How do you keep app churn rate to an absolute minimum? How do you delight app users — in this case, users of a health app — so that they remain engaged with it? My guest, Asya Paloni, is Head of Product Strategy at Welltory, a health app with 8 million users whose 50 percent 3-year retention rate is among the best in the business. I wanted to catch up with her to learn about strategies that have worked for her — and, by extension — may work for other app developers seeking to reduce churn and improve user engagement.
Asya and I cover much ground in our talk; topics include:
- A quick tour of Welltory, an all-in-one wellness app that tracks data from various sources and provides insights without giving users goals or tasks.
- How Welltory prioritizes integrations with devices that have a large user base, such as Apple Watches, and uses Apple Health as a default integration point.
- The degree to which retention and stickiness metrics in the health tech space are important metrics of success.
- Examples of successful apps that use “magic” and personalization to keep users engaged, such as pulling heartbeat data directly from an Apple Watch and interpreting it in a unique and personalized way.
- Internal Welltory research findings on the impact of its app on users’ stress levels and physical activity, including a 10% decrease in stress levels and an average increase of 20,000 steps per month.
- The challenge of balancing providing insights without encouraging self-diagnosis or neglecting professional medical consultation.
- The extent to which health apps represent instances of gamification.
- How Welltory uses feedback from the healthcare provider community to improve its apps and algorithms.
- The importance of continuous monitoring and data collection in personalized health and wellness.
- The role of machine learning and AI in generating personalized content and recommendations based on user data.
