7 Essential Tips to Retain Your Users on Your Game Portal
Game portals are always busy developing and preparing engaging and visually appealing content to maximize their profits through various monetization strategies. While creating attractive gaming content is essential, it's not the sole factor in a platform's success.
Attracting new users can be expensive and time-consuming, that’s why retaining them becomes even more critical.?
Beyond keeping your portal stocked with the right content, focusing on seemingly minor yet impactful details can significantly improve user experience and set your platform apart in the long run.
A portal that fails to retain users will struggle to cover its costs. Remember, if user acquisition costs $1, each user needs to generate a lifetime value (LTV) exceeding $1 to ensure profitability.
Prioritize user engagement and value creation to prevent them from leaving before maximizing their lifetime value to your platform.
Let’s uncover the 7 essential factors that drive effective portal management:
I. Focus on Portal Performance & Optimal Gaming Experiences
From the user's point of view, smooth performance is king. You can have all the bells and whistles, but if your portal and games don't run flawlessly, users won't stick around. Prioritize optimal performance to keep them engaged and coming back for more.
Today's gamers expect a smooth and responsive experience.? Even minor bugs, delays, or glitches can lead to frustration and user churn. Prioritize performance optimization and a bug-free environment to keep your users engaged and happy. Doing so will minimize user frustration and keep them coming back for more.
Needless to say, overlooking performance issues can be a death knell for your platform.?While it's a well-known principle, load times significantly impact user experience. Studies suggest that users expect websites to load within 3 seconds, and exceeding that can lead to frustration and abandonment.
While the ideal time may vary depending on content complexity, prioritizing fast-loading speeds is crucial for keeping your players engaged.?
A portal that delivers exceptional performance – smooth, fast loading, and consistently accessible – can significantly reduce user churn.
Technical issues, even seemingly minor ones like bugs and delays, are major drivers of user abandonment.
While attracting users with trendy games is important, retaining them requires focusing on performance. Long loading times are a major turnoff for players, and prioritizing hot titles over optimization can backfire.
Large file sizes and unoptimized code can significantly impact loading times, leading to user frustration and increased leaving rate. While optimization techniques can help reduce game size, it's crucial to maintain a balance with quality.??
For example, a simple puzzle game wouldn't justify an extended loading time, but users might be more forgiving for a visually stunning and complex title.
Ensuring smooth performance goes beyond the game itself – compatibility with various user devices is crucial. Before publishing, identify the most common devices used by your target audience.
While web games boast broad device compatibility, functionality can vary across different devices and operating systems. Our experience in providing web games to publishers reveals that unaddressed compatibility issues can render games unplayable or frustrating for some users.
Rigorous testing is key! Ensure your games function flawlessly across various devices before publishing. This includes popular browsers like Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari, as user preferences can vary significantly.
Another method is using user behavior analytics tools like HotJar and Microsoft Clarity to understand the most common devices used to access your portal.
Additionally, Google Analytics provides detailed insights into specific device models for even deeper audience profiling.
Choosing the right game server for your online portal requires expert advice.? While ongoing maintenance and updates are essential, the first step is finding a server with the best specifications for your needs.
Here's where an expert comes in: they can help you consider factors like budget, technical expertise, and the potential for future growth (scalability) to recommend the ideal server options for you.
Below are some of the options you can use:
When choosing a game server, it's crucial to consider the following factors:
II. Responsive Design: Ensuring a Seamless Experience Across Devices
According to statistics from Exploring Topics, mobile traffic accounted for a staggering 56% of total web traffic in 2023.
This means over half of your website visitors access it from mobile devices. This is a significant portion of your audience that cannot be ignored.
Therefore, making your portal mobile-friendly and paying attention to your games’ reactivity is not just an option; it's a necessity.
Of course, some popular games are only designed for landscape screens and can be played only in this mode. However, it will not conflict with the user's device.?
For example, you can check out the Dummies World Cup game, an enjoyable game with landscape gameplay. It is only important that the games are compatible with the device that your audience is using, from smartphones to desktops and tablets.
In any case, you should constantly improve and review the UI of your portal to ensure that your games and website are available to players in the best possible way.
On the other hand, you should test the games for responsiveness with different devices before publishing them.
