I gave a wellness app a positioning makeover – here’s what happened
Inspired by a real experience and true story
Let's be real, we've all got that quiet graveyard of apps on our phones, don’t we? In that graveyard, a good chunk are wellness apps that we downloaded in the impulse of 'the new me!' Probably used for less than a week, and forgotten or ignored after. Of these apps, some try to be our AI life coach, personal nutritionist, and spiritual guru; others bombard us with an endless scroll of ambient soundscapes, trendy yoga poses, and vague affirmations. It’s no surprise, then, that an estimated 90% of users stop using these apps within the first week. Almost nobody wants nagging advice from a productivity-obsessed algorithm with zero chill.
Here’s the truth: these apps don’t fail because they’re poorly made. They fail because they try to do too much for too many people, losing a meaningful, tailored experience in the process. The villain here isn't the lack of features; it's a miss on positioning, and that is where savvy product marketing, armed with real customer insights can rescue these apps from the digital dustbin.
The case of AuraPath: A fictional, something-for-everyone wellness app
AuraPath is imaginary, but I am sure by now you’d have met some of its real-world cousins. On paper, it has everything:
a sleek, intuitive UX
hundreds of guided meditations
mood tracker
manual workout log
‘healthy recipes’ section
community of users to inspire
influencer backing
Its tagline: “Your complete journey towards a better you!”
Its target user: “Anyone who wants to feel better”
This is the classic wellness app trap: good intentions, remarkable features, and excellent UX, but zero focus. It’s trying to be everything to everyone.
Why wellness apps like AuraPath die quickly:
From my product marketing lens, here are the usual suspects behind high churn:
a. Blending into the background - Every wellness app offers the same thing, and without a sharp and differentiated point of view, even a great app gets ignored.
b. Creating fiction, not relief- A bloated dashboard creates decision fatigue and instead of guiding users these apps often feel like they’re another one of those that you’d need to spend time to figure out.
c. Forgettable promise - The taglines of most wellness apps are vague and don’t translate into tangible outcomes. Someone exhausted or anxious needs a focused solution, not a difficult choice.
d. Trying to do too much: By offering everything like calorie tracking, meditations, workouts, and recipes – they end up losing depth. Users often come in with one need and get easily lost in the buffet, despite an intuitive user interface.
The product marketing pivot: stop serving everyone
If I were handed AuraPath at a stage of high churn, the fix wouldn’t be "add a hydration tracker" or build another content series. It would be to find the answers to four basic questions:
Who exactly is this app for?
What real, painful problem can we solve for them?
Which is our most-used feature, and why?
Can we double down on the one thing we do best?
Let’s say we now go back to first principles. We interview lapsed users. We study usage and behaviour patterns, and we uncover a common thread:
A huge segment of our users are mid-career professionals that are quietly burning out
These people aren’t just stressed, they are struggling to engage with work, trying to cut through fads to stay healthy, all whilst taking care of their personal lives. I am certain that another yoga pose added to their workout library is not what they are looking for.
Repositioning AuraPath: The Burnout Recovery App
Here is what we’d position it as:
“We help professionals between the age of 30-45 recover from burnout and rebuild resilience –one small reset at a time”
Let me clarify, we are not only evolving our messaging but also filtering the features to keep, to evolve, and to deprioritise with the product crew and user feedback.
What’s removed or de-prioritised:
Healthy recipes: Irrelevant for our audience and goes against the new positioning
Workout logs: Our target audience that is facing a burnout does not need more tracking
Generic affirmation: Revamped into another feature that actually speaks to the audience
What’s enhanced or introduced:
We look at the burnout symptoms of our target audience and introduce features to tackle them heads-on.
Burnout symptom: Sleep disruption
Feature: Restorative sleep hub
We elevate sleep support from a side feature to a central pillar that includes:
a. Sleep stories designed for anxious and overactive minds
b. Evening wind-down rituals (guided audio and video nidra yoga)
c. Sleep journaling to track patterns and evening triggers
Burnout symptom: Emotional exhaustion and cognitive fog
Feature: Burnout-specific meditations
We build a curated track list of short, science-backed meditations to target:
a. Transitions: to help between meetings or life milestones
b. Self-compassion: to fight inner criticism
c. Focus restoration: for attention fatigue
The tone shifts from a ‘floaty wellness-speak’ to clear-grounded language:
“Feeling exhausted and cynical at work? Let’s help you recover – not just cope”
The Competitive Landscape – and why this category is wide open.
Most wellness apps fall into one of these camps:
1. Meditation giant (Calm, Headspace) - Too broad and passive for burnout sufferers
2. Habit building tools (Fabulous, Finch) - Fun and gamified, however too light weight for people suffering from actual burnout
3. Therapy platforms (BetterHelp, TalkSpace) - Professional-grade support, however, time consuming and expensive and generally not the first step
4. Health trackers - Data drive and goal focussed, however quite heavy on body metrics
The gap that AuraPath can fill:
A dedicated digital space for burnout recovery to bridge the lack of options that exist in the market right now, giving us the edge over over promising apps and websites. We looked at a clear problem, understood who our audience is, and provided tailor-made solutions to overcome existing problems.
My final two cents:
Cent 1 - If your product can swap taglines with a dozen others in your category, then you have a positioning problem.
Cent 2 - If your features read like a checklist, then you have not studied your target audience and customers properly. The fix is not always to add more, or complement with a forced content plan or sales enablement strategy; but it is to cut back until the only thing that’s left is useably unique.