Part 2: How Peloton’s App Keeps Users Coming Back

In our last post, we went over the onboarding process for Peloton’s workout app. If you haven’t read it already, you can check it out here (Spoiler: the app is incredibly intuitive to use and my first workout had me feeling super sore the next day). In this post, I’ll break down each of the features in the app, share my personal experience after using it every day for 2 weeks and highlight what features I wish Peloton had.

Key Takeaways

• Peloton’s app has several features that encourage retention such as 
  • Customized classes
  • Gamification
  • Building an online community 
  • Live classes and programs

• They can Increase user retention through experimentation with Taplytics A/B testing and Push Notifications

Customized Classes

One of my favourite parts of the app are the various filters you can use to find workouts that fit exactly what you’re looking for. Once you click into the type of exercise you want to do such as a strength workout, cardio, yoga, or meditation, you can further customize the type of workout you want to complete. Peloton has incredibly detailed filters where you can decide on the length of the workout, class type (i.e. warm-up, full-body, upper body), instructor, difficulty, and music genre. They also released a new “sort” filter which came out on January 20th where you can filter workouts based on if it’s new, trending, popular, top-rated, easiest or hardest. You can also choose to have subtitles in English or German and filter classes based on if you want to see classes you’ve taken before or if you want to try a new one. Another great feature is that you can bookmark classes and come back to them later.

Feature recommendation: A feature I would like to see is the ability to save filters. Each time you use the Peloton app you have to reset your filters. A nice feature would be the ability to create pre-set filters and name them. For example, I would want to have a saved filter called “core” where I filter classes by core workouts that are 20 mins in length with intermediate difficulty. Then having another filter called “yoga” with pre-set filters of yoga classes with a 6/10 or higher difficulty, taught by X instructor for over 30 mins. This would help remove user friction and help users start finding workouts tailored for them faster.

Feature recommendation: I think it would be beneficial for Peloton to build a “recommended for you” section at the top of the featured page. The content for this section could be based on the past videos a user has seen or even by having a user complete a short questionnaire on their fitness goals.

Gamification

One of the main ways Peloton drives repeat users is through gamification. On the app, you can join challenges like the “January Strength Challenge” where you have to complete over 5 strength classes in the month of January. Along with competing in a challenge yourself, you can see how many people are participating in each challenge. Each challenge includes challenge tiers where you can earn bronze, silver or gold. Bronze means you completed the minimum requirements of the challenge where silver and gold signify how far above the challenge requirements you went. 

Along with the challenges which you have to sign up for yourself, Peloton automatically gives you badges that are added to your achievements tab on your profile after completing certain videos. If you add a friend or join a tag on Peloton you can see the badges of your community members. Personally, I found the badges were embarrassingly effective. By adding both short term and long term goals through the badges and challenges it gives users validation early on and a sense of accomplishment while pushing them to reach the next level. Peloton shows users what the next level of accomplishments are and how they need to get there, making people want to come back.

Detailed Workouts

Another great thing about the Peloton app is that each workout comes with a short description. Along with the description, the app tells you which instructor will be teaching the class, how many calories you’ll burn, the difficulty level, user rating, equipment needed, and the playlist of songs. The information on how many calories you’ll burn is great information to include since it makes tracking your workouts easier. With Peloton workouts, you can also bookmark them for later and easily share them not only within the app but through text, airdrop or any social media platform.

Feature Recommendations: I would like the ability to click on the songs in the playlist section and save them directly to my Spotify account. It would also be nice to see the total amount of calories you burned each day based on the workouts completed.

Once you’ve completed a workout you’re given a prompt to rate the class’s difficulty level and give it a thumbs up or down. Along with the high energy classes comes Peloton’s world-class instructors. This is something they highlighted on the first onboarding screen I saw when I downloaded the app, so I was curious to see the instructors’ experience. All the workouts on the app are led by 34 instructors from the United States, Germany, and London. Fun fact, some of the classes are taught in German!

I found that the instructors were incredibly helpful at guiding me through the workouts, especially with the yoga classes where posture and form are important. Throughout the 45 min Focus Flow yoga class, I completed with Ross he gave information on the poses, how to ensure you’re in good form and why positioning is important for your body. He also gave options on how to be positioned depending on your level of flexibility.

On the “more” tab on the app, there’s a section that gives details on each instructor. Here you can see their backgrounds and learn more about them. This was important for me because I always felt a strong bond with my spin instructor. I found that an instructor’s energy and style of teaching can really make a difference with a class. Having details on each instructor in the Peloton app helped me learn more about each instructor. When Peloton promoted their “world-class instructors” they weren’t kidding! Some highlights include Aditi Shah who was named one of NYC’s best instructors, Robin Arzon, author of New York Times bestseller “Shut Up and Run” (who is also a certified running coach and ultramarathoner) along with Leann Hainsby who was a professional dancer who has shared the stage with artists like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

Feature Recommendation: I would want to see a section where you can “follow” certain instructors and see a combination of the videos from all instructors you’ve followed. 

Push Notification Recommendation: Peloton could include the option for users to receive a push notification when their favorite instructor uploads a new video or is going to have a live session along with daily videos they think you would love.

Community

One of the strategies Peloton used to retain users was to create a strong sense of community on the app. When you start a workout (even if it’s not a live session) you can see how many people are currently completing the same class as you. In addition, the live classes mimic in-person ones as the instructor can interact with users by giving them call-outs on their Peloton achievements.

