Electronic Arts, Xsolla talk 5 best ways to make money with mobile game

Making money is a big challenge and a big goal in today’s mobile games market – but there are also new opportunities as the world changes. Direct sales to consumers, or online stores, have proven to be the key to unlocking new revenue streams and player loyalty. At this year’s GamesBeat Next, Berkley Egenes, Xsolla’s chief marketing and growth officer, spoke with Josephine Friday, senior director, global business BD at Xsolla; Danny Moy, chief strategy officer of SciPlay; and Manish Tiwari, senior director, product management at Electronic Arts, on the best practices for launching a successful web store.

Best practice #1: Quality is king

Naturally there are conflicts when you ask the user to leave the app to pay or take any kind of action, to go outside of the app to pay or take some action, said Moy, so be clear about the value of the prop is the important thing here. . That includes offering things you can’t find anywhere else, huge packages that attract whales and so on – but you can also offer a new kind of relationship with your players.

“This is where you can interact directly with us as a game director,” Moy explained. “We create a lot of one-on-one relationships with our players. It means they talk to our CS people. They talk to a VIP host. A lot of players appreciate that. If I run into problems though “Anytime I have questions about the game or if I feel like I’m not being held back, I want to be able to talk to someone.”

Best practice #2: Minimize conflict everywhere

A quality prop brings the player into the store, but the price itself, the checkout process, is an unavoidable obstacle, especially the first time. But the online store is aimed at gamers, Tiwari said, which means you can lure them into the conversion funnel using game essentials.

“If the player is willing to go through that conflict, he will be rewarded adequately for doing the initial verification, entering the web store, making the first purchase and re-purchasing,” he said. “If you reward the player throughout the entire shopping experience on the website, you will see that your engaged players will deal with these conflicts and create a new habit.”

But without the payment or the experience of paying, it can also be fixed with things like joining the community, rather than returning the player to the game after they buy, Moy added.

“I just bought a bunch of coins, a bunch of stuff. How can I make it compatible with the game with as little friction as possible?” he said. “You want the person to go back to the game and make sure it reflects everything they just bought. to use it. The whole experience of moving from one place to another, you want to minimize friction as much as possible. Once that’s smoothed out, it’s reflected back to the core experience. Players feel trust in each other. It becomes part of their daily routine.”

Best practice #3: Get the word out

You need to communicate the quality of your online store, but on mobile platforms, TOS limits the ways you can connect with your players.

“The great thing is that you can promote on social media, your YouTube channel, your Discord within the game,” Tiwari said. “Ask players to join this out-of-app marketing channel and use that channel to promote all the value you’ll offer in the web store.”

Another factor that works is the community, Moy said.

“Serve existing players in the online store and enjoy the experience,” he said. “Let them tell the other players and help you communicate. Maybe they will reward them for doing that.”

Best practice #4: Take advantage of LiveOps

Online Stores make LiveOps easy to stage, easy to scale and promote, and easy to attract players. LiveOps is also an important part of building the buying process, Tiwari said.

“If you want more players to have this habit of visiting your B2C store, everything that happens in the game, you connect it to your B2C store, make it a fun center with and new content that is already entering the game,” he said. “The novelty of the platform will always bring players back.”

But it’s important to fully integrate it into the gaming experience, Moy said.

“Don’t think of it as something isolated or isolated. Treat it as part of your game,” he said. “When people come here, make sure it’s personalized for their behavior, their experience, their current situation or situation. they see in the game. Don’t try to do the same thing. You want to create a great player experience and close the loop. ”

That builds confidence and assures players that this is just an extension of the game, not a different payment website.

Best practice #5: Continuous process

The main advantage of online shopping is that you have all the information of your player, throughout the journey, which gives you informed decisions and opportunities to improve.

“If you go back, especially in free-to-play mobile games, it’s about optimization, A/B testing and tweaking,” Moy said. “It’s the same with an online store. Don’t just build it once, let it sit there and expect it to continue to work and scale. Just like you’re playing a game of you, you are using your online store.”