In 2020, Peloton’s 12-month rate was 93%, meaning that 93% of Peloton’s users were still using the service one year after they started.

A 93% rate is impressive for any service, but let’s put that in a little perspective. The average 1-month retention rate for all health related apps is only 4%. That’s not yearly retention, it’s just a single month!

12-month

And incredibly popular health don’t get much better than that. For instance, Headspace, the meditation app, has a 1-month retention rate of 8.5%!

12-month

So how does Peloton do it? How do they hook their users to an activity that’s so notoriously difficult to find motivation for, exercise?

In this case study we’ll be experiencing Peloton by taking 4 rides together with a couple of different instructors, each exploring a different aspect of Peloton’s user retention strategy! So get your tank top and sneakers and let’s get to it!

RIDE 1

Britney Gears

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Foot-in-the Door

Hi, I am Britney Gears! Thanks for choosing to ride with me today! We're going to start nice and easy for everyone who is new to Peloton, or who just wants a nice warm-up workout.

By now you must be wondering about this scaly friend around my neck. This is Noodles! I bring her to my rides when I really want to put on a  show. She's totally harmless!

On this ride, we're going to tackle 3 nice, rolling hills, and maybe we'll learn a little something about Peloton along the way. Ok, let's get going with hill #1!

point of purchase

Have you noticed how easy it is to get started with Peloton? I mean, there are definitely some barriers, like the $1,500 price tag on the standard bike. But, they use some great strategies to make it easy.

Even though the bike is expensive, Peloton offers a money-back guarantee for the first 30 days, and also gives customers the option for 3-year financing to spread out the cost a bit.

Money-back Guarantee

Financing Plan

These are both fairly common sales tactics that convince customers that expensive products are a safe investment, and take advantage of 2 distinct behavioral principles.

Money-back Guarantee

Financing Plan

The 30-day money back guarantee takes advantage of the default bias. It's easy to think "I'll try it out and if I don't like it, I'll return it." But once we have the bike, the chances of us deciding to return it are slim to none. It's just too much of a hassle!

Money-back Guarantee

Default Bias

The human tendency to avoid change and effort makes the path of least resistance the most likely path.

Second, the 3-year financing acts as a precommitment device. Even though financing agreements tend to make the product more expensive in the long run, the low cost of entry, and our bias toward the present and immediate gratification, lock us into paying that higher cost.

Precommitment Device

Financing Plan

The desire for immediate gratification, and our discounting of events in the future can lock us into a behavior far in advance, in this case paying off an expensive piece of equipment for the next 3 years.

Both of these strategies fall under what's called the foot-in-the-door technique, or perhaps more appropriately here, foot-on-the-pedal! Clearly this can be seen as an ethical concern and leaning too heavily on the "get now cheap, pay later" can backfire. As a customer, always be wary of these tactics!

Precommitment Device

Default Bias

Foot-in-the-door Techniques

When the first step in a process is easy, we are more likely to start. Reducing barriers to action combined with additional techniques to keep people engaged long-term can be an effective way of maintaining engagement.

But that isn't the only way Peloton utilizes the foot-in-the-door technique with their users. Now we're really getting warmed up, get ready for hill #2!

starting a workout

So, Peloton makes it easy to purchase a bike. But, once you have a bike, you may feel tempted to skip out on your workouts because you feel tired or like you don't have enough time.

Peloton has a subscription model, for around $39 a month, to give access to all of their classes and rides, just like this one (except actually nothing like this one).

Subscription Model

It's in their interest that you don't unsubscribe from their service and your participation also adds weight to their social features, something my friend Spin Diesel likes to talk about!

Subscription Model

Social Features

That is why Peloton makes some short and easy classes. If you don't have time to do a full 45-minute session, a quick 5 or 10 minute option might be more likely to get on the bike. 

Short and Easy Workouts

"I'll just do a

quick workout"

And once you're on the bike, you are more likely to do another workout, and then maybe another. Sometimes all it takes to do something we want to do is to make the first step really easy!

Short and Easy Workouts

"I guess I have time for another"

Not to mention that the equipment is placed in your home, acting as a constant reminder to exercise. This is likely one of the top factors to Peloton's high retention. You can't miss the cue and you could literally start a workout in seconds (no need to even worry about what you're wearing). 

Physical Presence

In a time when notifications get increasingly crowded out, there's a good case to be made for the massive difference physical devices or objects can make to boost retention. The Shapa Scale is another example of this boasting high app retention rates thanks to the presence of their wireless scale. If the Elf of the Shelf had an app, we're sure it would have boosted retention too! 

