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分享提升Facebook游戏病毒传播效能的5个途径

发布时间:2012-04-17 15:54:01 Tags:,,,,

作者:Jeremie Dupuis

针对Facebook平台创建应用的一大好处就是可以利用该平台的用户好友关系,通过优化产品让自己的应用获得广泛传播,从而省下一大笔用户获取成本。

“请求”是可让应用获得曝光度的典型Facebook社交渠道之一。这项功能曾是Facebook平台最根本的病毒传播功能,但自从通告和newsfeed功能出现后,它就成了开发者引进新用户的第二选项。

但Facebook最新进行的一系列调整有望使请求功能重现往日活力,成为头号用户获取渠道。采用这种功能并不等于“大功告成”,但只要遵循以下步骤,相信你的应用表现就会显著提升(游戏邦注:前提是你了解Facebook请求功能的基本运作原理)。

1.采用无障碍请求并优化性能

如果你的游戏中已经采用请求功能,并且打算让玩家间形成无障碍交流,那就需要考虑这个新功能。在此之前,用户任何时候向好友发送礼物,都需要点击确认系统弹出的窗口。如果玩家需要时不时地进行这种操作,那就难免容易心生厌倦,久而久之就怠于发送请求。

无障碍请求(Frictionless Requests)

但现在无障碍请求支持用户在应用内向指定好友发送请求,而无需点击时不时弹出的确认对话框。用户首次在应用中向某位好友发送请求后,就等于批准该应用自动向同个好友发送后续请求。在默认状态下,这个请求对话框处于勾选状态。这就节省了玩家与应用间的对话流程,简化了玩家与好友间的分享过程。

Frictionless-Requests(from fbsocialapps)

Frictionless-Requests(from fbsocialapps)

优化性能

对网页应用来说,加载时间甚为关键,所以任何时候都要确保应用拥有足够敏感的响应性。为助开发者实现这一目标,Facebook最近优化了请求功能的表现性能。你可以通过应用设置中的“Advanced”模块进行“Request 2.0 Efficient”的相关设置。

2.个性化好友列表

个性化列表是个可助用户预先过滤好友的潜在功能。例如在《CityVille》发布时,游戏允许玩家从中邀请自己的《FarmVille》好友,现在它推出的是Active Zynga好友列表,这样玩家就可以通过Social Gamers Friends列表邀请好友。相信这就是Zynga成功游戏发展的一大要素。

CityVIlle(from fbsocialapps)

CityVIlle(from fbsocialapps)

但你还有其他更多类型的过滤器可供选择:

*邻居(Neighbors):更便于向已经玩过同款游戏,以及已同用户互动的好友发送礼物——该功能有助于维持用户留存率。

*普通好友(Common Friends):对需要多人参与,并且玩家希望与相识之人互动的游戏极有用处。

*指定城市的好友(Friends living in a specific City)

*好友列表(Friends Lists)

*指定年龄段的好友(Friends in specific age range)

*即将生日的好友(Friends with a birthday soon)

*家人(Family)……

你可以根据自己的需求选择过滤器。假如你对社交旅游感兴趣,不妨选择指定城市的好友过滤器;如果你关注的是社交商务,那就可以考虑根据年龄段来过滤好友。

3.精选前50名好友(Select Top 50 Friends)

这是最近出现于《Ravenskye City》的新选项,它可以解决用户面对一连串好友列表无从选择的问题。通过“精选前50名好友”功能,系统就会自动选中这前50名玩家好友。

Ravenskyes-Request-Invite(from fbsocialapps)

Ravenskyes-Request-Invite(from fbsocialapps)

这个过滤器默认按好友姓名的字母排序,虽然这种排序方式看似毫无用处,但你可以将它与个性化过滤器结合起来,这样用户点击两下,就可以邀请到所有的亲密好友。

如果将这个功能与“无障碍请求”相结合,就有可能看到惊人的病毒传播性及用户留存率。最重要的是,你简化了用户向不同好友发送匹配型请求的过程。

4.调整请求接受率

在想法简化发送请求过程的同时,你也要注意提高请求的接受率。这里有4种方法可提升用户接受率:

