A chess app changed how it showed losses to players, highlighting their best moves instead of blunders and adding encouragement. Game reviews jumped 25%, subscriptions grew 20%, and retention improved. The insight spread across the product so other features could use the same positive framing.
Chapters
So you play a game of chess. After the game's over, we have this virtual coach that teaches you about your worst moves, best moves, et cetera. And his job is to, like, improve user engagement and retention. And so he's in this exploratory phase, trying to figure out, how do I drive more of that type of activity? And what he observes is that 80% of people that review their games actually do so after a win. And that's really counterintuitive to when we initially built the feature, we thought that people would want to use it after losses or to see their mistakes, such they could work on their mistakes. And so we made some changes in the product experience. When you lose a game, game now, as opposed to surfacing your blunders, we flip it on its head. And so we show you your brilliant moves, your best moves, and we have coach say something encouraging. Losing just part of learning, keep it up, that type of thing. That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%, user retention by a lot as well. But the point is that it doesn't just stop there, right? You have to take that insight, share it broadly across the company. Now, adjacent product managers like the PM working on puzzles can now think about, okay, how do I at these cold patterns in my product and think about making them more positive?
