Brand new users were onboarding, checking out the main app mechanics and then dropping off. They were not adding or inviting friends to the app early enough if at all. This was a crucial metric to solve as those who added a friend in the first 2 days of onboarding were 65% more likely to retain until D30.

I conducted user interviews with ideal power users who have invited 5+ friends, with the questions designed to understand how they ‘sold’ the app to their friends. Every user echoed the same motivation, they brought friends in as it was a fun way to keep up with distant friends (that wasn’t texting).

It was clear that this motivation was not clear to brand new users and something had to change. I held syncs with the PM to learn the KPIs to hit, and concluded we needed to restructure a few things: include more social mechanics and celebration moments into the key flow.

Once these new features were included (locking areas of the app until the user invited minimum 1 friend, celebrating reaction moments, and sharing the collective challenge memories) retention increased by 35% and power users with min 1 friend increased 12%.