*在应用中创建信息中心

Messaging-Center(from fbsocialapps)

Messaging-Center(from fbsocialapps)

Facebook上的Games Tab经常充斥大量游戏信息,因此用户请求很可能如同石沉大海,杳无音讯。但Facebook支持你浏览所有与应用相关的等待请求。你可以在应用中接受或删除这些通知信息。

*鼓励用户回复信息–>创建往来循环

如果你最近玩过《CityVille》或《模拟人生社交版》,就会发现大多时候你在应用中接受礼物时,系统都会询问你是否回赠对方礼物。这也是用户答谢的一种方式。而开发者在此就要建立2名玩家之间的循环关系,这种循环有可能极大提升你的用户留存率,因为其中一方玩家的存在可能就是另一方返回游戏的原因。

*转化及A/B测试

如果你的请求文本内容并未出现在通知信息中,那么它就不会对接受率带来什么影响,但如果它出现在Game tab中,你可能就得去优化它。要采用这种做法,就需要转化文本内容,并对其进行A/B测试。

最重要的文本内容应出现于应用内的信息中心。这种文本要简洁明了,富有号召人们采取行动的感染力。

*突显等待信息

pending request(from fbsocialapps)

pending request(from fbsocialapps)

你已经可以在应用中加载请求信息,下一步就是让这些请求信息更为显眼,可以在登录页面显示相关标注,或者显示等待信息的数量(如上图所示)。

5.监测相关参数

要以每日或每周为基础,监测以下数据:

*点击请求后安装应用的用户数量

*点击请求之后重返应用的回头客

*首次玩游戏就发送请求的用户比例

*接受率

*用户发送的所有请求数量

*平均每次发送的请求数量

总结

综上所述,请求这种简单的功能需要经过一系列优化和调整才能发挥其效能。面对Facebook平台如此之众的其他竞争者,你应该善用Facebook推出的所有功能以便让自己的应用获得足够的曝光度。

但要注意避免陷入“垃圾信息化”的倾向,要根据用户体验来添加新功能,不要强迫用户每天都发送大量请求信息,只有先征服用户才能取悦Facebook。(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

5 Ways to Tune your Requests to Improve the Virality of your Facebook Application

by Jeremie Dupuis

One of the main advantages of building an Application on top of the Facebook Platform is that you can take advantage of the user friends connections to get your application more viral and save up huge amount of money in acquisitions by tuning your application perfectly.

Requests is one the many Social Channels Facebook offers to make your application visible and spread on the platform. Once upon a time, requests were the ultimate way to get viral, but with notifications and newsfeeds, it became a secondary method of recruitment.

But this could change as Facebook recently announced various changes that could give requests a second breath and make it become the #1 recruitment channel. It’s too early to say “Victory” but if you follow these steps, you’ll probably improve your K-Factor.

Note: I bet that you already know the basics of the requests, but if you don’t, you should read this article.

Follow the Guide!

Tip #1: Implement Frictionless Requests & Performance improvements

If you already use requests in your game and that you want to enable a frictionless communication amongst players, you might have to consider this new feature. Indeed, yesterday, anytime a user wanted to send a gift to friends, he would systematically have to confirm it through a pop-up. If this is something that players constantly do on a regular basis, this can be annoying and they will end up sending less requests, even if they intended to do it.

Frictionless Requests

Frictionless Requests is checked by default

But this day is over, “Frictionless Requests now enable users to send requests to specific friends from within an app without having to click on a pop-up confirmation dialog. Upon first sending a request to a friend from within an app, a user may authorize the app to send subsequent requests to the same friend without prompting for his permission. By default, the check box is checked. This removes a dialog from the flow and streamlines the process of sharing with friends.” (Source: FB Documentation)

I couldn’t explain it better than the Facebook documentation, and you undestand quite easily that thanks to that, you will be able to create a better retention loop as more requests will be sent. Check the documentation to see how to enable them.

