An advisory from
Akamai notes that 95% of players abandon games within a month*. According to the company, four in 10 abandon games due to long load times**, and one in five gamers expect pages to load instantly***.
Akamai offers some tips to keep gamers interested that apply quite well to retaining users for any app in general:
1. Prepare to be overwhelmed
You can never predict where in the world your new players will live and how successful your buzz building will be. Be ready to host a global audience at a global scale. Rely on a company invested in a flexible content delivery network infrastructure to deal with the crowd.
2. Give your best fans a front-row seat
Prioritise your visitors and give your rabid fans a great Web experience while managing expectations properly for everyone else – especially during a midnight launch or a beta code release.
3. Deliver landing pages quickly
Half of visitors abandon websites after just 4 seconds*** of waiting for a page to load. Use the best infrastructure possible to make the very first experience with your brand as good as the game itself.
4. Track download success rates
If you’re seeing low conversion rates, one issue might be large files. Make sure your content delivery network performs consistently and provides in-depth actionable data.
5. Optimise for the device
Develop app containers that fit under the iOS and Android over-the-air file-size capacities.
6. Accelerate every touchpoint
Nobody likes a loading screen. Speed up loading time by offloading to a cloud platform so it can do the heavy lifting.
7. Keep servers online
If your fans can’t play, they won’t stay. Take cloud security measures to protect yourself from cyberattacks that can drive high player churn and disrupt your revenue stream.
1 Chinese Gamers: In-game behavior of players from China
2 Cooper Waddell, Deconstructing Mobile & Tablet Gaming (EEDAR, 2014)
3 The Akamai Performance Matters: 9 Key Consumer Insights Research Report