Physical Presence

Your physical environment has a great deal of influence over your behavior, so an ever-present physical reminder to exercise can prompt action much more easily than a gym that you have to walk or drive to.

Physical Presence

1. Having consistent cues in your physical environment can maintain the behaviors associated with those cues for as long as they are present.

2. Immediate and easy access to a tool, like a stationary bike, increases the likelihood it will be used.

Alright, almost there, just one more hill to climb on this ride and we're done. Give me one last push!

For hill #3, you get to choose! If you want to bike it, bike it, if you want to walk it, walk it, and if you want to run it, run it!

autonomy

Not everyone wants to work out the same way. Although they're known for their spin bikes, Peloton offers 10 different types of exercise classes. Everything from strength training with weights, to walking outside, to meditation.

Personalization

Allowing users to decide how they want to interact with your product, and making it easy for them to do so, can increase the desire for users to return repeatedly.

Even within each types of exercise, Peloton does their best to offer as many options to exercise and interact with their service as possible.

Personalization

Allowing users to decide how they want to interact with your product, and making it easy for them to do so, can increase the desire for users to return repeatedly.

You can filter classes by length, class type, specific instructors, and the type of music during the class. This ensures every user can find their own niche, and can switch up their workouts for whatever they're feeling at the time.

Personalization

Allowing users to decide how they want to interact with your product, and making it easy for them to do so, can increase the desire for users to return repeatedly.

Allowing users to personalize their experience can really increase engagement! But even if you don't exactly know what you want, Peloton has a robust recommendation system that can help make that decision easier.

Much like YouTube or Netflix, Peloton remembers what classes you've taken and how you've rated them, and recommends classes based on that information.

Recommendations

When offering a large humber of choices to your users, offering relevant recommendations can help reduce cognitive overload, allowing quicker choices. Quicker choices means less user boredom and more user satisfaction.

Once you've completed a workout, you get recommendations for additional complimentary workouts as well. Utilizing the foot-in-the-door technique, Peloton keeps you exercising by recommending stretching exercises after cardio, or a walk after strength training.

All of the strategies discussed on this ride help users begin their Peloton journey and start to bond with their platform. But there are many more ways in which Peloton creates and reinforces that bond.

autonomy

starting a workout

point of purchase

Foot-in-the-door Techniques

Nicely done! You've reached the end of this ride with me, Britney Gears, and my snake, Noodles.

Now that you're all warmed up, I'd like to recommend you take your next ride with Spin Diesel. He'll give you a nice workout, and teach you about goal setting on the Peloton platform!

RIDE 2

Spin Diesel

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Accomplishments

Welcome to this short ride with me, Spin Diesel.

This ride is for all of you out there that got on your bike today even though you really weren't feeling it!

If you're looking for a little extra motivation to get on your Peloton day-to-day, might I recommend taking a look at some of Peloton's accomplishment mechanisms?

The first of these mechanisms is their achievements, or badges, which is a mechanism that lots of apps use these days to drive engagement.

Accomplishments

Many products implement achievements, badges, or trophies, but often these rewards are arbitrary and overused.

Accomplishments

For instance, in the language-learning app, Duolingo, one of the achievements is to upload a profile picture. What does that have to do with learning a language?!

Accomplishments

Duolingo

All of Peloton's achievements are earned through completing a certain number of workouts in a given category, exercising with others, or by reaching a certain daily or weekly exercise streak.

Accomplishments

To maximize motivation and interest in completing accomplishments, they should be relevant to the behavior you are encouraging and should become less frequent and more difficult to earn over time.

A side tangent on streaks here. They can often be a big double-edged sword that can just as easily de-motivate users as motivate them (looking at you again Duolingo). 

Streaks

Tracking streaks motivates users that are able to maintain them long-term. But when a streak is broken users tend to lose most of their motivation and disengage with the associated behavior. Avoid designing streaks that are too easily broken, and give your users every opportunity to recover them.

But, although not perfect, Peloton's tracking of both daily and weekly streaks gives users a little more choice with respect to how they want to interact with the service over only tracking daily streaks.

Streaks

Tracking streaks motivates users that are able to maintain them long-term. But when a streak is broken users tend to lose most of their motivation and disengage with the associated behavior. Avoid designing streaks that are too easily broken, and give your users every opportunity to recover them.

Again, the achievements Peloton offers are very straightforward and logically build based on repetitions. However, they don't offer too much variety. 

