Case Study: Increasing Game Revenue Through Store Personalization — Game Garden
The studio Game Garden has a merge project called Florescence. Recently, the game introduced a personalized store. How it works and how much more effective it is compared to a non-personalized store was discussed by Natalia Mishulina, producer and creative director at Game Garden.
Natalia Mishulina
Game Garden is a mobile game studio based in Cyprus, known for its casual family games. The team recently launched a new project, Florescence. After a successful launch, the question of effective monetization arose.
Given the current high user acquisition costs (CPI) in the market, increasing LTV through in-game purchases became a priority for the team.
The Problem and Search for a Solution
Florescence is a merge game set in a floral greenhouse. The classic merge mechanic is complemented by room design meta elements, plant upgrades, and role-playing elements.
From the beginning, Florescence showed good potential to appeal to its target audience. The colorful visual content and engaging meta successfully met the goals set for them. The next important step for the team was to set up effective IAP monetization through the store.
Several areas needed work in this aspect. First, the store needed an expanded inventory and new sections. Second, there was a lack of segmentation and personalization in the store. Third, the store's architecture didn't offer the flexibility needed for experimentation.
In terms of architecture, the in-game store was hardcoded, requiring lengthy app releases for experiments and implementing any changes.
Example of in-game client code for stocking the store with items
Example of store content created by program logic. Players see a full range of all available items without segmentation
Even though this approach worked during the early life of the game, it became clear it wouldn't allow the project to reach its full potential as it grew.
Game Garden decided to use the Balancy platform to set up a flexible store with personalized offers in Florescence. In the first iteration, the team aimed to tailor the store display for different player segments based on their spending capabilities and resource shortages in the game.
Implementation of the Solution
A modern in-game store is flexible and dynamic. Gone are the days when stores were rigidly hardcoded with items and offers that remained unchanged month after month. Today, segmentation, personalization, and LiveOps are key levers for maximizing revenue and player retention.
To create a dynamic store in Florescence, the team moved all packs and bundles from the old store to the Balancy platform. Then the loaded packs and bundles were used like Lego bricks to create a new version of the store's main page.
Florescence store items with prices and contents
The main page flag indicates whether an item should be displayed in the store's standard version. Moreover, there is a segmentation layer implemented through overrides*, which changes these flags under certain conditions.
*Overrides allow developers to rewrite the standard game logic to new logic under specific conditions. For example, changing item prices for players from a specific country, replacing item icons with thematic ones during holidays, or displaying a specific item in the store for a particular user segment.
In the case of Florescence, segmentation is based on the player's resource amount and purchase history. The following configuration of the main page was created for players who spent over $30, have enough resources (water and fertilizers), but have a shortage of soil (less than 2,000 units):
Here's what the conditions look like for creating this user segment:
For those players who spend less, different offers should be displayed. Below is the configuration of the main page for players who also lack soil but have spent less than $30 or are non-paying:
By repeating this logic for resources (water and fertilizers), the store is set up and ready to offer players the resources they currently lack.
Results and Future Plans
The in-game store in Florescence is now personalized and dynamically adapts depending on the player's current situation. For example, a low-spending player without resources (soil and fertilizers) sees the following configuration:
Segmentation was one of the innovations the team implemented to enhance their store. Additionally, they revamped the old store version: added more price options, included themed sections, and introduced a daily sale section where players can buy an item at a discount, but only once a day (new themed sections are shown on the left in the screenshot above).
After working on store content and personalization:
- Store revenue increased by 41%. Revenue from all offers, including the store, increased by 11%.
- The store's share of total purchases increased by 46% in terms of the number of purchases and by 26% in terms of revenue.
- New "daily offers" in the bank became the leader in the number of purchases among all offers, surpassing the previous leader (carousel-type offers) by 1.5 times, and by 2 times in revenue.
- Positive revenue trends from the store are accompanied by the store cannibalizing other offers. Therefore, the team is gradually transferring other offers to Balancy to enable segmentation by payer tiers. This is a potential growth point for the project.
These intermediate results are one step on the journey to creating effective monetization in Florescence. The task involves numerous improvements in the store, offer system, and overall game balance. Thus, at this stage, it was crucial to create a flexible foundation for future experiments.
