In the conclusion to our guide to mobile game monetization, which began here, we will be looking at how to avoid common pitfalls that might spell doom for your monetization efforts. Let’s have a look:
Okay, let’s say you’ve picked out and configured monetization model(s) for your game. You have a good feeling everything will work as planned. After all, you put a lot of thought into all of this.
Now what? Testing. A lot of it. You should start A/B testing different monetization features in the beta phase.
By testing, you can find out what’s working and what’s not. With it, you may find out some features work as planned, while others need some tweaking. Testing can also show you that no matter how much you like something, you might need to remove it because it’s simply not working.
But what if you really, really like a feature, but it works horribly? Lose it. When it comes to monetization, there is no room for emotional attachments. It’s only the results that matter.
What Can You Test?
One of the greatest things about mobile games is that you can test almost everything.
Let me give you some examples. If your game includes in-app ads, you might find out that you’re displaying too many ads. That means that you should try reducing the number of ad placements in the game.
Another thing you can discover is that players are reacting negatively to a certain ad format. With this in mind, you should consider focusing on other ad formats. In-app purchase monetization also requires testing. There is no better way to determine what you should offer your players and how much you should charge them.
For example, you may find out that players aren’t responding well to the offers in your store. This means you should try to test different price points and offers. In order to A/B test any of this, you should split your audience into two groups. For one group, you leave the existing features. For the other, you try something new. Then, you keep on doing this until you finally get the results you’re happy with.
However, the testing doesn’t stop here. After you launch the game, you should keep testing monetization features. There is always room for improvement.
Importance of Keeping Players
A lot of monetization guides say, “Think about retention before monetization.”
What does this mean? User retention is a metric that tells you how good your game is at keeping players. Sadly, it’s well known that players naturally tend to lose interest in games early on. For a monetization strategy to work, the game should be able to retain players.
How do you do this? Well, you do everything in your power to make the game as engaging as possible. To achieve this, developers usually rely on some tried and true retention techniques. This includes:
- Push notifications
- Social features
- In-game events
- Daily rewards
For the best results, you should aim to include more than one retention tool in your game. Whatever your game’s genre is, you should aim to improve retention rates. However, for some games, retention is more important than for others.
These are the games that monetize with in-app purchases. The thing is, these games need to convince their players to spend money. This is not an easy task, and it usually takes time. Therefore, the longer players play, there is the higher chance they will open their wallets.
Wrapping up
Hopefully, this series of articles helped you better understand mobile game monetization. Now, you should be ready to read some more advanced stuff. We’ll be covering more in-depth topics in later posts, so be sure to stick around for those. In the mean time, be sure to share any suggestions you may have in the comments below.