September of 2019 Lab Cave undertook an analysis of its title My High School Summer Party in an effort to increase installs and engagement for Google Play, after the pre-registration period did not bring the title a large enough volume of installs.
The analysis showed that the highest engaged users skewed older and female, rather than younger teenage aged players. The recommendation that came from this analysis was that a complete redesign of the title was necessary to maximise the attractiveness of the game to this most engaged profile of user.
Such a redesign can be high risk, but also high reward. Lab Cave decided to use SplitMetrics to test App Store assets and key metadata for their game. The combination of their own review and SplitMetrics’ insights, obtained by several A/B experiments, were absolutely crucial to the success of the newly titled Love & Dating Story. The revamp resulted in an install volume increase of over 300%.
Testing and having the ability to analyze data are key for successfully redesigning a live game storefront. It is always risky, but taking a look at the outcome of your experiments should always tell you the right way to go. Even if the results aren’t what you hoped for! For Lab Cave, testing helped us realize who the right target audience was and that helped us grow more than we initially forecasted.
For months, many A/B tests were run to test out new assets, a new title and in-game artwork. As the tests progressed a winning formula presented itself. While some tests were unsuccessful, others saw improvements of more than 30% compared to the original icons and screenshots.
Store page artwork for My High School Summer Party was originally bright, colourful and had a strong cartoon aesthetic (big eyes, simple/stylized character designs), targeting the game to its original intended audience of teenagers. Though this artwork was visually appealing, it was not resonating with the audience in the way it needed to.
Lab Cave’s creative team redesigned the artwork into a more mature, realistic style that was a better fit for the older audience profile and better communicated the overall aesthetic and experience of the game.
At this time Lab Cave also decided to test out key phrases in the store page assets that helped to better highlight the nature of the game to potential players. Words such as desire, romance, betrayal, seduction and fantasy proved to be popular and it was decided these would be placed underneath each store asset for players as they swiped through them. With the change in assets, conversion improved 43%, the single biggest change on-store since the game’s launch. The final asset lineup brought a further 14.2% increase in conversion against the control version. In fact, the winner showed a higher Engagement Rate (89.9%) and the longest Average Time on Page (13.80 seconds).
The most impactful change was a big one however, as the game title itself was completely revamped to better reflect the content of the game. Once Lab Cave changed their game’s title from My High School Summer Party to Love & Dating Story, installs increased exponentially. This happened because the correct audience of the game was reached with the new title, while the old title only reflected the plot of one of the playable stories within the game and thus was not as accurate in immediately conveying what the game was all about.
Often the issue with non-native testing tools is they can be clunky and tedious to use, but SplitMetrics was a piece of cake. With a powerful tool that took our A/B testing to the next level and always-available customer support, we felt in very safe hands with SplitMetrics.
Through effective A/B testing with SplitMetrics, Lab Cave was able to find the right formula for Love & Dating Story to reach the most-engaged audience profile for the game. Lab Cave was also able to get a deeper insight into user behaviour on the product’s pages. Learn more about more about A/B testing statistical significance.
Overall, the changes led to huge growth for Love & Dating Story, with 314% increase in installs in the Google Play Store and a 49% increase in the Apple App Store.