With Peloton, you can find friends who use the app and see their profile which has which days they worked out, what classes they completed and what badges they’ve earned. This adds a bit of friendly competition which I found to be surprisingly motivating. If none of your friends have the app, no problem! Peloton has a tags page that allows you to easily find people with similar interests or fitness goals as you. You can join up to 10 tags, and they have a tag for everything such as tags for moms, dads, beginners, dog moms, and locations. After checking out all the tags I added myself to the tags #BeersAfter and #PeletonCanada. Once you join a tag, it appears prominently on the main “classes” screen. Once you click into it, you can see all classes people from your tag are completing in real-time. This helps create a deeper sense of community since even if you’re completing a class alone, you know you have community members who are doing it with you. 

In a recent feature in Built in NYC Peloton highlighted their focus on growing and strengthening their online community. Viresh Rustagi, SVP Product Software Engineering said they also plan on adding new workout modules and fitness disciplines.   

Programs and Live Classes

A great way Peloton engages users is by having programs and live classes. On the featured page, there’s a section of recommended programs. These programs last several days or weeks and target certain exercise types. I started the “Crush Your Core” 4-week program with Emma Lovewell which includes daily ab videos. In the program details, you can see what each week focuses on. Joining this program helped keep me engaged on the app. Prior to using Peloton, I would rotate the same Youtube ab videos, but having set videos for each day makes planning my workouts easier. 

Recommendation: I think the recommended programs section should be more personalized. Currently, it looks like the programs are pretty generic and aren’t tailored to my workout history.  My recommendations section has programs unrelated to anything I’ve never even searched before such as running and it still has the “Crush Your Core” program which I already started.

In addition to the programs are live classes that hold users accountable since you can sign up for classes ahead of time and get a notification when your class is about to start. Along with the motivational aspect of not wanting to miss a class, Peloton has several live classes every day which means they’re constantly creating new content. This is something that also brings me back to the app since I know there will always be a new workout I haven’t tried.

Feature Recommendation: If I could have any feature on the Peloton app it would be customized workout playlists. Ideally, I want to tell the app what kind of workouts I want to do, how difficult I want them to be, and how long I have to exercise. From there it would be nice to have daily workout playlists pre-made for me so I can immediately start my workouts without having to spend time looking for the ones I want to complete. This is an important feature for me since I workout in the morning before work and it’s time-consuming to reset the filters for each workout type I want to complete.

The OTT (Over the Top Television) Experience

Peloton also has a great OTT experience. All the class types are organized on the left side of the screen with icons that clearly show each class type. The main differences between the OTT experience and the app are that the “features” page is the first page you see on your TV compared to the app which has “classes” as the first page you see. Both OTT and mobile have the same filter options, however, you can’t see your stats with the OTT experience or see who’s in a class with you. Personally, I don’t mind that it’s not included since I only use the TV when I want a bigger screen to complete the classes, not look at my stats.

Retention

The challenge that Peloton faces is that they have a free 2-month trial. This means they have 2 months to prove the value of their mobile app to users during the free trial period. Therefore, retention and usage of the app are critical to user conversion. This begs the question, how can Peloton encourage retention and increase app usage? A solution could be to analyze common behaviour among high-value users – these commonalities will provide insight into what combination of actions is their ‘aha’ moment. Surfacing these actions will help guide testing strategy, and look to nudge users to complete those actions too.

Peloton can drive engagement by engaging users with key functions of the app after they start their free trial. They can experiment with information that can help increase engagement and usage of the app. This will encourage new users to explore and learn the value of using the app. An example of this would be to highlight features of the app that a user hasn’t explored before as a way to show all the features they can use. By showing a user all the available features, it increases the chances they find a feature they like which could increase their engagement.

Experimentation idea: Driving higher push-notification opt-ins are important for re-engaging users in a valuable way. Peloton should experiment with different opt-in prompts through timing and messaging to help understand where users find value in the communications they receive. 

A key way to retain users is to re-engage inactive, high-value users in a personalized way. Depending on what the user has/has not yet done inside the app, Peloton should give them different messages to remind them of all the additional value they can get. For users who’ve already subscribed for the free trial, but haven’t been in the app for a certain length of time, a value-added push notification can be a good way to get them back into the app. From there, they can go one step further by experimenting with different variations of the landing screen, to see which version of the screen increases session length and app usage.

Experimentation idea: Peloton should run experiments that drive users to complete key actions that drive activation & retention. First, they need to develop an understanding of what a more engaging onboarding user journey that users will love, this can be done by A/B testing the onboarding journey. They can evaluate the existing user journey for new & inexperienced users, and if it pushes users to successfully “activate” key actions to keep them moving through the funnel. From there, they can surface features that will help drive users to re-engage with the app. It’s key that they capitalize on the trial period to continuously reinforce the value propositions.

Conclusion

Peloton does a great job at engaging users and consistently putting out content that makes users want to come back. Joining one of the programs was my main motivation for continuing to use the app due to how easy it was to workout when there were workout videos pre-selected for you to complete. 

I believe that honing in on this personalization and my recommendation of creating curated playlists could help them retain users and increase engagement. In order to determine what really makes a user stick around, Peloton should focus on determining what actions high-value users take and drive other users to a similar journey.

In Part 3, we’ll dive into how Peloton’s app aims to convert users after the free 2-month period. Want more Peloton content? Check out our TikTok on how to use Peloton’s filters to find your next workout.

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