Accomplishments

To maximize motivation and interest in completing accomplishments, they should be relevant to the behavior you are encouraging and should become less frequent and more difficult to earn over time.

To solve for this, they are combined with topical, variable, and social challenges and special events that give users more interesting goals to aim for and more reasons to come back.

Accomplishments

To maximize motivation and interest in completing accomplishments, they should be relevant to the behavior you are encouraging and should become less frequent and more difficult to earn over time.

These challenges can vary in length, anywhere from a week to a year. And they vary in content, like a challenge to take a Latinx Heritage Month-themed ride, or getting in 4,000 minutes of exercise in a year.

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

The timed nature of the challenges and events makes them more urgent and scarce than the standard achievements. If you don't exercise today, or this week, you may completely miss out on a badge that all your friends have earned!

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

And creating themes around personal interests motivates people to engage with Peloton by reinforcing their personal identities. This is something I talk a bit more about in my other community-themed ride! 

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

Admittedly, creating indentity-based challenges won't work for every product, but it works quite well for a service that constantly creates new content and prides itself on creating an emotional bond with its users.

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

An additional benefit to have fleeting, scarce accomplishments that disappear if uncompleted, is that unaccomplished goals are quickly forgotten by the user. This leaves only new, fresh things to aim for, adding a measure of novelty to the system as well.

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

The last way that Peloton reinforces motivation through their accomplishment mechanisms is by making them social.

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

• Social

When you decide to take on a challenge, Peloton shows you how many other riders, and how many of your friends, are also attempting that challenge. 

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

• Social

When paired with scarcity and identity, social information like this can really enhance the feeling of a community where riders aren't just exercising in a vacuum (which I don't recommend, it's very hard to breathe).

Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

• Social

Instead users feel part of a larger community centered around their individual interests and goals. And Peloton is keen to reinforce a sense of community as much as they can!

Ultimately, though, Peloton's goal setting works because the goals are relevant to the user, they are urgent, relevant, identity-based, and social. So if you're ever designing a goal setting system, I'd keep those ideas in mind!

Structuring Engaging Accomplishments

• Relevant

• Decreasing frequency

• Increasing difficulty

• Scarce

• Urgent

• Identity-based

• Social

Way to go! You've achieved a lot in the past few minutes, so take a second to congratulate yourself.

Also, by completing this ride you've unlocked a very special achievement. Good for you, fam. Well done!

Thanks for taking that ride with me everyone! If you're getting tired of old Spin Diesel blabbering on, I recommend riding with Britney Gears next. Her ride talking about Feedback is really invigorating!

RIDE 3

Britney Gears

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Feedback

Britney Gears here! A fun fact about me, I just won a big fight with my dad, and let me tell you, that man is toxic!

Now let's talk about feedback. I'll be calling out to you if you're giving it your all, so match my energy if you can!

By the way, if you enjoy this ride be sure to give me a good rating at the end. Peloton uses that information to help recommend rides like this one to you.

This is the first way that they utilize feedback to improve their experience. 

User Ratings

Peloton gathers information about what classes you choose to take (like the instructors you use frequently) and how much you enjoyed them in order to tailor the whole service to you.

User Ratings

It works in much the same way that Netflix does for recommending movies and TV shows, or how Spotify recommends music.

User Ratings

While this feedback keeps you engaged with the Peloton platform by personalizing the experience, they also utilize other forms of feedback as well.

Where Peloton truly shines is in the ability to make you feel like you're in the room with the instructors and riders in your class, even while you're stuck at home.

Each instructor interacts with the users that attend their live class recordings. They call out people who reach goals or complete challenges while in class. 

But perhaps more importantly, the Peloton instructor mantra is "I see you".

Instructors use this phrase all the time to create an emotional connection with the users that they actually cannot see.

What makes this phrase so powerful is the constant, repeated usage. If you hear a piece of information, or a phrase like this one, enough, you start to believe it's true. This is known as the Illusory Truth Effect.

Illusory Truth Effect

When someone hears the same phrase or piece of information again and again, they begin to believe it more and more.

Peloton chose a great phrase for their instructors to repeat. "I see you" conveys that there is someone you are accountable to, and someone who cares if you show up to your workout.

Illusory Truth Effect

When someone hears the same phrase or piece of information again and again, they begin to believe it more and more.

This is further nurtured by instructors regularly calling out names of people in the class. This is mainly in the form of welcoming someone on their first ride or congratulating someone for an achievement "Congrats on 100 rides, Sara!". #socialproof

Further reinforcing this connection with the instructor is that they often talk about their personal opinions or their take on pop culture during rides. 

