Achieved a 300% increase in downloads and an 11% uplift in impressions for trundl by leveraging user-powered messaging. Conducted in-depth user interviews, refined personas, and optimized the app journey and paywall, aligning the brand with user values and motivations.

With gratitude to the support from:

The Challenge

As a recently launched app, trundl reached out to Kurve with the goal of refining their messaging and running a paid experiment to validate it.

trundl aims to inspire people to live a positive and active lifestyle by walking more. Every step tracked with trundl raises funds for charity and helps the planet by saving on CO2 emissions.

The Solution

Messaging Review

Review Analysis

We started by analysing user reviews from the App Store and Play Store to understand more about customers’ pain points, experiences, and expectations.

Due to trundl’s brief uptime, there were only a limited number of published reviews available; therefore, we decided to combine this first analysis with information previously collected by the client, including beta testing surveys, initial focus groups, and motivation stats from current users.

User Interviews

Moving on to the second step of our messaging strategy, we scheduled a series of 30-minute one-on-one interviews with six of the most active and engaged trundl users. The goal was to further explore their emotions and motivations when using the app.

To craft our interview questions, we combined the data from our desk research with our Power-User Interview Framework; this helped us thoroughly investigate the following aspects:

• The key audience and personas;
• Real-world pain points solved by the app;
• Customers’ emotional states when using the app;
• App benefits in the users’ own words;
• Motivation for using the app;
• App potential for reframing habits;
• New trends and behavioural changes in charity fundraising, mental health, and the environment (according to user experiences and perceptions);
• Most loved features.

The interviews revealed fascinating insights into the customers’ sense of fulfilment when creating a positive social and environmental impact, their need to spend time away from social media, their joy in finding community, and much more.

This step was crucial in shaping trundl’s messaging and effectively addressing their users by fine-tuning personas.

Personas

Conducting one-on-one interviews allows us to understand in greater detail an app’s demand type and refine key personas by examining user behaviours, desires, and ways of communicating.

This strategy is key for the following:

1. Producing UGC briefs and guidelines, including exemplar UGC scripts for sample personas, and imagining how users would present and recommend the app in their own words. This exercise also informs the research criteria for influencer and creator profiles, ensuring they reflect the brand’s values and identity.
2. Improving the user journey to seamlessly integrate the app within their habits and lived experiences.

User Interface (UI) Feedback

While the messaging review was aimed at gauging user sentiment and identifying the brand’s simple promise, conducting interviews also allowed us to gather feedback on the customer journey whilst shedding light on underused features, bugs, and desirable functions. This was essential in mapping out trundl’s future app development strategy and updates.

Competitor Analysis

To provide the client with a comprehensive review of their product, we also conducted a visual competitive analysis, where trundl’s direct competitors were analysed and assessed by their branding appearance, focusing on highlighting their strengths and weaknesses in the following areas:

• Key features;
• Messaging;
• Visual presentation (app stores and websites);
• Pricing model.

To illustrate the users’ emotions and experiences, we produced an Empathy Map to help the client visualise and empathise with their users’ pains and gains.

We then developed trundl’s paid funnel for Apple Search Ads by creating Persona-Insight-Driven Custom Product Pages, which allowed the brand to validate the findings and map out new potential opportunities. The research also shaped the product roadmap and paywall optimisation to bring higher value to trundl’s user acquisition campaigns.

Finally, we developed a paid and organic app growth strategy informed by the results of our experiments.

Overall, the test contributed to an uplift of over 11% in impressions and more than a 300% increase in downloads.