IPs y conversión de clientes
Uno de los beneficios más importantes de una IP es su fuerza para atraer a potenciales usuarios. Es algo que todo el mundo sabe, ¿verdad? Sin embargo, preguntando a nuestro alrededor que por qué pensamos esto, aunque todo el mundo coincidió en que es algo obvio, nadie nos dió una respuesta concisa.
Sin embargo, si queremos justificar frente a un publisher o a un inversor los costes de ligar nuestro producto a una IP debemos ser capaces de exponerlo con claridad meridiana. ¿En qué nos ayuda una IP?
No es un gran misterio, pero es algo que creo que todos deberíamos tener claro, porque plantea una estructura dentro de la cual ubicarnos como desarrolladores.
Cuando tienes que diseñar una campaña de marketing para tu producto hay que balancear un montón de números. Algunos de ellos son el coste de adquisición del usuario (Acquisition costs), el ratio de conversión (Conversion rate) y los ingresos medios estimados por usuario (Estimated Average revenue per user) .
- Coste de adquisición: Es el dinero que nos cuesta conseguir que un cliente potencial perciba nuestro producto y se decida a probarlo.
- Ratio de conversión: Es un índice que mide cuántos de los clientes potenciales que prueban nuestro producto se convierten en clientes (compran el producto, se suscriben, etc).
- Ingresos medios por usuario: Es la cantidad de dinero que esperamos obtener de cada cliente durante toda su vida como cliente.
Reduciéndolo todo drásticamente, se trata de ver si el coste de adquirir y convertir a un usuario es mayor o menor que los ingresos que esperamos obtener a través de él. Si nos cuesta más dinero atraerle que lo que se va a gastar, entonces el negocio no funcionará.
La gran fuerza de una IP reside en el hecho de que reduce los costes de adquisición, porque le está enviando a los usuarios un mensaje sutil: “Este producto se parece a ese que te gusta tanto y esta información es fiable, porque viene de la misma gente que hizo el otro producto”. Es decir, dado que (teóricamente) el usuario atraído encontrará en nuestro producto lo que esperaba (se satisface la expectativa creada por su relación con la IP), aumentamos la probabilidad de conversión (es más probable que le guste y que se quede), lo cual reduce el coste de adquisición de un usuario.
Por supuesto, todo esto es mucho más complejo: ¿Cómo conseguimos una IP? ¿Tenemos que pagar por ella? (Esto aumentaría los costes de adquisición, entre otras cosas, así que habría que volver a ver si nos sale a cuenta), ¿Es conocida por nuestro público objetivo? ¿Nos obligará a modificar el gameplay de nuestro producto de forma tal que ya no tendrá sentido? ¿Es nuestro gameplay capaz de satisfacer las expectativas del usuario? (por ejemplo, si quieres hacer una version de móvil de World of Warcraft tendrás que modificar el gameplay. ¿Seguiría satisficiendo al usuario de WoW?).
Como decía Michael Ende, “Eso es otra historia, y deberá ser contada en otra ocasión”.
Algunos enlaces interesantes
 Features Beyond Conversion Rate: Further Numbers to Improve Casual Game Sales
Conversion rate has become the standard for determining success in the casual games space. In both formal and informal meetings within the casual games industry, conversion rates are both guarded and flaunted depending on what your numbers look like. Microsoft has taken every opportunity to mention the conversion rates of the top Xbox Live Arcade games, and the larger casual games industry has noted the need to improve conversion rates in order to become even more financially successful. While improving conversion rates is certainly a good area of focus, there are limitations to conversion rate that make it an incomplete measure of the casual games industry. In addition to Conversion Rate there are three new metrics (penetration, proficiency, and reach) that can be used by large casual game websites to more precisely identify and measure areas for improvement. Looking at Proficiency and Reach in addition to Conversion Rate reveals helpful information in regards the customer’s journey towards purchasing a game and can help identify ways in which to improve customer retention through the sales process as follows:
Where Conversion Rate Succeeds There are many reasons why we use Conversion Rate. It is a very useful number as it ties sales to downloads. Conversion Rate is easy to collect and since it is reported as a percentage it doesn’t give away specifics to competitors. At Reflexive we use Conversion Rate instead of Sales as our key ranking metric due to its self-correcting nature. That is to say that while listing the top games by sales is likely to keep the same games at the top of the list as they continually generate more sales, using Conversion Ratio creates a more dynamic list that corrects itself. Increasing eyes on any one game increases its sales, but if the downloads increase at a faster rate than the sales, the game will drop out of the top sales list, maximizing the audience’s exposure to a variety of games. Where Conversion Falls Short Conversion rate in most industries is a ratio derived by dividing the number of sales of a product by the number of total customers. However, the casual games industry uses a different conversion rate, dividing sales by the number of demo downloads, giving you sales per download instead of sales per customer. This provides a limited definition of who your customer is and does not provide you with any information about them outside of their reaction to the game’s downloadable demo. By neglecting to collect information on customers who drop out early in the process, you miss valuable information on ways to turn site visitors into paying customers. What is Penetration? (Downloads/Customer) While the conversion ratio used by most industries (sales/customers) and the one used by the casual games industry (sales/downloads) don’t measure the same thing, we can find the missing piece of information by dividing sales/customers by sales/downloads. The resultant number is downloads/customers. This number, which I call Penetration, can then be used along with Conversion Rate to explain two pieces of useful information. From Conversion we estimate how many sales are occurring per the number of downloads. From Penetration we determine how many downloads are occurring per the number of customers (with customers being a unique visitor to the website). Case Study: Penetration and Geometry Wars Geometry Wars makes a great case study on the usefulness of Penetration, as only some of the numbers have been released. Using the released numbers, we can see how Conversion Rate leaves us somewhat in the dark in regards to the success of the game. On January 13th, 2006 Microsoft reported the Conversion Rate of Geometry Wars was 23%. On March 27th, 2006, the Conversion Rate on Geometry Wars had grown to an amazing 39%. What caused the change in the Conversion Rate? How did the change affect sales per customer? Did having a 39% Conversion Rate mean it was selling better than when the rate was 23%? Using just the Conversion Rate we are lead to believe that the game has become a better seller, and while this may be the case, we can use the numbers reported by Microsoft to illustrate that we don’t know this for certain when we use only the Conversion Rate. |
Ludosofía 
Mas cosas para aprender mas y mejor… 😀