👋 How Duolingo Succeeded in the Market (And How Analytics Helped)


Duolingo is one of the most popular language learning apps (ranked #1 in app stores). Instead of boring lessons, it feels like a game with progress, levels, rewards, mini-game exercises, and more.

According to the company, around 34 million people use Duolingo every day.


But what’s behind this success?

1. "Test Everything" is a key principle at Duolingo. Constant experiments help the company improve learning and find new ways to grow. At any given moment, Duolingo runs hundreds of A/B tests. They experiment with everything—from small UI changes to major features like leaderboards. They've even built their own A/B testing platform.

➡️Learn about Duolingo’s experiments: article

➡️Example of an A/B test to build a daily learning habit: article

➡️Tools Duolingo uses for data analysis: article

2. Duolingo develops its own metrics to help improve the product. One of the most important metrics is "time spent learning well."

➡️How Duolingo develops its metrics: article

3. In 2018, after several years of consistent year-over-year growth, the DAU metric began to stagnate. To address this issue, the Data Science team developed a "Growth Framework," which helped increase DAU fourfold since 2019.

➡️More on this case: article

4. Motivation to use the app and learn a language may work for speakers of one language but not for speakers of another. Duolingo developed the Expurrimenter, which helps conduct A/B tests on in-app messages to ensure that the messages motivate all learners equally and feel natural to them.

➡️How Duolingo adapts in-app messages: article

5. Turning a Free App into a $7.7 Billion Business: video


Working at Duolingo

Duolingo has 700+ employees from 30 countries, with 45% being engineers (including developers and data scientists). Check out their job openings, including internships: careers. Learn about Duolingo’s interview process: article.


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