How Analytics Insights Turn Healthy Customers Into Healthy Business at Nautilus

Insights/Action/Outcome: The Nautilus JRNY team used Amplitude to look at workouts and understand differences of user behaviors with different modalities. They saw increased importance of trainer-led video workouts on bikes, a need for more adaptive workouts on treadmills, and a desire by some users to find new workouts. Instead of a one-size-fits all solution, they adjusted new workout offerings for specific modalities, updated the UX to better highlight newly added workouts, and shifted their workout production to target user’s needs on specific modalities. They quickly saw an improvement in the average number of monthly completed workouts—a key measure of engagement and an encouraging step in their efforts to retain users.

While working at Nautilus Home Fitness as lead product manager, my team and I made discoveries about our flagship digital product, and the right insights guided us —and made us a healthier business.

Nautilus builds a healthier world

Nautilus, Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets strength, cardio, and fitness accessories under well-known brands such as Bowflex, Nautilus, and Schwinn Fitness. Nautilus is an industry leader in connected fitness and offers various training programs to help customers achieve their fitness goals.

Explore the World content on JRNY adaptive fitness membership. Shown on the Bowflex Treadmill 22.

I spent most of my time in JRNY, Nautilus’s training app with an adaptive membership designed to evolve as a user’s fitness progresses. Users can leverage our patented motion tracking to keep an eye on form and track milestone achievements to encourage progress. JRNY adapts to the way an individual wants to exercise.

I worked alongside people dedicated to developing unique workout experiences, which involves forging long-term connections with customers and finding ways to improve their journey. We were always looking for innovative ways to serve our audience better, make fitness accessible, and build a healthier world.

Making sense of data

We spent a while comparing different vendors and opportunities, and Amplitude Analytics offered everything we needed to scale our insights with better user data. The retention charts, segmentation charts, and demo environments provided exactly what we needed to get clarifying details on our audience. Another selling point was collaboration, which was almost as important as the platform features. While other analytics platforms felt very complex and isolated, Analytics proved to be much more collaborative and approachable for multiple stakeholders.

We took a methodical approach to adopting Analytics for Nautilus, and Amplitude’s support was crucial. Throughout the implementation process we experienced incredible technical assistance and usability support, which got us started on the right foot.

Once we engaged in basic training, we built our first basic event: Journey Started.

We set Journey Started to trigger every time JRNY opened, which let us see our customers’ trends and behaviors. This visibility meant we could quickly analyze necessary data points, including when users used our app, how often each session lasted, and how often each user opened the app during the week.

We didn’t realize how many insights we’d glean within our first year of use—or how much we’d learn about the different ways customers wanted to use our app.

Flexing our muscle in new workout recommendations

We used Amplitude to look at workouts grouped by specific properties to understand differences of user behaviors with different modalities. We saw increased importance of trainer-led video workouts on bikes, and a need for more adaptive workouts on treadmills. We also saw that some users wanted to find fresh new workouts.

Instead of taking a one-size-fits all solution for any modality, we started to adjust the new workout offerings for specific modalities and we updated our UX to better highlight and call attention to newly added workouts.We also shifted our workout production to target user’s needs on specific modalities. Making these changes quickly led to an improvement in the average number of monthly completed workouts—a key measure of engagement and a positive step in our efforts to retain users.

What has me excited is the mindset shift within our team to understand, take action, and measure if we see results, faster. With such a powerful analytics platform plugged into our app, it became easier than ever to make insightful and informed decisions.

Leaning into Analytics for an outcome-based future

Analytics helped the Nautilus team shift to a problem-focused, outcome-based feature roadmap. We can use clean, trustworthy data to measure success for new features, updates, and rollouts.

We increasingly lean on Analytics for problem-solving, but more than anything else, I love what the platform offers for our sense of collaboration and inclusivity. Analysts can (of course) still take time to probe the data further, but it’s also possible to share our Analytics data with various stakeholders, UX teams, and even developers. Everyone has a chance to explore the data for their own purposes, which means everyone has an equal opportunity to learn and improve the customer experience.

We made strategic changes to our app and added new features to reduce friction points and improve engagement. It wasn’t just about building something—it was about helping our customers achieve their mission.

Using Analytics directly impacts our customers, who are engaging more with JRNY and setting down a path of their own design. The more workouts they do, the healthier they become, and the healthier our business becomes, too.