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If you’ve ever used the language education app Duolingo, you know it’s like a game.
This is certainly no coincidence. Duolingo is acutely aware of the power of gamification, and at the recent Canvas Conference, product Manager Zan Gilani detailed some of the strategies it uses to improve retention.
Here’s a bit of background (from which we’ll further discuss ways to improve retention):
Duolingo currently has 25 languages to choose from, and mandarin will soon be added.
With more than 200 million users, it is arguably the most downloaded educational app.
Duolingo’s mission is to provide free language education around the world (the app is free for everyone).
L The company currently has billions of pieces of data (6 billion courses are completed each month) and is constantly iterating.
Four ways to motivate learners
Keeping users engaged is a big challenge for Duolingo. Studying alone is difficult, and there are even more distractions when studying online. Gilani says the completion rate of massive Open online courses (MOOCs) is very low, about 1 to 2 percent.
To overcome this challenge, Duolingo is learning from the game world, and Gilani mentions four ways to help form daily usage habits:
Small, specific goals
L Visible progress
L External triggering (making the user return to the application)
L Investment by users
Anyone familiar with Duolingo knows that the app has small, specific goals that users must complete in order to unlock the next unit. Improving physical fitness is a vague goal, Gilani says, but running a mile a day is straightforward.
The streak meets all four criteria above
Gilani and Duolingo wanted to focus on the power of winning streaks, a powerful game mechanic that meets all four of the habit-forming criteria. Apps like Snapchat, Facebook and Headspace can be seen notifying users and rewarding them for being active within the app for several days in a row.
As a result, Duolingo encourages users to set daily goals and commit to using the app every day, extending their winning streak as they hit their daily goals.
Users care so much about keeping their winning streak, Gilani shows an email sent to Duolingo’s headquarters in which a user explains how they lost their Internet connection during Hurricane Irma (and their winning streak) and asks if they can get it back.
Test #1 – Visible improvement
Users need to see their progress, and winning streaks aren’t always obvious in Duolingo’s app. So the Duolingo team did a test that displayed the number of days in a winning streak at the top of the app so that at any given moment, users were aware of their winning streak.
The results were impressive. Increased daily active users (DAU) by 3%, and increased day 14 retention by 1% (D14, the number of users still using the app after 14 days). In the long run, the promotion made a big difference.
Test #2 – Emphasize winning streaks
Next, emphasize the winning streak at the end of each class. The user begins to see the ring of fire displayed below.
Results :DAU increased by 1% and D14 increased by 3%.
Test #3 – External trigger
External pushes, such as emails and app notifications, can easily feel like spam, Gilani said, but a streak can soften that feeling. Winning streaks provide a legitimate reason for external reminders to be pushed, so Duolingo can say “remember you’ve won 24 days in a row” rather than simply “come use our app”.
In this test, the Duolingo team sent these external triggers at different points in time after the user had last taken a lesson in the app.
The results showed that emails sent 23.5 hours after the end of the previous class were best at encouraging students to re-engage in classroom learning. Not surprisingly, as Gilani points out, doing something at the same time every day is the easiest way to make a habit.
An interesting part of Duolingo’s external alert message is the use of “passive-aggressive notification” after a user has been inactive for five days. The tone fits well with the brand’s playful nature, with the message beginning: “These reminders don’t seem to work…”
[The screenshot above is from a Duolingo user’s Twitter account]
Test #4 – User investment
Duolingo has lingot, a virtual currency that users can use to buy a lot of things, including streak freezes (that is, not being active without breaking a streak).
The Duolingo team’s test also included winning streak bets, in which users bet their Lingots that they would achieve a winning streak of a specific length. This functionality, which was previously nested within the app, now appears directly in the user interface (specifically, a betting challenge that displays a seven-day winning streak once a week).
Results :D14 increased by 5% and IAP(in-app purchase revenue) increased by 600%.
It’s important to note that Duolingo has always been free to use, but users can now pay to subscribe within the app, which allows users to use it offline (potentially vital to keep the streak going) and remove ads from the interface.
Gilani noted that the test also ran a two-day winning bet, but the increase in D14 and DAU was so small that it was abandoned.
Test #5 – Design for vulnerability moments
According to Gilani, The number of Duolingo users drops by 9% on weekends. Typically, this is a time when many users lose their winning streak. Losing a streak can be demoralizing.
So what if a user could skip a day and keep their streak going? That’s what the Weekend Amulet does, and you can get it for 20 Lingots (Duolingo’s virtual currency).
Offering this feature to users to say “you don’t have to use it on weekends” again had a huge impact on app usage.
The result :D14 increased by 4% and users were 5% less likely to lose their streak.
Test #6 – Create multiple ways to win
It’s not just a winning streak that keeps users engaged. Duolingo also added achievement badges. This is very difficult to get right, as Gilani says, “Often these are poorly applied — in other words, achievements are the problem in poorly gamified narratives, but when they are applied correctly they have a positive impact…”
Duolingo’s badges are permanent (unlike streak) and come in a variety of categories, earning them for a variety of tasks, such as inviting friends, logging in before 8am, and so on. Badges can also be earned completely, unlike streaks — Gilani even uses the expression “make sure you catch them all.”
The first test of an achievement is to congratulate the user on joining. The results were not satisfactory — 0% DAU, 0% D14, and everything else was 0%.
Gilani says they forgot that testing had to be achievable. Registration is not an achievement. “Users have to see what they’re achieving, and when they start achieving it, they crave it,” Gilani added.
Testing more different badge achievements does have an impact. They found a 2% increase in DAU, a 2% increase in D14, and a 5% increase in in-app purchases.
This success was based on increased badge classification. For example, a user can earn a badge for scoring 1 perfect test score, then 5 perfect test scores, 10, and so on. Rating badges further improved results — DAU increased by 1% and D14 increased by 1%.
A feel-good ending
Gilani concluded by telling delegates that product designers enable more people to go further and learn more. One of Duolingo’s success stories is Edilson, a former security guard in Colombia who has taught himself many languages through Duolingo and recently found a new job teaching English at a security academy.
So, what can you use in your apps and services to retain customers?
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