Strava is a fitness-tracking app that helps professional athletes and amateurs to track their physical activities. In 2022 Strava had 95 million active users, with two million added every month.

These key statistics reveal that Strava excels at bringing in new users, but what’s more important is that Strava distinguishes itself by turning new sign-ups into active and engaged users on the Strava app.

If you ever wondered how to break the challenge of making your app sticky, let’s take a look together at how Strava did it and how you can learn from it. Ready? Steady? Go!

At its core, Strava simply tracks workouts, but that’s just what any other fitness app does, right? Well, Strava did more than that. 

In the sports world, being part of a community is the engine that motivates players to keep going without giving up. To transfer the community feeling in its app, Strava armed with an engaging weapon – gamification.

Here’s what you can learn from Strava gamification mechanics:

Use the power of network – Give your users access to a social network that allows for communication and encouragement. On Strava, users can follow each other’s progress and give ‘kudos’, features that reinforce social validation and inner motivation.

Sustain motivation with challenges – Strava introduces group challenges where users establish identical objectives to determine who can reach them. Challenges can also be individual, so when a user accepts a challenge, his progress will be tracked and rewarded when completed. 

Boost competition with leaderboards – The Strava leaderboard ranks the athletes that match the same activity. Leaderboards activate the fever of competition among users who seek social recognition or simply enjoy engaging in friendly competitions with their Strava friends.