave the initial retention boost; built by hand before gen AI, which was very painful
- Welltory: Show heart data as a color-changing liquid that updates with no user effortBecame the core feature; guest says people really love it; no numbers
- Welltory: Tell users how their habits affect things they care about, like next-day work output
- Welltory: Replace raw stats with a home screen that explains what each step and heartbeat meansJust launched; guest says users seem to really love it
- Welltory: Build smarter, personalized Apple Watch-style move rings and daily goalsDidn't drive retention: missed goals made users feel shamed; worked only for a small group
- Welltory: Give users a personal daily plan to follow and check offDropped: health tasks happen outside the app, so users fall off and feel shamed
- Welltory: Make users' results pretty and easy to post, so they can show offGuest's example: a friend posts his results and keeps coming back; no numbers
- Build one standout interactive widget before adding the basics every rival hasDrove a lot of installs and retention; some bad reviews for missing basics
- Welltory: Check each big feature idea against the mission, main persona, trigger and user jobGuest says the team has used it successfully; scoring features with points didn't work