By sharing ideas around non-exercise topics, it blurs the line between instructor and friend. 

Parasocial Relationships

When a celebrity, or a character from TV or the movies, shares their opinions, life story, or other personal information, people can develop emotional connections to them. We like, trust, and want to interact with people we feel emotionally connected to.

In that spirit I'd like to share something about myself with you all. 

My name used to be Olivia Riderigo, but I love late 90s and early 2000s pop music. I changed my name to be close to my favorite artist. But, I won't tell you which one!

In the same way that you can develop parasocial one-sided relationships with your favorite celebrities or TV show characters, Peloton's instructors create a one-sided emotional bond.

Parasocial Relationships

When a celebrity, or a character from TV or the movies, shares their opinions, life story, or other personal information, people can develop emotional connections to them. We like, trust, and want to interact with people we feel emotionally connected to.

But it isn't just instructors, like me, that can interact with you while you're exercising! A leaderboard of riders is constantly on the screen whether you're riding in a live class or not.

The leaderboard gives you a live comparison of how you're doing aginst all the other riders. Although leaderboards are often misused in behavioral design and gamification, doing more harm than good, this one is implemented quite well.

Generally, leaderboards are used to increase the motivation of competitors. But they can easily backfire for all the people who aren't close to the top.

If you aren't close to being first, why bother competing at all? Especially when your competition is hundreds of other people. Beating all of them can seem like a daunting task.

Learning how to implement competitive leaderboards properly could be a whole case study itself! So for now let's just say that when designing a leaderboard it is important to carefully consider what you are measuring, the context it is being measured in, and how that information is presented

Competitive Leaderboards

• Measurement

• Context

• Presentation

However, the goal of the Peloton leaderboard isn't entirely competitive, but social as well. By making the leaderboard a live feedback mechanism, Peloton reinforces the idea that you aren't exercising alone, you're working hard just like thousands of others in a shared experience.

Social Leaderboards

• Reinforce shared experience

Complementing the leaderboard is the ability to send other riders virtual *high fives* during workouts. This live support mechanism provides an extra boost to the social atmosphere of the leaderboard.

• Allow users to support each other

Social Leaderboards

• Reinforce shared experience

You can send high fives to other people who are struggling just as hard at the same workout as you are, and they can send them right on back too!

• Allow users to support each other

Social Leaderboards

• Reinforce shared experience

Ultimately, Peloton does a really good job at making your solo workout feel like a social experience through instructor and peer feedback.

And lastly, once you're done with your ride, Peloton gives you feedback on your performance. After a bike workout, that means things like energy produced, cadence, and speed.

Peloton also gives you information about how your performance in the current workout compares to your previous workouts. 

Recently they've implemented the Strive Score, a score based on your heart rate during a workout. The higher your heart rate, and the longer is stays that way, the higher your Strive Score.

This is a really interesting way of providing personal feedback that can be compared across many different kinds and durations of workouts, and doesn't entirely depend on fitness level either.

Instead of coming in 120,000th place on the leaderboard, you can instead see how you stack up against your own previous scores. Because the feedback is based on your own individual capability, rather than comparison with others, it reduces the chance that the feedback will be demotivating.

You could compare your Strive Score against your friends or others, but the fact that it is tied to your body's physiology rather than an external indicator like speed or wattage means that it is best used as a personal benchmark.

This is hard to replicate, but the takeaway here from a design perspective is that sometimes offering your users ways to compete against themselves can be more motivating than competing with others.

All-in-all, Peloton uses feedback to enhance the usefulness of their recommendations, develop a connection between you and their instructors, to create a social, interactive atmosphere during workouts, and increase motivation to improve against yourself and others.

Thanks for taking this ride with me today, you did great! I see you!

I touched on it a bit here, but take a look at Spin Diesel's ride #4 next to get a better view of how Peloton creates a community around exercise, and how they increase motivation through social experience!

RIDE 4

Spin Diesel

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Community

Welcome to this interval ride with me, Spin Diesel. When you're with me, you're part of one big family!

And in this family we leave no one behind. So get ready for an intense ride!

We try hard at Peloton to cultivate a strong sense of community. This is communicated from the first interaction most people have with Peloton.

Our website is called onepeloton.com. The name implies everyone with a Peloton machine and subscription is part of a single collective community.

Peloton uses three techniques to cultivate a feeling of community for their users. First they develop an identity around the product, then they establish social norms around exercise behavior, and thirdly they create a feeling of accountability.

Let's talk about identity first!