Funnels#

Designing a new game with new features combines assumptions about your players. Using previous knowledge and best practices is good, but it’s recommended to check those assumptions with data. Use Funnels to verify those assumptions, such as difficulty or time to get from A to B in your game. This type of report can highlight pain points in your experience that can be improved to increase retention and revenue.

What are Funnels?#

Use Funnels to visualize the user flow and journey through your game. Define ordered steps to analyze how many users go from beginning to end, but also how long it takes for users to go from one step to another. The Funnels tool includes:

• A bar chart that visualizes the dropoff through your steps
• A table detailing the number of users in each step, the dropoff percentage, and the average time users spend between each step
• The ability to export the chart and the table

When to use Funnels?#

We recommend using Funnels to verify all assumptions based on user journey and time spent in-game to reach a specific point. The assumptions can range from:

• This dungeon should be fast to beat
• This new tutorial should facilitate onboarding
• This new leveling system should get more users to level 10

Funnels can also be used quickly answer questions about player behavior:

• How long does it take for users to buy this specific offer?
• How many users reach specific milestones in my Christmas event?
• What’s the dropoff of unique ad viewers?

What are some popular Funnels?#

Progression Funnels#

• Tutorial completion is one of the most common Funnels. As the tutorial is one of the first things players see in the game, your players will decide if the core gameplay is what they want out of your game. This Funnel will help you identify some steps in your tutorial that can be unclear, too difficult, or longer to achieve than expected. It’s usually a sequence of the “tutorial step started” event with the “step ID” as a parameter. To go deeper, this can be a sequence of “tutorial step started” and “tutorial step ended” to collect information on how the player handled this tutorial step. This is done using parameters in “tutorial step ended”, for example, the time to equip the weapon, number of tries to hit the enemy, and if the player uses a mechanic shown in a previous step.
• The level progression Funnel is a basic visualization to see how players flow through your main progression mechanic. This can be a player level (RPG), a level completion (puzzle), or what suits your game design. This Funnel will help you understand if a level is too difficult or long to complete and where you lose most of your players. This is usually a simple sequence of your “level up” or “level completed” event.
• The feature discoverability and use of Funnels challenges UX assumptions, from character’s ability used, gear equipped, and achievements page visited. Though some features might be presented in tutorials, some players might forget about them or find them unhelpful to progress. Funnels can check if players use the features regularly.

Monetization Funnels#

• The first and further purchases help you understand how many players convert from non-paying to paying users, and how many players are ready to pay again in your game. You can see if players got enough value from the first purchase to buy again. This is usually a sequence of the “transaction” event where the “realCurrency” parameter is greater than 0. This Funnel can also be applied to ads consumption with a sequence of adImpression events.
• Use the audience conversion Funnel to target audiences with specific offers to understand how sequences of offers are converting. Tune your offers campaigns and adjust the price and rewards of each offer to get the conversion you’re targeting. This Funnel is a sequence of your offer names that you expect your audience to buy.
• The offer impression Funnel is used for in-app purchasing on your shop page and also on popup offers. Choose the time for these offers using rules to ensure you’re displaying the right offer at the right time to the right audience. Use the offer impression Funnel to verify that offers are shown enough and are converting correctly.

To conclude, Funnels can be used to validate a large number of assumptions. You need to track the right events and parameters to challenge your assumptions. See our event tracking page for more information on tracking best practices.