How to analyze and optimize your game’s web shop

Fundamentally, web shops are ecommerce products - and while there are a lot of similarities in the user journeys across ecommerce and games, there are some major differences, too. To improve your web shop’s performance, it’s important to look at the right metrics at each stage of the user journey and apply expertise from both sides (ecommerce and gaming). 

So we wrote this handy guide based on our experience building data dashboards and optimizing webshops. Ahead, we’re sharing the top metrics you should analyze at each step in the web shop funnel, along with tips for optimization.

Here are the metrics we’ll be going over today (click a metric to scroll to that section):

Here’s a visualization of how they all fit together. Basically, to calculate total revenue you need to multiply all other primary metrics:

Another way of thinking about this:

Stage 1: Players land on your webshop

The first step of the player funnel is all about traffic. On the high level, we look at total visits as the primary traffic metric, which measures the total number of visitors to your web shop in a given period. Total visits tells you how effective your UA strategies are at driving traffic: the better you are at getting the word out about your web shop, the higher your total visits will be.

To increase the number of visitors, consider incorporating these best practices into your webshop marketing strategy (for even more ideas, check out our UA strategy guide here):

• Partner with creators - either by running creator code campaigns, getting them to promote your webshop on their channel, or even selling creator bundles

• Put a link to your webshop in every About Us/profile section across social media - even the header image on Facebook is valuable real estate! 
• Run email campaigns that highlight offers on the web shop 
• Publish a video or blog explainer on your socials that highlights the value of the storefront and lets players know how to use it
• Compliantly use in-game links to the web, which you can then direct to your web store

From total visits, you drill down into traffic sources and user behavior. These can help you optimize marketing strategies and webshop UI/design. 

Traffic sources

Traffic isn’t all about quantity - quality is just as important. One way to assess traffic quality is to understand where your webshop visitors are coming from. Traffic sources like email, social, paid, organic, and direct tell you which channels are driving most of your users - and each source brings different types of users with varying intent and engagement. For example, organic visitors who come to you through search engines tend to have higher intent than paid visitors, while email visitors - which are generally existing players - could have the highest engagement of all.   

Drilling these down further, you can filter traffic sources by pageviews or ROI to determine the performance of each source. From there, you can make more strategic marketing decisions, like putting more ad spend on Facebook if that’s where your most valuable web shop visitors are coming from, or trying to boost your Discord numbers if that channel is especially effective at converting visitors into first purchasers. 

On-site behavior

Then there’s bounce rate and session length. Bounce rate measures how many players landed on your shop then left without taking any action (for example, clicking into products, navigating to other pages, etc.). The lower the bounce rate the better. Meanwhile, session length tells you how long players are hanging out on your webshop, browsing, and/or engaging - the higher the session length, the more engaged a player is and likely to make a purchase.

Both of these data points are indicators of your web shop’s first impression. If the webshop design and UI are intuitive and feel like an extension of your in-game experience, players immediately understand the value of the store and why it exists. Then they’re more likely to stick around - which leads to lower bounce rates and longer session lengths. 

You can do this in a few ways:

• Clearly communicate the special value players get in the web vs. the game, like putting your web-exclusive deals at the top
• Let users browse offers without having to log in (basically, don’t gate your shop) 
• Greet users with a tutorial that explains what the webshop is, the value it offers to players, and how it works 

• Organize the storefront in a clear, navigable way - make sure this includes highlighting how players can link their accounts to get personalized deals. For example, we suggest having clear “sign in” buttons
• Replicate your in-game assets and offers so they appear exactly the same on the web - like we did for Snowprint. This requires custom design, but it’s worth it: web shops are pretty new and unintuitive to players, so it’s important that they feel comfortable and recognize they’re officially connected to your game 

Stage 2: Players link their accounts

The next step is getting players to link their game account to the web shop. The main metric we use to look at account linking is account linking conversion rate. This measures the percentage of visitors who successfully link their accounts out of all users who land on the web shop. It’s a high-level way to analyze the two components that affect account linking conversion: your web shop UI and the technical nature of the linking flow.

Account linking CVR =  (number of accounts linked / number of unique visitors)

Starting the account linking process

Account linking initiation rate is all about the UI of your web shop. This metric looks at how many users began the account linking process, and it’s calculated by dividing the number of unique visitors who attempted to sign in by the total number of unique visitors. 

