For ensuring that the mobile game is thriving and earning higher revenue, it is essential that it has a higher user retention rate and is played several times in a week (in fact, several times in a day). User retention rate plays a significant role and is an essential performance metric that keeps a game running for decades and generates continuous revenue.
Here are some proven and best ways to increase retention for your game.
Launch As Earliest As Possible & Reach the Point Fast!
For ensuring that the users return to the game or the app, they must get full entertainment and a fantastic experience from the competition. Users who are already turned off in the initial stages might not prefer to give the game a second chance. Here are some common issues and their remedies:
- If there is a fundamental requirement of an internet connection for your game, offer the new users’ offline play options.
- Allow the users to skip the Facebook or email login to start playing as the guest users.
- Delay the requirement of any secondary download in the game until the players complete the early portions of the gameplay. If there is a necessary in-app download, then include a progress bar to it and enticing visuals to the same.
Design is essential for avoiding any obstacles and allowing the users to experience the core gameplay instantly. Boom Beach is the best example where the users are kept right in action. The users must take the essential three steps to reach the essence of the game, which are: Starting the game, building the first tower, watching the battle.
Fill in the Required user Knowledge Gaps:
For ensuring a higher user retention rate, generating curiosity is the soul requirement. There are several ways available to do the same, but the most effective and efficient method for creating interest is delaying the feedback.
For example, Covet FFashionis a social dress up game where the players dress up their characters for different events. Further, after going for quick shopping and mix-matching the critiques and fashion from their friends, the players submit the look for the ongoing event.
Most of the games allow a feedback option for the player right after the submission. But in Covet Fashion, there is a requirement of voting the looks and social dress ups and the players have to wait for some days to get the final results. Thus, by the time the results are declared, players stay in immense curiosity to look at how they did well and the prizes they received.
Moreover, from the game design perspective, providing the feedback right after the action is essential. But for the games that build in a habit, going for the opposite method keeps the users attracted and willing to experience more.
Rewarding the Progress Investments:
As much time and money any player spends on the particular game, they are more attracted to playing it. Research unveiled that there is some time when just some progression is useful in making the people more committed to a process. The prominent marketing researchers performed some experiments on the loyalty programs. In just a few months, the two significant loyalty stamp cards were then handed out in the testing. The results then unveiled that the translation to the number of users who are more willing to commit to any process has already made enough progress.
There are enormous ways to offer a sense of progression to the players even if they started playing recently. For example, in Crossy Roads, just after the first run, the players get a gift of 100 coins and a shorter three-minute timer, then starts for the next reward. Further, the players buy a prize with all the gifted coins, mostly a newer character. And then, in just a few minutes after starting the game, the players already have two new characters in the latest collection and can soon get a third one in the next three minutes.
Think social, Co-Op and Competitive:
According to Bartle’s four-player types, the two players’ personas would benefit from the social features. Then, the players loving the competition, who are the achievers, are highly driven for higher engagement by the zealousness and leader boards in the friends’ progression. Candy Crush Saga’s level leader board and social map appeal to such people.
When people come together to work for a similar goal, they get more engaged, and also, the committed groups get a higher retention rate than the lone wolf users. For example, in Covet Fashion, a fashion house features a clan of players working for a common goal’s achievement. The same fashion house players can borrow the clothes from each other and use them for fashion events. Players can also share the looks with the group for review before submitting them to the event.
Triggering the Engaged Response –
Factually, many users do not organically return to a new game and might require some convincing. Push notifications thus serve the mean rightly for calling back the users to a game after they have left it. Some games also remind the users to come back to play and experience fun.
For example, in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, the road for achieving fame is paved with several glamorous events and functions and has durations of a few hours. If the user does not use the in-app purchases to speed up things, the events take even more time to finish up and conclude. For such situations, ten minutes before the completion and end of the game, the users are sent a notification from the game, stating: “Your (glamorous event) is over in 10! Get as many stars as you can!”
This message proves out to be very useful because:
- The players get an urgent notice that they only have 10 minutes left for acting before the event ends.
- Users get a clear idea of what is requested and expected from them.
- The users get highly motivated as if they do not comply with the notification, and then there might be a situation when they lose the progress made in the event.
Conclusion:
These are some highly effective and proven ways for gaining a higher user retention rate for the game or the app. As they are already successful ones, any game publisher and developer can use them to get a good result. Game App Development Company uses the best and proven user retention rate management ways to make sure that the developed app or game receives immense success.