III. Create High Levels of Engagement with Your Users
Building strong player engagement is the lifeblood of any successful game portal. Just like any other business, understanding your audience is crucial for growth.? For game portals, this translates to fostering a strong relationship with your players.
Such an engagement allows you to continuously improve your platform based on their needs and preferences.
Let's take a peek at some of the key strategies employed by thriving game portals to boost player engagement:
IV. Empower Players by Cultivating a Sense of Ownership
By empowering players to feel valued and heard, you can create a platform that truly resonates with your users’ needs and preferences.?
Here's how to create this sense of ownership:
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Actively seek player feedback across various aspects of your portal, from game releases to portal improvements.
Demonstrate genuine respect for their insights and incorporate them into your development decisions.
Provide easy-to-access communication channels for players to connect with you and share their feedback. This could include forums, social media groups, or dedicated feedback forms.
Leverage player data and preferences to deliver personalized game recommendations. This ensures that players are constantly discovering new and engaging content that aligns with their interests.
Empower players to organize their games into personal categories, such as "Favorite Games," "Action Games," or "Adventure Games." This personalization enhances the user experience and allows players to easily access their preferred content.
Implement a recommendation engine that suggests games similar to those a player has enjoyed. This feature can introduce players to new and exciting titles while keeping them engaged within your portal.
V. Offer Them a Valuable Reason to Play for
What motivates your audience to engage in gaming? Is it solely for entertainment??
Personally, I find Poki to be a captivating platform, easily consuming hours of my time. However, typically, regardless of my ranking or scores, I move on to more pressing matters.
I only revisit gaming platforms when I want to play my favorite game or explore new releases on well-known game portals.
Players on Poki usually seek entertainment, but they could easily switch to other platforms. While this isn't inherently wrong, offering stronger incentives can enhance player retention for you.
Think about motivations like maintaining the current rankings, achieving high scores, earning real money, or generating income.
These factors can significantly bolster player engagement and loyalty to your portal.
VI. Optimizing In-Game Ad Display
It's important to consider the impact of excessive advertising on your users' experience. Overloading them with ads can lead to dissatisfaction and ultimately drive them away.
On the other hand, if you minimize advertising in your game, it may result in lower revenue. However, there are three key factors to keep in mind when incorporating in-game advertising:
Considering the available options in gameplay, this game has the potential to display more advertisements.
As an example, consider an optional game with similar features to Block Up Puzzle:
With its features and options available, this game has a lot of room for more ad display compared to other games.
Undoubtedly, there are crucial considerations for implementing an in-game ad system and improving advertising revenue.
We've discussed these points in detail in the article "8 Tips for Improving In-Game Advertising Revenue," which can certainly be helpful.
VII. Do a Thorough Quality Assurance?
Proper testing and QA teams for games before their release and introduction to players can prevent potential technical issues.
You can surely imagine how frustrating and discouraging it can be to encounter game glitches. Making sure the games you release perform properly is crucial.
Testing and examining games isn't only reserved for pre-release. Remember to regularly monitor and test your portals and games.
Continuously assess games from a player's perspective and consider what changes could enhance them and bring them closer to your audience's preferences. Depending on your budget, strive to update and keep games current.
Additionally, keep in mind that your popular games will likely need more attention than others. Throughout a game's lifespan, games with levels may require additions of new levels or even transitioning to endless gameplay (by adding automatic level generators or a large number of levels, etc.).?
Similarly, for levelless and endless games, try to prevent monotony and player fatigue by adding new features, challenges, or even changing themes, colors, and aesthetics to keep the gameplay engaging for players.
The Bottom Line
All seven points mentioned in this article are crucial for keeping a portal lively. However, improving and maintaining a portal involves a lot of different factors.
Take a moment now to think about your own portal and how you can make it better, considering the advice shared here.
In addition to what's been discussed, think about features like having different categories and tags to make it easy for players to find games and include a search function.
I wrote this article after looking at various portals and listening to what our audience needs at DoonDookStudio.
My goal is to create more content that helps improve gaming businesses and provides solutions that work.?
So, if you're facing any specific challenges in this area, I'd love to hear about them and see how we can help.
Game Artist at DoonDookStudio
11 个月Great