I am personally thinking that if others are seeing this too

Something I’ve noticed lately while working on a product: getting people to try something is often much easier than getting them to come back and use it again.

At first, I thought the problem was simply onboarding. So I kept tweaking the first few screens, removing steps, changing the copy, etc.

But after talking to a few users, I’m starting to wonder if that’s actually the wrong thing to focus on.

A couple of people understood the product perfectly well and still didn’t return. Their feedback was basically, “Yeah, this is useful… I just don’t have a reason to open it again yet.”

That got me thinking about the difference between a product being useful and a product becoming part of someone’s workflow.

For those of you who have launched products:

• What made users actually come back?

• Was it a feature, a habit, notifications, integrations, or something else?

• Did you discover the answer through analytics, user conversations, or mostly trial and error?

I’m especially curious about what changed things after the initial launch, rather than the usual “how to get your first users” advice.