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Duolingo’s onboarding testing — what’s stuck?
What’s changed since 2022? Personalisation, animation and speed.
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Last year, I wrote about how Duolingo converts freemium users. It was one of my best articles of all time on Medium and was super fun to write.
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I’ve been meaning to do a re-visit for while now, especially seeing as I have screenshots that date back to 2022. When I found the old screenshots I thought:
What. A. Treat.
There’s so much that’s changed, and there’s a lot that has stayed. Which indicates that certain parts are working whilst others are continuing to improve — propelling the business to incredible financial results.
Before diving into the UX, time for a recap of Duolingo’s 2018 growth slump, what they changed and how the business is doing now.
Hint: pretty damn well.
Duolingo’s growth slowdown, reversed
Back in 2018, Duolingo was seeing single-digit user growth each year. They’d not grown retention for four years and…