Ben Gammon
VP of Product at Ladder, a strength training app
Where to hear and read about Ben Gammon1 episode or test
Ben Gammon is VP of Product at Ladder, a strength training app, where he drives retention through product design. The lesson most worth taking: name the one result users came for, build the in-product loop around it, and add messaging only after that loop exists.
you need to build the loop first and then you build the tactical things around it to kind of reinforce those loops.
The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder
Ben Gammon: the story and the lessons
1How Gammon defines the result users came for
Gammon says retention is too tangled to fix until it is boiled down. Retention means that when someone pays, they pay again. Early on it is volatile, and later it becomes a rubber band ball of stacked influences.
The result has to be named in words that work for users and for the team.
Ladder worked backwards from five-star reviews to find the result. The common theme in its five-star reviews was getting results. In fitness, results mean consistency.
In his words: "what factors into retention, it's getting results." Gammon calls Photo Room a parallel case, where users want better eBay listing photos.
He turned the result into one weekly target of three workouts. Ladder started at four workouts a week and ratcheted it down to three, backed by science. Every retention feature now ladders up to that target.
The ethos is "don't make me think": the user presses play and does the workout.
2How Ladder's journal, check marks and widget build the habit
A tracking journal turns each workout into visible progress. Users log reps and weights in the workout player, and the next session opens with a recommended weight built from the last one. About 70 to 75% of users log in the journal for each workout.
Gammon says logging feels like a reward to the user while feeding a flywheel for the business.
Accumulated history makes the product sticky. The post-workout summary shows gains since the user started. Data builds outward from one lift to every lift to the profile, and users become proud of what they have built.
Gammon dislikes calling this "hostages" but says: "as you build state, it becomes sticky."
Check marks and a widget keep the three-workout habit in view. Three check marks make a weekly streak, and the widget shows it outside the app. About a third of users have the widget.
It also works as a billboard, since others who see it may ask about it and that can drive referrals. Gammon says benchmarks are tough, so he cannot say whether a third is good, but it seems positive.
Gammon holds back the widget prompt until trust is earned. The widget cannot be the first thing shown, because the app has not yet earned that trust. Ladder gives clear instructions because adding a widget is not intuitive for most people.
He teaches features during the workout, not in FAQs. Coaches voice over the steps in a welcome workout: pop open the journal, swipe up, input weights, and why. Gammon says this is 10x more effective than FAQs.
The reminder lands mid-workout, which is why it works. Few apps have a human coach who can do this.
Gammon builds the loop first, then adds push and email. Find the features that drive retention and drive their use inside the product. Notifications and emails then help users go deeper.
The evidence is correlation, not a before-and-after test, and no figures show how the journal or widget changed retention.
3How Gammon gathers feedback for the roadmap
Gammon sorts feedback into acute pain, surveys and dogfooding. Acute pain arrives through Slack and in-app feedback forms. Surveys are ad hoc and recurring, and team dogfooding gives an end-to-end mental model and empathy for users.
The hard part is staying disciplined and following through.
He distrusts five to ten interviews in a diverse consumer base. A handful of interviews gives only an N of five or ten, and one bad App Store review about a missing feature rarely unlocks everything.
Interviews can still give some insight, but large surveys work much better for working backwards from a big population.
Ladder's year-end survey drew over 7,500 responses. It has 80 to 90 questions, mixes multiple choice and open-ended, and takes over 45 minutes to fill in. AI helps parse the answers.
Gammon says surveys only work if the questions are not biased or leading. Few apps will get this many responses, but the aim is the broadest feedback available.
4How Gammon picked and judged the nutrition bet
Survey signal pointed Ladder to nutrition as its second bet. Nutrition came through clearly in the end-of-2024 annual survey. It works as a multiplier, since dialed-in food helps people reach results faster.
The team worked from first principles: which methods work best and what people use today. It took longer than the usual projects.
He checks early behavior because users ask for things they never use. Gammon looks at day-one and day-two logging and at week 2, 3 and 4 retention. At 100 days since launch, long-term retention cannot be measured yet.
"people say stuff that doesn't map to reality."
