Inspiring accountability and results

I led the redesign of Beachbody’s health and fitness community platform, serving over 6 million users

Beachbody sought to boost retention, but the app’s features and content limited user engagement.

Data showed that when Beachbody’s subscribers were engaged, they churned at a lower rate. However, there were a few hurdles to engagement that had to be overcome.

  • The app was centered around workout videos, but the workout was the only time subscribers were using the app.

  • Most workouts were part of fitness programs, which took weeks and required serious motivation to be able to follow.

Workout groups were an opportunity to overcome engagement hurdles

We did focus groups and interviews around these hurdles, and aligned on the idea of workout groups.

If subscribers could follow programs in groups, with a supportive, motivating community manager, it would keep them engaged in the app and give users the support and accountability they needed.

I led research, branding and the design of the product experience

My team was responsible for:

  • user research, initial discovery research and on-going user testing

  • UX, including customer journeys, user flows, and wireframes

  • product branding and marketing screens

  • a community manager experience, including tools for setting up and branding a group, managing invites, and tracking participant behaviors

  • a cross-platform participant experience where users could track and share their activities, comment and react via a social feed, and create personal profiles to connect with the community

I actively participated in all aspects of these tasks, such as designing UI, and collaborating with our researcher on testing strategies.

The key to success was empowering and educating community managers

Through user interviews and a competitive analysis, we realized that community managers make or break communities. Beachbody had 250,000+ re-sellers that earned commissions from their customers, so we focused our attention on them, and did co-creation activities to drive our feature set and user flows.

Our top-of-funnel marketing educated and spoke to product benefits

We collaborated with community managers, as well as internal brand, business and Creative teams on the design. We worked with our Data team to test CTAs and layouts to optimize click-through.

Designed a cross-platform participant experience

Once users had joined the platform, they could track activity, share progress, and support one another, on web and mobile apps. A profile (see the 2 screenshots to the right) was an important tool for helping users get to know each other.

The redesign drove a 250% increase in total active groups and 160% increase in unique users. NPS also rose significantly, from -20 to 50.

Post-launch, we followed an aggressive roadmap over several years, adding high-demand features and optimizing based on analytics.

To date, over 6 million people have used the platform and a half million groups have been created.

I’d love to hear from you

Email me at andrewturrell@gmail.com to chat about a role or project. I’m open to full-time or freelance.