How Gaming Analytics are driving the future of Gaming

Basic metrics such as DAU, MAU, Retention, device etc… are a good way to determine the effectiveness and future potential of gaming sites. But how are these analytics driving the future of gaming?

Analyzing Gaming metrics effectively allows companies to determine who is using their sites/games. It helps them answer questions like where these users are coming from? How much revenue is generated and from which users? Which games and activities are users engaging in most frequently and for what duration?

Which games/site ares are they engaging in when they first enter your site? etc...

Gaming companies can get started by utilizing analytics to establish current baselines and benchmarks for their games. Once we understand how the users behave, we can measure other variables such as the impact of game and website updates, user strategy alterations, determine where the most profitable customers are coming from and more...

First and foremost, a good understanding of Gaming Analytics is necessary in order to develop and maintain effective promotional, marketing, business and user strategies.

Here are some of the most commonly used Gaming Analytics that you will need to know:

Traffic Source -

This metric refers to where the customers are coming from.

Organic Traffic: Visitors that enter a related keyword in a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc..) and then click on your website in the search results. This traffic can be optimized to the website through SEO, SEM and more (we will discuss this in future blogs)

Direct traffic : Visitors that come to the site from typing the website url directly

Referral traffic: Visitors that come to the site from clicking on a url located on another website such as blog, newsletter, social media platform, white paper etc.

Campaign traffic: Visitors that come to the website by clicking on a campaign or ad.

Retention

Retention tells us how many users who started using the gaming site and are continuing to use the game over time. This let's us know how engaging our games are and can be important in developing ways to increase retention of our customers. This is very important in subscription based gaming sites as well as making informed decisions on what games should be continued, expanded and improved.

DAU - Daily Active Users

This refers to the daily amount of “active” users on the site or app. In Gaming analytics this metric refers to more than just visitors to the site, it refers to visitors that engage the site by playing a game, commenting, or engaging specific areas of the site. This is an important number to know when determining how many customers are actively engaging our site on a daily basis.

MAU – Monthly Active Users

Monthly active users indicate how many people are actively engaging the site during the month. We can divide MAU by the DAU to determine what percentage of the monthly users are also regular daily users.

ARPDAU – Average Revenue per daily active user

This is the average amount of money spent by the people who use the site on a daily basis. Are they purchasing games? Making in game purchases? Buying subscriptions? Etc…

This very important metric and helps us understand how the website is performing.

Usage – by Device

This is the type of device people are using with the games and our site. This metric can help us understand and explore why different types of games or apps. are used on certain devices more or less than others. This information can be used to improve game play for certain devices and develop marketing strategies that focus on which game and devices the games are most successful.

EED – entry event distribution

EED tells us where the members are going first and/which games they are choosing to play first on the site. This is very important information from a website functionality and marketing perspective. Knowing which games and pages the customers enter through most frequently is essential to developing effective targeted marketing and business strategies.