Tram · day-7 retention 31% → 44%
Onboarding for a city transit app
Most new riders opened the app once. A shorter onboarding built around their first trip lifted day-7 retention from 31% to 44%.
The problem
Riders installed the app at the station, bought one ticket and never came back. Onboarding asked for an account before it showed a single route.
What we did
We moved sign-up to after the first trip, asked for the commute instead of a profile and sent one useful alert on day two.
The result
Day-7 retention rose from 31% to 44%. It was my first launch, and the dashboard I built to track it became the team’s Monday ritual.
What I’d do differently
Test the alert copy. We guessed it, and it was the most read thing we ever wrote.