A major European games publisher needed to perfect their process to increase subscriptions.
Improve usability and messaging of online game store
Challenge
A major games publisher asked us to conduct usability testing of the subscription sign-up and purchase journey for its online games store. Objectives for the study were to determine if the subscription offer was clear and appealing; evaluate whether participants could successfully subscribe and download a game; and assess the subscription cancellation process.
Approach
Because we really needed to get ‘in their heads’ we took a qualitative approach. Ten gamers participated in hour-long, in-person in-depth interviews (IDIs); half of the participants began their journey in the browser-based games store while the other half began their journey using the desktop client games store. During the IDIs, we posed tasks and scenarios and captured rich feedback.
Outcome
Many participants did not know what the subscription fully entailed or what catalog of games would be included. Once a game was downloaded in the desktop client, conflicting messaging confused participants. To alleviate this, we made several recommendations on how to improve the subscription offer and download ability, as well as several improvements to readability and formatting.