“What we did is sit down and say you know what factors into retention — it's getting results. We went through all the five-star reviews, all the people that were hands up saying this is really striking a chord, and that was the underlying theme. So you start working backwards from okay getting results — what does that mean? Well in the fitness world it's consistency.”

Work backwards from results to find your retention north star

Retention analysis starts by reading every 5-star review and mining the underlying theme. For Ladder that theme was 'getting results,' which unpacked into 'consistency,' which distilled to three workouts per week backed by science. Every product decision — the journal, the widget, the streaks, the check marks — was built to serve that single north star. Ben Gammon's framework applies to any app: find what your happiest users are celebrating, then reverse-engineer the product path that reliably gets new users there.