Hello guys,
I appreciate the Idea of getting new Players.
As an alternative to working on the APP or GUI it would really help if a Influencer on Youtube (preferably one dedicated to non-casual gaming) would cover the game. I mentioned the game and the link
games.ravenblack.net at 4 places in the internet and this Forum at 1 place in the internet in the last days.
I noticed peaks of like 50 viewers on this Forum a day. Recent New Players in the game seem to be: Tiamat5555, DodoBirb, SpaceMango and Proph. Not entirely sure if all of them tried the game because of the links.
The problem is 4 fold -
Marketing (getting new users in)
Conversion (getting leads to actually register and start a game, and if on mobile then also install the app)
Onboarding (getting the leads to actually play at least 1 or a few full games, till they "get it")
Retention (getting the onboarded players to stay, feeling there's enough community and pleasure in playing the game)
For marketing -
1. I agree getting influencers / blog posts / other PR / forums is the right way to go.
2. SEO - very slim, on the app market this isn't performing well, so far winning first page only on "Warlocks", reaching 2.5 views per day, of them 0.5 from US. Might get better with higher rating (now ~3.0 in US), might enter the "Wizards" keyword and others (spells, magic, etc'). For Web we can't really influence
3. Paid traffic - we don't have funds for that
4. Viral - maybe in the future, right now no one uses the "Invite a friend" option in the app
So all in all marketing we get ~75 views / month from SEO and recent posting on forums got some spikes
Bottom line - I believe it is better to try marketing the app over the web as it has more long term potential, and better onboarding (see below),
and it could be worthwhile to test that in a few posts.
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For Conversion - No data for Web.
For app - we had about 20 installs in last 2 months, so that's 20/155 = 13%. That's not amazing.
It might go higher with rating
We tried testing different screenshots, but that didn't improve conversion. Other ideas are welcome (for store presence, screenshots, texts etc').
Of these 16 started a new game = 16/20 = 75% so that's ok.
All in all conversion is 16/155 = 10%
Bottom line - open for ideas. Now 10% for app, unknown for web
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For Onboarding -
For the app -
5 users of the app finished a game and started another in that time period. 5/16 = 30%. Not amazing.
We added tutorial (not good enough). Smaller simplified spell book for beginners and simpler GUI. Also bots respond immediately in the app, and users have both PvP and PvBot created immediately after finishing registration, with notifications on new turns.
Next steps - further GUI improvements (nicer tutorial, nicer spell book, nicer turn history/animations). Hopefully these can raise onboarding to 50%.
For web - I think there were 8 new players, and 1 of them finished a game and started another, so that's 13%. Lower than app, but numbers are small so any additional user would change figures by a lot. The main tools for improving onboarding is chatting with new users.
Bottom line -
I think that long term conversion in app is more promising because we can track and improve it. Some plans are on the way, more ideas are welcome.
The community can also help here both for app and for web by inviting new users to games to create momentum and chatting
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Retention -
This is a tough one. We did have some users in the last past months that played 10s of games and then left.
Some on web and some on app.
On the web it seems like these are old players that returned.
On both it seems that players leave because of not having enough players to play with.
Bottom line - Retention might solve itself if we have enough players playing at the same time. A bit of chicken and egg.
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So what's my take?
It's tough, we're not succeeding much so far. The main achievement so far has been slowly increasing app rating from 2.3 to 3.0 in US, and getting to a decent level of onboarding.
I think it would be interesting to test promoting the app on forums and see conversion and onboarding of that. If it works we might be able to expand on it.
I also think the community can help in inviting new players to games.
I think we can improve onboarding further in the app (30%-->50%)
and hopefully if all that works then: A) rating will go up, lifting marketing and conversion B) Retention will go up having more players to play with. C) If all that works and we get to days of bliss then we might also see viral play kick in