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This is the fourth edition of our Growth Insights. When you joined, we promised you growth tips and insights straight to your inbox every week. And here they are. 🚀

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Tip: Create Web Stories for your articles to increase traffic

Source: Growth Bites

WordLift boosted their traffic by 504% and got over 263,000 impressions in a few days with one simple Web Story that became popular on Google Discover.

To get a similar boost, Andrea Volpini of WordLift suggests taking your top-ranking articles and creating Web Stories to summarize (and essentially act as trailers for) your articles. Use tools like MakeStories or Newsroom AI to create the Stories. Or, if you use WordPress, try Google's Web Stories Editor. And, of course, you can always code it yourself. The Stories should be concise and easy to consume. Use videos and animations when possible. Make them more skimmable by numbering the frames. And use jump-links to bring users to key points in the articles. Once you're happy with the story, publish it on your site and make sure that Google can index it by linking to it from your article, creating a dedicated sitemap for your Stories, and adding a navigation link from your homepage to a Web Stories landing page.

What's trending?

How did AI become an Agent?

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If you open a dictionary and look up agent, you’ll find this definition: a person who acts on behalf of another person or group.

And if you look up AI—short for Artificial Intelligence—here’s what you get: the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

Well, let’s try to understand this deeper and discover how AI becomes an Agent. Yes, I’’ll talk about AI. And yes, I’m aware there’s already a mountain of stuff out there on this topic, but somehow, there’s still plenty of room to say more. Because it’s AI… you simply can’t ignore it.

Another thing you can’t ignore?

Read more below to find out 👇

Reigniting Growth in a Mature Product: Duolingo’s Roadmap to 4.5x DAU

Source: Lenny’s Newsletter 

In a rare inside look at Duolingo’s meteoric growth from 2017 to 2021, Jorge Mazal, former Head of Product, shares pivotal strategies that helped the app 4.5x its daily active users (DAU) and set the stage for a successful IPOLet’s dive into the key lessons.

Learning from Early Setbacks: Gamification and Referral Program

The team’s first attempts at growth—adding a “moves counter” inspired by games like Gardenscapes and launching an Uber-style referral program—didn’t succeed. The moves counter didn’t fit Duolingo’s learning experience, where the focus is on mastery, not strategy. Similarly, the referral program offered free months to top users already on paid plans, leading to only a modest 3% increase in users. These setbacks taught Jorge’s team the importance of adapting ideas to Duolingo’s unique needs rather than replicating features from other products.

Prioritize the Right Metrics to Drive Growth

After these setbacks, the team turned to data, segmenting users by engagement levels and pinpointing the Current User Retention Rate (CURR) as the most impactful metric. They found that a small 2% quarterly improvement in CURR could increase DAU fivefold compared to other metrics, making it their North Star metric. By the end, focusing on CURR alone drove a 21% improvement in retention and reduced churn by over 40%.

Enhance Existing Features for Quick Wins

Instead of building new features, the team optimized existing ones like leaderboards and streaks. Revamping the leaderboard system to match users by engagement level led to a 17% increase in overall learning time and tripled the number of users engaged for over an hour daily. Streak-saving notifications also proved valuable, reducing dropout rates significantly among streaked users, with a notable impact on daily active users and long-term retention.

Protect Communication Channels for Sustainable Engagement

The team adopted a conservative approach for push notifications, limiting frequency to avoid user fatigue. Their careful optimization yielded a series of incremental gains, resulting in steady DAU growth year after year. By avoiding overuse, Duolingo protected its notification channel and preserved a meaningful way to keep users engaged.

Diversify Growth Vectors for Sustainable Expansion

With CURR close to its ceiling, the team experimented with new growth channels, including viral TikTok campaigns, influencer partnerships, and international expansion. These initiatives added substantial gains in monthly active users (MAU) and brought in a diverse new user base, ultimately contributing to Duolingo’s growth momentum leading up to its IPO.

Final thoughts

Rather than replicating what worked for other companies, Duolingo tailored its growth strategies to fit its unique product needs, resulting in a 4.5x increase in daily active users and a sustainable growth model focused on core user experience.

Thank you for reading! ✌️

We look forward to sharing more with you next week. Stay tuned!

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