Is Your Mobile Game Thriving or just Surviving?
Someone once said, “practice makes perfect”. To that I say, “perfect practice makes perfect”. When tracking the wrong things one cannot possibly be expected to make progress doing the right ones. Similarly, in Mobile Marketing in analyizing vanity metrics vs actionable metrics, having high downloads, installs, and CTR’s is nice, but are those the real types of KPI’s (Key performance indicators) that are going to help you move forward in your business?
..Probably not.
The good news however is, ther are certain variables YOU CAN measure that should very well increase your chances of success by monitoring and analyizing the approriate metrics. In this article we’re going to touch on a few.
Shall we?
Engagement
Sessions/DAU
While self-explanatory to most, this refers to how many times the average DAU (Daily Active User) initiates a session in your game. A solid number of sessions per DAU is around 3, but it also depends on the genre of your app.
I.E.
Games like RPGs will tend to have longer but fewer Sessions per DAU while endless runners and games with shorter sessions can easily exceed 4 or 5 Sessions per DAU.
DAU & MAU
The ratio of DAU/MAU (Monthly Active Users) indicates how “sticky” a game is. A game with a strong DAU/MAU ratio should be able to maintain a value of 0.2 or more for an extended period of time.
Note: When comparing this between games running a user acquisition campaign, the ratio will be skewed upward.
Retention
As of now, there are two solid ways to measure retention. One simple example would be: Assuming the day the user downloads the game is Day 0. If the user starts a session on Day 1, they are considered retained. If they do not start a session, they are not retained. This calculation is made each day for the cohort of users that downloaded the game on the same calendar date.
When calculating retention this way, strong retention benchmarks (provided by W3i) are as follows:
Day 1: 35-40%
Day 3: 20-25%
Day 7: 15%
Day 30: 5%
Again, percentages will vary depending on if it’s an endless runner or level based game as they simply don’t have the longevity to match retention of an RPG or Player vs. Player game.
The second way to calculate retention, (revisiting our original example). Assuming the user initiates a session on Day 1 and is considered retained. They then take a break for Days 2-5. On Day 6 they come back and start another session. Some notable analytics providers calculate retention by filling in Days 2-5 and marking the user as retained. The standard for this style of retention right now is to mark the user as retained for 7 days before and after a session.
This approach looks at retention as more of a long term approach, the retention of a user over their lifetime with the game. Note that, the user during this period is not being counted as a DAU on Days 2-5, and since they are not initiating sessions. The ranges for this style of retention are much broader since a significant amount of data is being estimated. With that in mind, strong lifetime retention benchmarks (provided by W3i) are shown below:
Day 1: 60-65%
Day 3: 50-55%
Day 7: 40-45%
Day 30: 20%
Neither style of calculating retention is more correct than the other. Just make sure you compare them on an apple-apple’s basis.
Monetization
The acronyms to follow as well as their descriptions are different actionable metrics and methods you can use to account whether you’re making progress, or simply spinning your wheels.
ARPDAU:
Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) is one of the most common monetization metrics in the mobile space. This gives developers a sense of how their game is performing on a daily basis. As a game’s DAU count climbs, some games that are very healthy financially may dip below this threshold, but for most games, $0.05 is a good first benchmark. Games with excellent monetization will have ARPDAUs between $0.15 and $0.25.
ARPU:
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) measures how much a game earns per user that has ever downloaded the game. While ARPDAU captures a day’s worth of data at a time, ARPU is measures the total monetization of an average user. The main difference between ARPU and LTV (discussed more below) is ARPU does not project how newly acquired users will monetize in the future. An ARPU of a certain value does not guarantee a financially successful game; it’s all relative to the cost of acquiring users.
LTV
Lifetime value (LTV) is a similar metric to the aforementioned ARPU. Lifetime Value takes into account what users have done since they downloaded the application, and also projects how those users will continue to spend in the future. There are multiple ways to project how user behavior will change over time. The basic end of the spectrum would be a linear projection, and the complex end of the range would be predictive analytics calculations.
Conversion Rate
In this case refers to how many users perform an In-App-Purchase (IAP). In most games, 1-2% of users will pay for virtual currency. In healthy games, the conversion rate is closer to 3-6%. Few games however, can boast a 10% conversion rate or higher, usually these are games that focus on a niche audience as opposed to mass market.
While there certainly are more metrics that could be accounted for, it’s important to determine first and foremost what type of results you’re trying to yield from your users. Inevitably, it’s more than likely centered around events that will lead to more revenue (regardless of your monetization method). This however, can only be achieved by measuring actionable metrics from segmented events that allows you better understand how you can increase the variables within those events.
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
