Product Insights from the Kinit Beta App
A couple of months ago we shared the Kin standalone app vision. The Kinit App private beta has been out for couple of weeks now. The goal of the private beta is to learn as fast as possible about the earn-spend experience and overall user motivation.
In the beta app, users can complete one simple task per day and be rewarded with a predetermined amount of Kin. Within 4 days/tasks, users can accumulate enough Kin to spend on an Amazon gift card, and as they progress, they will have enough to spend on other gift cards, like Grubhub and Ticketmaster.
Phase one of the private beta has ended and with that comes our first insights.
Something good is happening!
10 day retention rate: 75%
49% spent on at least one gift card
How do we measure retention?
Since the main daily activity available in the app is completing a task, this is also the way we measure retention and engagement. Meaning, an engaged user is one that completes a task (e.g. user that completed a task on a specific day is considered retained/still active for that specific day).
Kinit stats compared to market stats
According to a recent study, 21% of users abandon an app after one use. The fact that one in five users will never launch an app again after one session is alarming, and we were determined to beat the market stats.
And so we did! Only 7% of Kinit users abandoned the app after one use.
The numbers continue to beat the market stats with only 15% of Kinit users abandoning the app within the first 3 days, compared to 77% of users based on market stats.
Earn Insights & App Retention
98% of the users completed their first task! This number shows the success of the app’s simplicity.
84% of the users completed 4 tasks, which means they have enough Kin to start spending.
75% of the users completed 10 tasks. 10 tasks = 10 day retention.
These retention stats are very promising and exciting considering the fact that through most of the beta period, we didn’t execute any measure to increase retention via push notification or other re-engagement actions.
66% of the users completed 21 tasks. The fact that two out of three users use the app for at least 3 weeks is amazing and demonstrates how we are moving in the right direction with regard to understanding what drives users to power the kin economy we are aiming for.
The tasks users enjoy the most
Users feedback was constantly streamed to us on different channels: focus group, emails, support requests. Some of the feedback was related to the earn tasks users experienced in the app.
Here are the top 3 most popular tasks mentioned by users:
- “The value of money”
Questionnaire that aims to challenge the way we perceive money, with questions like:
‘How would you reward a friend for good advice?’
‘Would you exchange your lunch for a 1 month Spotify subscription?’ - “Superheroes”
Fun questionnaire about famous superheroes, with questions like:
‘Who is cooler: Batman or Superman?’ - “College Groups”
Survey about user’s involvement with college groups on campus.
These examples prove that users are not only into fun activities, but also enjoy thinking about challenges and serious content that is related to their day to day life. Our challenge going forward is to find the right balance between them all.
Spend Insights
Users love to get Kin! But what about using their Kin?
84% of the users completed four days/tasks and had enough Kin to start spending. Out of those users, 49% spent their Kin on at least one gift card out of the following: $5 Amazon (83% of all purchases), $10 Grubhub (15%), $25 Ticketmaster (2%).
In addition, according to one of the surveys we ran in the app, 84% of the users that didn’t spend their Kin mentioned they are waiting for other offers, and only 16% declared they just want to hold Kin. This data is very crucial for us because A) We still need to find the right offers for our marketplace, and B) We learned that despite only ~50% didn’t spent their Kin, the majority of them are willing to do so.
How do users spend over time?
A healthy ecosystem would be one in which users get Kin and use it equally.
When looking a bit deeper on users behaviour over time, we identified four different types of user personas:
- Hoarder
Users who hold Kin and don’t spend it.
For creating a healthy ecosystem, we should reduce the percentage of users in the category to the minimum amount possible.
51% of the users were identified as hoarders. - Spender
Users who spend immediately once they have enough Kin to spend on something. When building the Kin ecosystem, we are hoping to see more and more users in this category.
Only 23% of the users were identified as spenders. - Saver
Users who hold their Kin for a long period of time (usually 15–20 days) and then spend a large amount of Kin either on a few small purchases or on one big purchase. We are hoping to see less users in this category moving forward.
14% of the users were identified as savers. - Undefined
Users with inconsistent spend behaviour. It could be that the user is a spender for the first 2 weeks, and then acts more like a saver for the following 3 weeks… or vice versa.
12% of the users were undefined.
Kin spend/earn ratio
Another interesting data point is the total Kin spend/earn ratio. Users that had enough Kin to spend, spent 34% of their Kin on average.
For example, from the chart, 25% of the users spent more than 75% of their Kin. This analysis shows we still have a ways to go, since the majority of the users prefer to spend less than 50% of their Kin, if at all.
However, since many of the users are waiting for other spend offers, we assume the ratio will change drastically once we identify and implement the right offers for users.
Final Thoughts
The importance of the private beta insights shared in this post are not only for learning purposes, but also to set our baseline going forward. The numbers are very promising and the goal is to continuously improve and optimize the experience.
A follow up post will be shared soon with our next steps, plan, and goals. Meanwhile, any feedback/questions/suggestions are much appreciated and kudos to the amazing Kinit team for creating such a great product!
