Virtually any new web venture today can benefit from A/B testing as a means of curating content to visitor preferences.
Without a doubt, personalizing holds true for gaming platforms, too.
As a segment of platforms that sees and relies on directly interfacing a large volume of active consumers on a day-to-day basis, gaming sites benefit from testing in significant and direct ways.
With this outlook in mind, here are some elements those managing gaming sites might want to consider for A/B testing.
A popular method for many gaming sites is to showcase a variety of image-only click-throughs when giving options, with video previews available on game-specific pages.
Some sites also opt for embedded GIFs as ways of quickly previewing gameplay (although these might actually be better replacements for images than video due to lack of audio).
Generally speaking, the marketing industry has trended toward video of late, but it’s a good idea to brainstorm and test how users might best engage with game previews. These GuessTheTest A/B test case study shows just how important it is to test your optimal app, video, or gaming and product thumbnail images.
This comparison needs to be considered in the context of both desktop and mobile versions of gaming platforms since the transition between them has, historically, been a bit of a nightmare.
The reality, the majority of gamers are now on mobile, and UX designers often opt to adapt mobile sites to display pull-downs as horizontal sliders.
While the choice is going to depend partly upon the architecture of the site, it’s important to know how users perceive accessibility and enticement.
With a lot of CSS templates being easy to copy and paste nowadays, quickly mocking up a couple of menu options to test shouldn’t take too long.
As these GuessTheTest case studies show, testing and finding the optimal navigational format and presentation for your audience has a big impact on conversion rates across desktop and mobile devices.
Deciding how to order and display buying options is a key business decision for any game site operator.
As this GuessTheTest case study, conducted on behalf of T-Mobile, shows testing how to display different subscription tiers illustrates how careful design may yield substantially different results in terms of what users consider the “default” and how willing they are to be upsold.
For gaming sites, the test could be specifically between tiers of bundles or other models.
When a potential gamer takes the plunge is crucial to optimize. And on the user side, a balance needs to be struck between convenient options and perceived safety, assuming all options are safe.
With gaming sites, there are both new and established options for users to choose between.
Regarding the new, the notion of poker sites considering cryptocurrency for deposits and payouts has become very real in recent years.
Crypto is becoming a fresh option alongside more long-standing alternatives –– such that an A/B/C test could differentiate between preferences for a processor (like PayPal or Skrill), paying directly via credit card, or paying via crypto.
It may be that platforms are best off supporting all three options, but testing for preferences will nevertheless influence what’s most sensible to emphasize.
Timing and method are keys when it comes to displaying special offers.
Pop-ups can create a bit of an allergic reaction for internet users -- even gamers who are accustomed to fairly “busy” casino sites. To this point, many users still take active steps to block them.
For this reason, it's worthwhile testing if it's better to use a pop-up of display the offer as a banner carousel.
If you do go for pop-ups, test the impact of using less intrusive formats and minimizing the number of overall pop-ups used.
As this GuessTheTest notification bar case study shows, timing and placement are important variables to get right to improve the effectiveness and conversion rates of pop-ups or other notification displays.
There are a lot of decisions that need to be made with a mass user-base platform like a gaming site.
There are many elements that you can be optimized to appeal to more users. A/B testing is a powerful tool to determine what works best with your users.
For more A/B testing inspiration, checkout the full library of tests. There are hundreds of inspiring A/B tests for you to look at and game the system with.
Take your best guess, see if you win, and apply the findings to optimize your own success.
Hope you’ve found these suggestions useful and informative. Please share your thoughts and comments in the section below.
One of the most debated testing topics is how large does my sample size need to be to get trustworthy test results? Some argue samples of more than 120,000 visitors per variant are needed to begin to see trustworthy test results. Ishan Goel of VWO disagrees. What does he think is needed to get trustworthy test results? Listen to this webinar recording to find out.
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