These are my learnings from the App Forest
TLDR Learning's:
🎮 Gamification is insanely Powerful ⏰ Build on top of one main simple feature 🎭 Ads are Fun 🤼 Build impactful Communities
Stats:
⛏️ Founded in 2014 ▶️ +10M Downloads (Play store) 🍎 4.9 Star Review (Apple store) 🅿️ +1400 Upvote's (Product Hunt)
What in the World is Forest?
"Forest allows you to "plant a tree" whenever you want to focus on your work. As time goes by, the sapling will grow gradually into a tree, but if you use your phone, your tree will be withered!" - Forest Team
Forest explained in 4 steps:
- Whenever you want to stay focused (work, study…), plant a tree — by starting the timer ⌛
- Your tree will grow while you focus on your work 🌴
- Leaving the app halfway will cause your tree to die 🥀
- Grow your own forest — Stay focused daily and turn hard work into a land of lush forest. 💚
Learning's:
1. Gamification:
Gamification is the Fuel
Gamification is the biggest game changer for this innovative app. It is the most important trigger for users loyalty.
Without any Gamification it is just a simple timer.
So what makes it different to a simple timer?
Each time the timer successfully finishes, you get coins 💰 and trees 🌳
With the coins you can then buy different kind of trees or even plant real trees in Africa.
Leaving the app results in getting less to none coins and might kill your tree completely. ⚰️
This way the app also gently shames you 😳R i you don't successfully complete your goal eg. by confirming if you really want to "give up" — Stuff like this really messes with your conscious.
While the death of a digital tree is obviously very low-stakes, and there are no real consequences if you let it bite the dust, over the course of a week using the app I learned that just knowing a few measly minutes away from your phone is all it takes to save a life — even that of a fake tree — is a surprisingly successful motivational tactic.
It is a real game
You can actually plant real trees. That is right they took gamification a few levels higher. With your coins you can actually help build a real forest. 🏞️
Then compare with your friends to see who planted more trees. 🧑🤝🧑
Nothing is more rewarding than knowing that you did something good for the humanity.
I mean a game that has a positive impact on the real world. That definitely gets people engaged.
Competition What fires you more up than beating your friend? — Not much 🏅
You can earn all the bragging rights by competing with your friends to see who is able to plant more real or virtual trees.
If you don't have any friends (then I'll be your friend 🧡), you can also compare your progress against both your previous self and a worldwide set of users.
It is just not Boring
Like every app with gamification just has a list of badges you get over time… that is boring. 🥱
Forest has way more & cooler stuff.
You grow one big thing. You grow a Forest — by adding one tree at a time. The users can virtually see all their hard work ⚙️ — the more trees in the forest — the more productive hours the user had. Who doesn't want to own a gigantic Forest?
In addition they created a whole store just to buy different kind of 🌳🎄🌴🎋
This keeps us motivated to keep on going and to keep leveling up. No one just wants one kind of tree if he can have many different kinds in their gigantic forest.
They truly took Gamification to the next level, and made it fun, This is has a huge impact on their retention…
2. Build on top of one main simple feature:
The main feature of this app is a simple timer. Nothing more. Just a simple timer. ⏰
There is nothing complicated about their main feature. It is super simple and clear what it does. Everyone understands it immediately.
With this one simple feature, they build a following of over 10 Million people. 👪 Crazy right?
They were only able to accomplish this making this one simple timer absolutely amazing. All the other features are build on top of the timer, to enhance it, make it more fun… This is key. 🔝
Looking at all the features of this app, it all boils down to this one cute, gamified timer to help you stay focused. The rest of the app enhances this timer.
3. Ads are fun:
Everyone hates ads. 😡
Ads are not fun.
Forest managed to make ads fun. 🥳
It is 100% the users choice if he/ she wants to see the ad.
After a successful working session, the App lets you double your coins by watching a 10 sec ad. I always want more coins, so I always watched the ads. 🤑
They managed to incorporated ads in such a great way that they don't distract or irritate the user. Plus this is how Forest makes their money on the free apps and the user gets more coins. It is a win win situation. 🔥
This truly is a great innovation in my opinion.
4. Build impactful Communities:
With their timer they managed to build a community of thousands. 🏘️
In 2017 Forest created a subreddit on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/forestapp/
Since, they build a huge community on there.
This helped them connect better with all their users, but also and more important start connecting users with eachother. 🤝
Through this subreddit they run challenges with their users, this creates even more stickiness to their app.
In addition they help you find study buddies 📜. They do this just by creating one big pinned thread, where everyone looking for a study buddy can comment. In that way the study sole mates can find each other easily 🎎.
A good side benefit is that they always have a good overview of the problems of their users and what features they want. 🙋
With just a simple timer they build a community of thousands. Absolutely incredible.
In summary this is a great app. Take a simple feature and put it on steroids. Add a community to it, and you have Forest. They did an unbelievable job, in making this an amazing experience.
See you next time, with new learnings from the best Apps. Heiko Damaske