作者：Catherine Mylinh

不论你正处于手机应用开发的早期阶段，还是已经发行了游戏并拥有大量的用户基础，你都可以从其他已经取得成功的社交应用开发商身上学习相关的经验教训，并以此作为先机而鼓励自己争取成功。

以下是Kontagent Konnect关于Gaia Online的CEO Mike Sego的访问Gaia Online已经凭借《Monster Galaxy》在Facebook和iOS平台上都取得了巨大的成功。首先，Mike Sego与我们谈论了该公司是如何利用其在社交平台和手机平台所积攒的经验教训而获得成功，其中包括：

Mike-Sego

能够推动手机游戏获取成功的重要参数

如何利用F2P模式获得盈利

如何在iOS平台上成功地进行分离测试

其它能够提高用户粘性与用户留存的策略

对于那些想要实现社交平台和手机平台转化的开发者来说，他们最需要重视的基本原理是什么？并且这些基本原理是否也同时适用于手机游戏开发者？

将我们在Facebook中所学习到的知识应用于手机游戏开发中，能够有效地帮助我们在手机领域获取巨大的成功。

以内容而言，机制对于提高手机游戏和社交游戏的用户粘性，用户留存以及盈利都至关重要。包括任命机制，能量机制，或者留给玩家更多好奇，设计一些难以达到的特定目标，并让玩家只有在到达某些特定关卡时才能获得等——在所有过程中始终保持用户体验的一致性。

当提到社交游戏或手机游戏时，我们都发现免费模式已经成为最能够吸引用户的一种方法。除此之外，你还需要密切观察这些用户所创造的转化漏斗，一旦有新用户安装了你的应用，你就需要分析他们在游戏中的每个关卡或者每个阶段所采取的行动。当你发现大部分用户在同一个阶段同时离开游戏时，你就应该问自己“是否应该关闭这个关卡？是因为这个关卡太困难？还是太简单？我可以添加哪些新的机制让玩家愿意继续游戏？”

当你继续开发游戏时，必须牢记要快速开发并发行游戏，并频繁地进行游戏测试。游戏测试至关重要，我们必须通过用户数据而不断调整并进行游戏迭代。做好这一点便能够帮助你进一步提高游戏的转化率。花费更多时间去管理并检查新用户体验将能够帮助游戏获得更大的收益。不管是对于社交游戏还是手机游戏。

你最关心的参数是什么？

与社交游戏一样，我们在手机游戏中需要面临的两大关键问题是，如何减少CAC（游戏邦注：用户获取成本）以及扩大LTV（游戏的终身价值）。归根到底就是指：我们要如何以最少的钱获取最多的玩家？并如何从这些玩家身上赚的更多收益？而其它内容也都始终围绕着这两个参数，因为基于这两个参数我们才能够判断一款游戏是否具有继续发展的潜质或者并不值得我们为此投入更多。

在经过较长一段时期后的用户留存

观察多少玩家坚持游戏，以及他们坚持了多久，是1天还是7天。（仅仅1天的留存并不能够帮助你找出需要改善的内容。这就是为何我们需要测试新用户体验的原因。）

获取用户的成本

我们需要获取一些有机的比例，也就是指那些无需我们花费更多成本便愿意玩游戏的用户数量。而这就不同于我们在社交游戏中所采取的病毒式追踪模式，因为那时我们未能获得详细的用户来源数据。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Gaia Online CEO on Important Mobile App Metrics to Track

Catherine Mylinh

Here at Kontagent, we’ve helped hundreds of social customers win by helping them gain better insights into their users’ behaviors. And, we have even more exciting product features planned this year. (Sign up for our newsletter for the latest Kontagent news and updates.)

We’re always improving our already-powerful, best-in-class analytics platform. We’ve been leveraging our knowledge and experience to help many of our social customers make a successful transition into the mobile space, too.

Whether you’re in the early stages of developing a mobile application, or you’ve already launched it and have a substantial user base, looking to social app developers for a history lesson on how to do it right can give you a huge head-start, and greater chance at success.

Kontagent Konnect Interview: Gaia Online CEO Mike Sego

Gaia Online has been able to do this with Monster Galaxy–a hit on both Facebook and iOS. In the first installment of our Kontagent Konnect Executive Interview Series, we spoke with CEO Mike Sego on how the company is applying many of the lessons it learned in social to mobile, including:

The metrics that are most important to succeeding on mobile

How to monetize on the F2P model

How to successfully split-test on iOS (yes, it is possible!)

Other tactics used to keep players engaged and coming back for more

What are the overarching fundamentals for developers who want to make the social to mobile transition? Do these fundamentals also apply to mobile developers in general?

Applying the knowledge you gained on Facebook to developing for mobile is the most effective way we’ve found to succeed in the mobile space.

When it comes to content, the mechanics are almost identical for what motivates user engagement, retention, and monetization between mobile and social. Appointment mechanics, energy mechanics, leaving players wanting more, designing specific goals that are just out of reach until multiple play sessions, etc.—the user experience is consistent.

When it comes to social and mobile game apps, we have found that free-to-play models are the most successful at attracting users. Beyond that, you should focus on a very tight conversion funnel; once a new user has installed your application, analyze every action she takes through the levels or stages of your app. When you start looking at cohorts of users, if there is a spike in drop-offs, you should start asking yourself, ‘What is it about this particular stage that could be turning off users? Did I make the level too difficult? Was it not difficult enough? What are some other incentives I can bake into this particular point of the app to get them to keep going?’

But, as you continue to develop your application, keep in mind that you should develop and release quickly, and test often. The trick is to test, fine-tune and iterate with user data. These insights will help you to improve conversion. Spending a disproportionate amount of time instrumenting and scrutinizing the new user experience will pay dividends down the line. This is true for both social and mobile games.

What are the metrics you pay most attention to?

Just as it was in social, the two biggest levers in mobile are still minimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC), and maximizing lifetime value (LTV). The question boils down to this: How can we acquire as many users as possible, for as little money as possible? And, how can we generate as much revenue as possible from those users? Everything else is an input into those two major metrics because those two metrics are what will ultimately determine if you have a scalable hit or a game that just won’t pay for itself.

User retention over a longer period of time

Specifically, look at how many users stick around, and how long they stick around, i.e., Day 1, Day 7 retention. (Day 1 retention alone is too broad for you to fully understand what needs to be improved. That’s the reason for testing the new user experience.)

Cost to acquire customers

We look at the organic ratio—the number of users who come to us without us having paid for them. This is different from the way we track virality in social since our data for user source isn’t as detailed… continued (source:Kontagent Kaleidoscope)