J. Tseng App Engagement Dynamics Social Developer Summit

Increasing Application Engagement

Presented by:

Manu Rekhi, GM of MySpace Games, Developer Platform & Content

Jeff Tseng, CEO/Co-Founder of Kontagent

MySpace Users Love Games

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MySpace…

• Has more than 113 million monthly active users

• Sees 100,000 signups every day

• Users spent a total of 9.1 billion minutes on the site

MySpace Gamers…

• Spends 2x longer on MySpace than non-game players

• The top 100 apps on MySpace by DAU see avg. usage of over 7 minutes a day per user.

• Some games see as high as nearly 25 minutes per user a day.

• We have tens of thousands of Games and Apps total.

Kontagent is the leading provider social analytics for social games

Tracking 500+ social games and applications

Tracking over 12M DAU

Tracking over 50M MAU

Kontagent

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4. TRACK

Funnel Approach to A/B Testing for engagement (exclude new users)

Messages Sent/Posted - # of outbound messages/per user Used to optimize engagement if messages are sent to existing

users A/B test to optimize the call to action

Acceptance or click-through - ratio of user interactions with a viral msgs Used to optimize engagement A/B test to optimize CTR

Engagement w/ Viral A/B Testing

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3. EXPERIMENT

• Test assumptions every day• Organize around small nimble teams• Be results oriented• Define success metrics

Experiment

Viral Message A/B Testing

Min Average Max Max vs. AvgInvites Sent/Event 3.9 4.3 4.9 +12%Conversion 6% 8% 11% +35%Accepted/Event 0.25 0.35 0.47 +34%

Application A - A/B Tests (50K+ MAU)


Application B - A/B Tests (700K+ MAU)

Kontagent App - A/B Tests (50K+ MAU)


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2. LISTEN AND LEARN

Research shows that users are more likely to invite friends to apps with high production values

Focus on Quality

Graphics

PLOT

story

refe

ren

ces

challenge

battles

interaction

propertiesch

ap

ters

fightsentertainment

customization

leisureleisure

competitioncompetition

• Graphics and plot are this games strong and engaging features

• Theme is also a strong value.

• Competition and game mechanics also seem to be important for engagement.

• Needs work on customization

"It’s a bit of an addictive game, competitive, and does have a social feeling to it being able to communicate to my "mob" friends etc.“(female user on why she likes Mobsters)

“Once you were the top player it felt like a good achievement." (female user about games)

"I like it because I have a lot of friends that play and I’ve met a lot of new people playing." (male user about why he likes games)

"These games (...) are always improving and offering something new to the games which urges you to return." (male user about games)

User Feedback

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1. ITERATE

Lather, Rinse and Repeat

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CASE STUDY

Track and Experiment - Deep dive

Complex flows can’t be analyzed using funnels

Split A/B Testing can be used to see if a change is effective

Split users cohorts by behavior, user attributes, time, random

General Idea: Group users and look for differences in behavior then to select the optimal one

Using Split A/B Testing to Improve Monetization

Case Study: Split A/B Testingwith User Timelines

Observation: Initial users pay a lot, but the majority of money is made later

Hypothesis: Increase monetization touch points further in the game

Methodology: Make changes to one group of users and split A/B test

0 100 200 300 400 500 6000%

20%

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Cumulative Monetization vs. Visit #

Visit #% M

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0 100 200 300 400 500 6000

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Monetization Events vs. Visit #

Visit #

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Selecting Cohorts for Testing

Test Setup: Compare 2 time based cohorts 392K average DAUs for Original Cohort 381K average DAUs for Test Cohort

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 -

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

DAUs

Original CohortTest Cohort

Days

Use

rs

Test Results:Cumulative Monetization Events

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2,000

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6,000

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10,000

Cumulative Monetization Events


Days

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Test Results:Monetization Timeline

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Monetization Events vs. Visit #


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Test Results:Cumulative Monetization Timeline

Results Original Cohort: 6,943 monetization events Test Cohort: 8,088 monetization events

Improvement: +16% increase monetization events in Test Cohort

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 -

2,000

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Cumulative Mon. Events vs. Visit #


Visit #

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1. Simple Funnel/conversion A/B Testing Optimize viral behavior

2. Split A/B Testing Used to measure the effect of more complex

behaviors

Summary of Testing Methodologies

Improving Engagement: What Makes a Sticky Game?

- Quality is king- Graphics, theme, and game plot are key

- Ability to play with and without friends- Strengthens bonds, allows you to maintain your social ties.

- Game play is intuitive and easy- Emotional attachment- Ability to level-up- Achievements

- Make them public

- Enable self expression- Customization is specially important among female gamers and RPGs.

- Competition and bragging rights- No ending to the game, ever changing and growing.

- keep users interested, adapt the game.

QUESTIONS?

J. Tseng App Engagement Dynamics Social Developer Summit

Entertainment & Humor

Transcript of J. Tseng App Engagement Dynamics Social Developer Summit