[Huawei Developers] shikkerimath:
Jianghu Games, founded in 2018, is an emerging game publisher in China that releases, operates, and provides services for online games. Their 3D masterpiece Tata Empire, a tower defense game, as well as a range of other whimsical games, have brought in substantial monthly revenue for Jianghu Games, and have been highly acclaimed. Jianghu Games has teamed up with HUAWEI Analytics Kit, to continue to enhance its user experience and deliver premium games, by exploring user behavioral trends, with the aim of optimizing its products and operations strategies accordingly.

Analytics Kit has proven especially crucial by helping Tata Empire pursue high-precision, data-driven operations.

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As noted by Yang Jiasong, Chief Operating Officer of Jianghu Games, the platform used to face formidable challenges: "Prior to using Analytics Kit, we had to rely on our experience in product design and operations, or make adjustments by learning other companies' examples. Without a data analysis platform, we were unable to quantify the effects of product iterations and operations. However, building such a platform on our own would cost a lot, and require an annual investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars," Yang said. "Fortunately, with Huawei's one-stop analysis platform, the operations team is now able to quickly verify their assumptions and optimize strategies through visualized data reports, so long as they have integrated the Analytics SDK and set tracing points for the reported business data. This helps us grow our business, with data as the driving force."

Testing game materials + real-time monitoring: key to attracting users

Mobile gaming is an intensely competitive field. When a new game enters the market, the leading issue is bringing in traffic. However, determining cause and effect can be tricky, as it correlates to multiple factors. The operations team of Tata Empire divided this process into two phases: from impression to download, and from download to registration.

From impression to download: After coming across a recommended game on an app store, users will consider numerous factors when choosing whether to download the game, such as how attractive the game name and icon are to them, and whether they are satisfied with the game description.

From download to registration: The registration success rate is subject to a wide range of factors, including the game package size, network speed, privacy permission, function authorization, file decompression speed, updates, splash screens, animations, SDK loading process, and identity verification mechanism.

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The entire process is funnel-shaped, and the first step for attracting traffic is in how the game is presented at first glance. That is why the operations team started off by rigorously studying icon design.

"Before applying icons to game packaging, we first took a vote in our company, and selected two icons as character profile pictures. Both had distinctive storytelling attributes and dramatic tension. However, the results of the voting represented the preferences of just a small group of personnel within our company, not those of users. In other words, the result must be verified in the market," explained the head of operations for Tata Empire.

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The Tata Empire operations team made use of the A/B testing and real-time monitoring functions in Analytics Kit, in order to observe user preferences with regard to which icons were used. They found that when the game materials were released at 10:00, traffic increased dramatically. However, the growth rate was not as robust as expected during the lunch break. Therefore, the operations team changed the materials accordingly, and benefited from the expected traffic boom in the evening.

Using a funnel to locate the root cause of user churn, to improve conversion

The operations team of Tata Empire created a funnel for the key path of user registration, in order to keep an eye on the conversion status during each step, from installation to registration, and design targeted strategies to improve the registration conversion rate. According to the results from the funnel analysis model, users churned mainly during the game loading and splash screen phases, leading to less than 50% of users successfully registered, which undermined new user conversion.

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By saving the churned users as an audience, and utilizing the audience analysis and event analysis functions, the operations team found that the churned users were mainly on relatively inexpensive devices. In addition, testing on real devices indicated that the game launch speed on such devices was rather slow. To reduce players' waiting time, some nodes were removed from the new version, including animations, splash screens, and interludes, after which, the operations team leveraged the funnel analysis function in Analytics Kit to compare the earlier and new versions. The conversion rate of the new version soared to 65.16%, an increase of over 20%, meeting the team's initial expectations.

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New users ≠ Retained users. Attracting new users while retaining existing users

The operations team is aware that new users are not necessarily retained users. After players download the game, the operations team now pays more attention to players' conversion status during key steps, user retention differences across different channels, and conversion trends across different phases throughout the user lifecycle. It is only by obtaining in-depth insights into user behavior, that they are able to enhance user experience and boost user loyalty.

Targeting users with optimal precision

Retention and payment are core indicators that reflect how effective a game is at attracting users. The retention analysis and event analysis reports provided by Analytics Kit indicated that the user retention and payment rates for new Tata Empire users from various channels were below average. One possible reason related to the acquisition of non-target users.

In the past, the operations team had mainly concentrated on game styles, themes, and content simulations. Character profile pictures consumed a majority of the game materials, with game tactics as a supplement. In order to better attract target users, the team decided to adjust the presentation of Tata Empire, highlighting it as a tower defense game. Test results showed that defense tower materials feature an excellent click-through rate and ability to attract traffic. Unsurprisingly, Tata Empire has seen an increase in new users upon the introduction of such materials.

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Note: Above data is for reference only.

As a result, the operations team expanded the scope of materials from defense towers to archer towers, and gun turrets, among others, gradually accumulating a more targeted and stable user base.

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Flexible and open audience segmentation, to facilitate precision marketing

Analytics Kit supports flexible audience creation, based on user attributes and behavior events. For example, it detects behavioral characteristics of active users, and precisely sends push notifications and scenario-specific in-app messages, to enhance user activity and stimulate conversion.

The retention analysis results can be saved with just a click, based on which the operations team can send periodic messages to users who have stopped using the app for a certain period of time.

Analytics Kit also enables the operations team to save churned users as an audience with a click, and send SMS messages, in-app messages, and push notifications to these users to facilitate conversion.

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"Analytics Kit strictly complies with GDPR regulations and satisfies our requirements on data security management and control," noted Yang Jiasong. "In addition, it eliminates the barriers between user data on different device platforms, and provides multi-dimensional drill-down analysis, flexible audience segmentation, and multiple channels to reach users, offering us an end-to-end precise operations solution. Thanks to this, our operations team has been able to make informed decisions in line with the data, and the workload of our technical personnel has been reduced as well. Our teams can now focus their attention on in-depth data analysis and mining, new versions, and strategy optimization, which have led to increased success in the market."

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Analytics Kit occupies a unique role, as a one-stop digital, intelligent data analysis platform tailored to meet the needs of enterprises' cross-departmental and cross-role personnel. It offers scenario-specific data collection, management, and analysis, and gives app operators the tools they need to pursue winning business strategies.

Our official website: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/hms/huawei-analyticskit?ha_source=hms1

Demo for Analytics Kit: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/service/josp/agc/index.html#/myProject?ha_source=hms1

Android SDK:https://developer.huawei.com/consum...d-dev-process-0000001050163813?ha_source=hms1

iOS SDK:https://developer.huawei.com/consum...s-dev-process-0000001050168431?ha_source=hms1

Web SDK:https://developer.huawei.com/consum...t-dev-process-0000001051145662?ha_source=hms1

Quick APP SDK:https://developer.huawei.com/consum...p-dev-process-0000001077610568?ha_source=hms1