To no surprise, “games” is the most popular category in the U.S. app stores. In 2013, mobile game usage grew by 66 percent, and the most recent estimates suggest users spend 40 percent of their total in-app time playing with, among other things, birds of varying temperaments. For game marketers, cracking the top 10 of the category requires approximately 65,000 daily downloads, over 10x as many needed for more typical categories. This high degree of competiveness leaves little margin for error.

So, how can today’s gaming app developers make sure they’re maximizing their apps’ potential without the risk of making mistakes out the gate?

Enter: Soft Launches

Soft launches help game developers identify potential problems before making the full leap onto the app store shelves. But testing everything and anything—from the app’s copy to the value of a tutorial—can be time consuming and expensive. Before beginning a soft launch, developers need to narrow their focus.

To refine potential testing points, identify what data needs to be collected in order to provide worthwhile feedback, and determine how the information collected will lead to tangible improvements. Common testing point questions usually fall among one of four categories: user experience, user retention, monetization, and virality.

Sample questions include:
· How are users interacting with your game?
· Is there functionality that players are not using at all?
· What threshold do they have to reach to become long-term players?
· How long does it take players to make a purchase?
· Are IAPs priced correctly?
· Are people sharing your app?
· Do you have the right sharing tools in place?

Once a hypothesis and testing method is determined, the next step is to select a representative market. Games released in the U.S., for instance, will typically soft launch in English-speaking countries like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

Game developers then need to decide on a tracking partner; User Acquisition (UA), User Experience (UX), or both. UA tracking focuses on app marketing and ROI, telling you information such as; where new users come from, how much they cost, and how much revenue they generated.

UX tracking, on the other hand, details what users do in your app: where churn occurs, what features they use and do not use, and where they get stuck. It also provides information on user flow, session length, and social sharing. Choosing a tracking partner is dependent on the prerequisite decisions.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Before rushing your game out to launch, make sure you pay close attention to the small details that are often overlooked. For example, spending to acquire users is more or less useless if your registration page doesn’t work. So, to get the best results, be mindful of the finer, but nevertheless important, details like:

· Links are working and directing to the correct pages
· Font and image formatting is correct
· Rating tools and comments are operative
· 3rd party integrations are active and working
· Images and content are in the correct sections
· Social sharing capabilities are working and directing to the correct link
· Servers can handle the weight of a large volume of users

When done correctly, soft launches can collect data that will suggest improvements on everything from improving user flow to monetizing more effectively. It’s a smart and strategic tool for app marketers looking to gain an advantage in an all-too competitive category.

 

By Oliver Clark, Director of Sales, EMEA at Fiksu. 

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