Hybrid users of workouts and nutrition convert and retain better. New hybrid users convert at a much higher rate and are more retentive 100 days in. Gammon treats it as a secondary product-market fit and a new lever of retention.
The results are early, and Gammon notes it is tough to map them to retention this soon.
The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder
Retention comes from the product reliably delivering the result users came for, with lifecycle messaging layered on top. Ladder worked backwards from five-star reviews to a three-workouts-a-week target, then built a journal, check marks and a widget around it, and a nutrition add-on found through surveys now lifts conversion and retention among hybrid users.
Gammon says retention is too tangled to fix until it is boiled down. Retention means that when someone pays, they pay again. Early on it is volatile, and later it becomes a rubber band ball of stacked influences.
The result has to be named in words that work for users and for the team.
Ladder worked backwards from five-star reviews to find the result. The common theme in its five-star reviews was getting results. In fitness, results mean consistency.
In his words: "what factors into retention, it's getting results." Gammon calls Photo Room a parallel case, where users want better eBay listing photos.
He turned the result into one weekly target of three workouts. Ladder started at four workouts a week and ratcheted it down to three, backed by science. Every retention feature now ladders up to that target.
The ethos is "don't make me think": the user presses play and does the workout.
A tracking journal turns each workout into visible progress. Users log reps and weights in the workout player, and the next session opens with a recommended weight built from the last one. About 70 to 75% of users log in the journal for each workout.
Gammon says logging feels like a reward to the user while feeding a flywheel for the business.
Accumulated history makes the product sticky. The post-workout summary shows gains since the user started. Data builds outward from one lift to every lift to the profile, and users become proud of what they have built.
Gammon dislikes calling this "hostages" but says: "as you build state, it becomes sticky."
Check marks and a widget keep the three-workout habit in view. Three check marks make a weekly streak, and the widget shows it outside the app. About a third of users have the widget.
It also works as a billboard, since others who see it may ask about it and that can drive referrals. Gammon says benchmarks are tough, so he cannot say whether a third is good, but it seems positive.
Gammon holds back the widget prompt until trust is earned. The widget cannot be the first thing shown, because the app has not yet earned that trust. Ladder gives clear instructions because adding a widget is not intuitive for most people.
He teaches features during the workout, not in FAQs. Coaches voice over the steps in a welcome workout: pop open the journal, swipe up, input weights, and why. Gammon says this is 10x more effective than FAQs.
The reminder lands mid-workout, which is why it works. Few apps have a human coach who can do this.
Gammon builds the loop first, then adds push and email. Find the features that drive retention and drive their use inside the product. Notifications and emails then help users go deeper.
The evidence is correlation, not a before-and-after test, and no figures show how the journal or widget changed retention.
Gammon sorts feedback into acute pain, surveys and dogfooding. Acute pain arrives through Slack and in-app feedback forms. Surveys are ad hoc and recurring, and team dogfooding gives an end-to-end mental model and empathy for users.
The hard part is staying disciplined and following through.
He distrusts five to ten interviews in a diverse consumer base. A handful of interviews gives only an N of five or ten, and one bad App Store review about a missing feature rarely unlocks everything.
Interviews can still give some insight, but large surveys work much better for working backwards from a big population.
Ladder's year-end survey drew over 7,500 responses. It has 80 to 90 questions, mixes multiple choice and open-ended, and takes over 45 minutes to fill in. AI helps parse the answers.
Gammon says surveys only work if the questions are not biased or leading. Few apps will get this many responses, but the aim is the broadest feedback available.
Survey signal pointed Ladder to nutrition as its second bet. Nutrition came through clearly in the end-of-2024 annual survey. It works as a multiplier, since dialed-in food helps people reach results faster.
The team worked from first principles: which methods work best and what people use today. It took longer than the usual projects.
He checks early behavior because users ask for things they never use. Gammon looks at day-one and day-two logging and at week 2, 3 and 4 retention. At 100 days since launch, long-term retention cannot be measured yet.
"people say stuff that doesn't map to reality."
Hybrid users of workouts and nutrition convert and retain better. New hybrid users convert at a much higher rate and are more retentive 100 days in. Gammon treats it as a secondary product-market fit and a new lever of retention.
The results are early, and Gammon notes it is tough to map them to retention this soon.
Ladder