Unlocking User Retention: Lessons from Duolingo's Streak Feature

Duolingo's streak feature has been a major contributor to the company's success, helping drive user retention and growth. Jackson Shettleworth, Group Product Manager at Duolingo leading the retention team, shares key insights and lessons learned from developing and optimizing this feature over the years.

The Impact of Streaks

The streak feature has had a massive impact on Duolingo's business:

• Over 9 million users have a 1+ year streak
• It's considered the most impactful feature besides the core lessons
• A key driver of Duolingo's growth to a $14 billion valuation
• Critical for improving current user retention rate (CURR), Duolingo's key retention metric

As Jackson explains:

"If you look at the numbers, I think pretty objectively [streaks] has been our biggest growth lever for driving use."

Evolution of the Streak Feature

The streak feature has evolved significantly since launch:

• Initially based on XP (experience points) goals
• Simplified to extending streak by completing one lesson per day
• Added flexibility with streak freezes
• Introduced streak goals and perfect streaks
• Constant experimentation and optimization (600+ experiments in 4 years)

A key early change was moving from XP-based to lesson-based:

"This was huge driver of DAU - just making it making it easier to extend your streak but I think really importantly is still meaningful right like the unit of use and you know as you're thinking about building a streak like I think it's really important to think about like what the unit of use of your app is."

Key Lessons and Insights

Some of the most important learnings shared by Jackson:

Focus on the 0-7 Day Experience

Getting users through the first 7 days is critical:

"We've looked at the data for you know our retention curves and what we found is that once you get to seven days loss aversion kicks in and and and you retain."

They've run many experiments focused on this early period, including introducing streak goals.

Balance Flexibility and Perfection

Adding flexibility (like streak freezes) improved retention, but they're careful not to cheapen the streak:

"You can almost always get engagement wins up to a certain point by just cheapening the streak making it easier to extend letting users have more flexibility but you kind of got to hold the line at some point."

They balance this by also celebrating perfection with features like perfect streaks.

Clarity and Simplicity are Key

Making the streak concept clear and simple to understand has been crucial:

"The more that we can make the feature easily comprehensible to users the more retentive it is."

This includes using clear copy, animations, and UI design to reinforce the concept.

Celebrate and Reward Users

Using animations, haptics, and visual rewards has been effective:

"All of this stuff wins and it's cool because I think it wins there's a few reasons one is it just makes you feel good right you know you you get some cool moment in your streak and and and we celebrate you and we celebrate you in this visual way and your phone's buzzing it just like feels awesome."

Notifications Strategy

Streak-related notifications have been highly effective, even late at night:

"We'll send it what we call a streak saver and this is at 10 o'clock at night if you have not extended your streak we'll send you a message saying hey you know like it's it's your last chance this is this is it if you don't extend your streak."

Constant Experimentation

Duolingo runs a huge volume of experiments on the streak feature:

"We've run in the last four years over 600 experiments on the streak so every other day effectively we're running an experiment."

This allows them to continually find new optimizations and improvements.

Team Structure and Process

Some key aspects of how Duolingo structures teams and processes around the streak feature:

• Metric-focused teams rather than feature-focused
• Clear prioritization based on impact to key metrics like CURR
• Detailed roadmaps and dependencies mapped across functions
• Starting with simple MVPs and iterating rapidly
• Balancing quick wins with long-term strategy

Jackson emphasizes the importance of having a clear metric focus:

"When you can be really laser focused on my goal each quarter is to make this metric go up I think it's much easier to make sure that you're working in the highest ROI thing."

Advice for Other Companies

Some key recommendations for other companies considering implementing streaks:

• Ensure your core product experience is compelling before adding streaks
• Make the streak highly visible if you want it to be impactful
• Test different approaches rather than over-planning
• Consider how streaks can fit your ideal usage patterns
• Be willing to experiment and learn through testing

Jackson believes most apps could benefit from some form of streak:

"I am uh well known for saying the company that I think every streak every team every app could could benefit from a streak now how you implement it is very different."

Conclusion

Duolingo's streak feature demonstrates the massive impact a well-designed retention mechanic can have on user engagement and business growth. By constantly experimenting, optimizing, and evolving the feature, Duolingo has turned streaks into a key driver of their success. Other companies can learn from their focus on user psychology, clear metrics, and willingness to rapidly test and iterate.

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CCwoQZH5hI