Player sessions: why watch them?

Player sessions: why watch them?

Recordings of player sessions are the most reliable source of information about how players interact with the product. It is often the case that a cool and clear design in practice causes frustration and confusion for a 50-year-old user with a small phone screen who doesn't know where to click at all.

There are many services that solve this problem: Smartlook, FullStory, Hotjar, etc. We will not dwell on the services themselves, but will describe a few of our tasks and problems that we managed to solve with the help of such a tool (in our case, Smartlook).

1. Bad involvement in the wheel of fortune
   Context: started the wheel of fortune, expected engagement at 25%. The fact is 11%.
   Analysis: players were eager to visit the page, but the Deposit button was off the first screen. Players tried to tap on the wheel but did not scroll lower to see the button. That said, desktop users engaged very willingly - 80% made a deposit under the wheel (but there were few such users in absolute terms).
   DecisionThe «Deposit» button was moved right to the centre of the wheel (where the players clicked) and added a small ripple to it.
   Result: involvement increased to 24%.
2. Large VIP player cannot activate the bonus
   ContextOn smaller projects, we create separate segments for each major VIP player. This allows us to quickly find all sessions of a particular player and study what he is doing (useful as part of the daily routine).

Analysis: a «big» VIP, whose pattern does not involve frequent contact with a personal manager, clicked on the «Activate» button under the bonus, but nothing happened. After 20 seconds of trying, the player closed the site.
Decision: it quickly turned out that there had been a mistake when setting up the bonus - the correct link had not been built into the button. Corrected.
Result: a personal manager contacted the player via WhatsApp, issued a personalised bonus. The player returned to the site, played for the bonus and then activated the bonus that had previously caused difficulties.

3. The pop-up was interfering with the players
   Context: players complained en masse to the support that they were prevented from playing by a pop-up window. At the same time, the figures showed a RPM sag on 35%.
   Analysis: after reviewing a few sessions, we discovered the problem. A push notification was running that would not close if the player was inside a slot. As a result, the push overlapped part of the interface and did not respond to player's tap. If the player caught the push outside the game, he could close it.
   Decision: fixed.
   Result: the turnover started to level off. In addition, we launched a «sorry campaign».
4. Deadclicks at the box office
   Context: we have a step-by-step deposit process. On the first step the player selects the amount, on the second step the player selects the payment method. At the same time on the first step there are icons of payment methods. They are illustrative in nature - so that the player immediately understands what methods are available. However, new players often click on these icons in the first step, waiting for some kind of response from the site.
   Decision: at first we added the inscription «select method next». Intermediate result - no fewer deadclicks. Second solution - removed icons from the first step.
   Result: deadclicks disappeared and players started to pass the first deposit step on average 4 seconds faster.