devtodev: the regularity of inputs is the most important indicator of the monetization of the game
Payments to the game are usually made by loyal users. The more loyal they are, the more they spend. Vasily Sabirov, representing the analytical service devtodev.com I decided to confirm this thesis in practice by measuring user loyalty and evaluating its connection with monetization.
User loyalty is measured through an indicator, which in the gaming industry is also called the “sticky factor” (sticky factor). The latter is calculated as the ratio of the daily audience to the monthly (DAU to MAU).
Editor’s note: In fact, this relationship has plenty of names. Vasily, in a conversation with us, noted that some call this parameter “stickiness” (here is a literal translation of the English stickiness). But here the word acquires a negative connotation, so it’s not quite right to use it. We are at App2Top.ru usually we write “engagement”, coming from the English engagement.
The described attitude indicates the regularity of user inputs during the month: the more regularly users log into the application, the higher the “stick factor”.
Editor’s note: Vasily clarifies that if it is not possible to calculate the DAU/MAU (for example, due to the fact that the game has just been released), you can safely take the weekly number of active users (WAU) instead of the monthly number of active users (MAU). According to him, “this metric is also indicative when measuring the regularity of user inputs.” To our question whether it is possible to extrapolate WAU to MAU, Vasily answered positively. He also noted that, on average, the MAU is, for obvious reasons, two times less than the WAU (if we compare the first weeks after launch with the first month after launch). In other words, some general pattern can be traced.
If we assume that each user enters the game every day for a month, then DAU = WAU = MAU, and therefore the “stick factor” is equal to one hundred percent.
But how achievable is this, and does this indicator really affect the commercial success of the game?
To answer this question, we are in devtodev.com We analyzed about 100 mobile games and calculated the average values of the “stick factor” for the first three months of 2015.
The average value of the indicator was 18%, while the minimum value was 4%, and the maximum value was 37%.
Then we calculated the correlation between the “stick factor” and income. The correlation was 50-60%, depending on the category of the game. This suggests that there is certainly a link between the “stick factor” and income, but it is not so strong that it can be said that only the ratio of DAU to MAU affects income.
This is quite logical: the “stick factor” does not take into account the price level in the project and the percentage of paying players, the economic balance and the benefits of paid use of the game. However, at the same time, the “stick factor” is an excellent indicator of measuring user loyalty (activity), which (and now this is confirmed by data) is the most important indicator affecting the monetization of the project.
Now let’s combine our calculations with data from open sources in one table so that you have something to compare the “stick factor” of your project with:
So it turns out that the “stick factor” is a kind of DAU-Jones index, it is an excellent tool for measuring user loyalty and, as a result, monetization. And, by the way, this is one of the indicators that Apple and Google use when ranking apps in stores.
