Just pulled our 12-month retention data and honestly wasn’t expecting what I found.
Users who stick around past day 90 behave completely different than what our early metrics suggested. Their usage patterns flip after month 6.
Anyone else seeing weird long-term user behavior that contradicts your day 1-30 assumptions?
The pattern shift at month 6 usually happens when users move from exploring features to actually relying on your app for real problems.
I track what specific actions these long term users take differently and then test promoting those behaviors earlier in the funnel. Sometimes the features that hook people long term are buried or not obvious to new users.
Yeah we saw something similar around month 4. Early active users sometimes just disappear while quiet ones stick around longer.
Had this exact thing happen with a productivity app. Users who seemed lukewarm in the first month ended up being our best long-term cohort.
Turns out the “power users” we thought were ideal actually burned out fast. The slow adopters found their groove around month 3 and stayed way longer.
Changed how we score user quality completely. Now I track engagement momentum rather than just early activity spikes.
Users past 90 days understand your app’s core value differently than early metrics show. They integrate it into their daily habits. What you’re observing at month 6 is likely them discovering new use cases or situations where your app provides more value. Segment these long-term users and analyze what triggers these shifts. That’s where you find true product market fit.
Day 90 users are totally different people basically.