I wish we had tracked user engagement better with Body Boss; though, I knew where coaches were getting stuck and why they weren’t experiencing the value of what we built. I have a list of 85 schools who trialed Body Boss within 14 months, but only converted 16%. To boost conversion, we added features… Whoops!

We built several features that did lead to conversions and got us closer to product-market fit. That is, we built critical workout features that coaches needed. However, we also added features that didn’t lead to conversions like Pods – ability to track multiple player workouts with a single device vs. a one player, one device before. Coaches were really impressed with Pods and it led to several trials, but not to conversions.

Body Boss Pods on the tablet and smartphone

Why didn’t Pods or other great features not lead to conversions? Simple – the coaches never got to the point to use Pods.

What we built and why we built, is what entrepreneur Joshua Porter calls the “Next Feature Fallacy” (see: The Next Feature Fallacy).

In retrospect, the major hurdle of user/ coach engagement was building a workout program. We had improved the experience several times since v1.0; however, most fixes were band aids, and didn’t solve the problem.

So to use the new Pods feature, coaches had to build a workout program. Except, if coaches were having issues building a workout program, then they never got to Pods. 

Instead of building new features like Pods (a nice-to-have), we should have focused our efforts on user experience and helping coaches get started with Body Boss. Once we got coaches using the system, we could then track engagement metrics and tested the adoption of features like Pods.

What else could we have done to address the engagement issue? How have you developed features that consistently added value?