Account linking initiation rate = (number of unique visitors who attempted sign in / number of unique visitors)

It’s an indicator of the effectiveness of your web shop design because it tells you whether you’ve communicated enough value to players to convince them to link their accounts. Our experience has shown us that one of the most important parts of account linking is making the process simple and quick. Here are a few tips for doing that:

• Give users multiple ways to log in with as few clicks as possible, like scanning a QR code on desktop, tapping a deep link on mobile, or using their game account email and password
• Offer players a reward for linking their accounts. For example, this could look like “Get a free skin for linking your account!”. You could even do this on the group level with something like “The first X players to link their accounts get a 2x reward bonus!” where X   should be 10% of your account linking KPI
• Create a popup on your web shop that appears when players intend to exit the page. As they leave, they’re shown a reward, which encourages them to stick around and finish linking their account

Completing the account linking process

Account linking success rate measures the percentage of users who began the account linking process and completed it. It’s an indicator of the technical nature of your account linking flow and its design - if players started the process then dropped off, that’s likely due to a bug, a QA issue, or a flow that’s too long or difficult.

Account linking success rate = (number of accounts linked / number of unique visitors attempting to sign in)

If you notice that the account linking success rate is low, it could indicate there’s a technical issue you need to solve, like the linking process isn’t properly implemented, there are no fallback options, or it’s not displaying correctly on certain devices. Our two main suggestions for improving the success rate and minimizing the opportunities for technical issues are: 

• Allow direct sign-in to the webshop using the game ID system (e.g. Supercell ID), or use a seamless, bug-free account-linking solution like QR codes or deep links
• Simplify account linking into a single step, regardless of device

Stage 3: Players complete their first purchase

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Before we dive into each part of the purchase process, let’s take a step back and mention there’s a high-level metric here called first purchase rate that lets you track the percentage of players who made a first purchase after linking their accounts. 

First purchase rate = (number of players who made 1 purchase / number of players who linked accounts)

To increase this metric:

• Show visitors personalized offers after they link their accounts. Not all web shops can do this, but at Stash we can tailor offers to each player based on in-game segmentations
• Offer incentives or rewards for making the first purchase
• Give players more bang for their buck when purchasing on the webstore in general - for example with a rewards bonus, discount strategy, or loyalty program
• Show all your in-game offers - the more offers that players can choose from, the higher the chances of conversion
• Constantly highlight the value of the webshop (e.g. banners on your game website, social posts)

Now let’s dig deeper and identify areas where you can optimize the first-purchase experience and boost conversion by looking at metrics for each part of the transaction:

• Entering the product page
• Adding to cart
• Checking out

Clicking into the product page

Not every webshop will have a product page, but it can be handy to give players more information about a product - including a description and list of included items (if it’s a bundle). If you do have product pages, measuring clicks - or more precisely, click-through rate (CTR) - can be a great way to understand what products players are interested in. So look at CTR to identify offers that could be optimized - but take this in context with conversions: 

• An offer could have a low click-through rate, but if every player that clicks into it is making a purchase, then you probably shouldn’t remove it from your shop or tweak it too much
• An offer with high CTR but low conversion rate has something that’s deterring players from actually adding it to their cart after clicking in - whether it’s the price point, the lack of value, or another issue

Adding to cart

If your web shop has a cart feature, players can add products to their cart while browsing or from a specific product page. Here’s when you can look at the add to cart rate. Note: if your store doesn’t have a cart, this is an optional metric - it’s similar to the numbers of users who initiate a purchase (e.g. clicking the ‘buy’ button).

Add to cart rate = number of users who click ‘add to cart’ / number of linked accounts

Add to cart rate tells you the percentage of linked accounts that have added a product to their cart. In the context of CTR, if players are clicking into a specific product repeatedly but not adding it to their cart, it could mean something on the product page needs your attention. Similarly, if the CTR and add to cart rate are low on the browsing page, it indicates something is wrong with the value of that product or its offer card.  

To increase the add to cart rate, create offers that give players enough value. You can explore all of our suggestions for web shop offers and discounts in this article, but a few to mention here:

• First purchase incentives, like an exclusive skin or bundle
• BOGO offers
• Improve your offer selection 
• Web exclusive bundles 
• Bonus resources for web purchases (e.g., bonus currencies tied to spend) 

Checkout

Once players add a product to their cart (or if you don’t have a cart, they select the item they wanted to buy), two things can happen: they either move forward with the checkout process, or they leave your shop before completing the purchase.

We’ll get to the first option soon, but digging into option two, you need to look at cart abandonment rate as the primary metric. Keep in mind we’re still talking about analyzing the first-purchase stage of the user journey - make sure to segment out other users so you’re only looking at those who’ve added an initial purchase to their carts. 

When cart abandonment rate is high, it usually means your players don’t feel like they’re getting a better value on your webshop than in-game. