Retention

Retention measures how many users return to your experience after their first visit in 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days.

Viewing Retention Metrics

To view your experience's retention analytics:

1. Navigate to your Creations page on Creator Dashboard and select your experience.
2. In the Analytics menu on the left, select Retention.

You can view analytics for individual or group owned experience. To view the latter, you need to have group permissions for analytics.

Improving Day 1 Retention

Day 1 retention is the percentage of new users who come back to your experience after visiting it for the first time. To improve this metric, focus on your experience's core loop, first-time user experience, and performance.

Core Loop

Core loop is the actions that users repeat in your experience to make progress in a single session.

• For a pet adoption experience, a core loop might include adopting, training, and leveling up pets.
• For a tycoon experience, a core loop might include managing a business, balancing resources, and competing with other users.

The following example is one path to improve your core loop:

1. Identify the core steps that users perform in the loop and make them clear and fun.
2. Balance the challenge of your core loop to avoid user frustration and boredom.
3. Reward users for completing your core loop with feedback, currency, items, and achievements.

To learn more on how to design core loops, see Core Loops.

First-time User Experience

First-time user experience (FTUE) is how new users experience your core loop for the first time. To improve your FTUE:

1. Use a brief tutorial or contextual info like tooltips to guide users through your core loop. Avoid long tutorials to help users get to the fun as quickly as possible.
2. Deliver a joyful moment after users complete your core loop for the first time.
3. Preview the progress that users can make if they complete your core loop multiple times.

You can also use analytics to improve your FTUE:

1. List the steps of your core loop. For example, for a pet adoption experience, the steps can be:

   • Adopt a pet.
   • Train a pet.
   • Level up a pet.

2. Track the completion rate of each step. Use special in-experience items to mark the completion of each step. Track both positive and negative experiences. For example, if the FTUE includes a battle with an NPC, track both whether users win or lose more frequently.

3. Identify and fix big drop-offs. For example, if visiting the pet store has the highest drop-off rate, you can reduce friction in this step by making the pet store easier to find.

Avoid a complex or time consuming FTUE, as you want to get users to the fun as quickly as possible, ideally in 5 minutes or less after entering your experience.

To learn more on how to design your FTUE, see Onboarding.

Performance

Performance is how well your experience runs on different devices and platforms. To improve your performance:

1. Test on different devices and platforms to fix any bugs that might affect performance.
2. Monitor crash rates, frame rates, and errors each time you update your experience.
3. Set up a user community that can help identify bugs and crashes.

Improving Day 7 Retention

Day 7 retention is the percentage of new users who come back to your experience after visiting it for the first time on the 8th day (Day 7). To improve this metric, focus on your experience's progression system.

Progression System

Progression system is how users accomplish goals and gain rewards in your experience, such as leveling up and unlocking new content. To build a healthy progression system:

1. Set up clear user goals: Short-term goals can provide instant gratification and feedback, and long-term goals can give users directions to work towards over an extended period of time.
2. Add content variety: A variety of content, such as new modes, inventory items, and social features, can prevent users from getting bored.
3. Balance the difficulty: If users progress too fast, they might run out of content to explore. If they progress too slow, they might get bored and frustrated and lose the motivation to stay.

You can use analytics to improve your progression system:

1. Identify your progression system. For example:

   • Earning in-experience currency for a tycoon experience.
   • Unlocking new items to collect for an item collection experience.
   • Mastering casts or skills for a magic world experience.

2. Measure user distribution by tracking the number of users for each progression level to see how long it takes a user to reach the next level by granting each user a special in-experience item once they advance to the next level.

3. Fix the progression system. If users level up too quickly or too slowly, evaluate the difficulties of your progression system's tasks and adjust them accordingly to make sure users spend the proper amount of time on each level.

Improving Day 30 Retention

Day 30 retention is the percentage of new users who come back to your experience after visiting it for the first time on the 31st day (Day 30). To improve this metric, focus on your experience's ending system.

Ending System

Ending system is what's available to users after they've completed the main objectives of your experience or reached higher levels. To improve it:

1. Add more content: Regular updates can keep users coming back. A common frequency is to release smaller updates on the existing mechanics every 2-4 weeks, and bigger updates of new features every 2-3 months.

2. Add social mechanics: Social mechanics can motivate users to stay engaged with your experience and interact with other users while waiting for new content. Common social systems and elements include trading, parties, guilds, and competitive systems such as PvP (player versus player), tournaments and leaderboards.