Performance improvements

Loading times are important when you’re building a Web Application so everywhere you can, you should try to be as responsive as you can. To help you with that, Facebook has recently optimized the performance of requests. If you want to benefit from this performance improvement, go to the Advanced section of your app settings. Setting the ‘Request 2.0 Efficient” in the app migration changes the format for request IDs in the JavaScript requests callback method. So adapt your code as explained here: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/569/

Tip #2: Personalized List

CityVille Send Request Form enabling personalized lists

Personalized List is a hidden and under-used feature that offers the technical ability to pre-filter the list of friends for the user. For the launch of CityVille for example, players were given the ability to invite their FarmVille friends, now it is the Active Zynga friends, making it trivial for users to invite their list of Social Gamers Friends. You can be sure it was a major ingredient of their growth speed.

But there are more types of filters you could use for your application:

Neighbors : Makes it easier to send gifts to players who already play the game and already interacted with you → Good For retention

Common Friends: Can be useful for multiplayers games where a player would want to play with friends that know each other.

Friends living in a specific City

Friends Lists

Friends in specific age range

Friends with a birthday soon

Family…

Depending on your business, you’ll choose whatever filter makes sense. If you’re into social Travel, you may be interested by the city filter. If you’re into Social Commerce, the age range could be useful…

Tip #3: Select Top 50 Friends

Ravenskyes City Request Form

A new option appeared recently in Ravenskye City that could solve the fact that it is long to select many friends. With the Select Top 50 Friends feature, it is no longer a problem as it will automatically select the top 50 players.

The default filter being an alphabetical order, it is pretty useless but you may have understood: if you match a Personalized Filter with the Select Top 50 Feature you could allow users to invite all their friends from a specific list in 2 clicks: for example, they could invite all of their Close friends..

Imagine using this feature with the Frictionless Requests, the gain in virality and retention could be tremendous! The best part of it: your users will thank you for that cause you will make it easy to send targeted requests to various friends.

Tip #4 : Fine-tune your Acceptance Rate

Now that you’ve worked hard to ease the sending of requests, you will want to improve your acceptance rate. Here are 4 ways to improve this acceptance rate:

Build a messaging Center inside your application

Messaging Center

The Games Tab on Facebook can be really packed and thus, requests could be lost in the middle of thousands of notifications. Facebook allows you to browse all of the user’s pending requests related to your app. You can then accept or delete the notifications from within your application. By doing that, you can make it trivial for the player to accept all the requests and even encourage the user to send some backs. (See below)

Encourage the sending Back → Create a loop

Have you played CityVille or the Sims Social recently ? Most of the time, when you accept a gift from within the app, you are asked if you want to send back one. This is a way for the user to say « thank you ». For you as a developer, you’re creating a loop and a relationship between the 2 players that will greatly improve your retention as players will get used to bring each other back to the application.

Translate and A/B Test Wording

As the text of your request is not displayed in the message of the notifications, the text of your requests will have a small impact on your acceptance rate, but as it is displayed in the Game tab, you might want to optimize it. To do this, you should translate and A/B test the content of the text.

Most important is the text that is displayed in the in-app messaging center. It should be short, translated, and with a clear call to action to accept it.

Make pending requests prominent

Now that you can load requests in your applications, you will want to make them prominent by maybe displaying a modale on login, even more when the user came to the application after clicking a notification. Or at least display the number of notifications.

Tip #5: Measure your improvements

On a daily and weekly basis, you should monitor the following metrics:

Number of users who installed after clicking a request

Number of returning visitors who came back to your application after clicking a request

Percentage of users who sent requests during their 1st session

Acceptance rate

Total Number of requests sent

Average number or requests per sending

Conclusion

As you have seen in this article, a simple feature like the requests can require a lot of tuning to express all of its power. As there are many other developers out there, you will want to enable all of the features Facebook released to get your application at the top of the charts.

Beware of getting spammy and think about all the features that add to the user experience instead of forcing users to send 100 requests a day. First you’ll make your users happy and you’ll make Facebook happy !

So now, it’s time to write your specifications, send them to your awesome developers and start getting more viral !(source:fbsocialapps


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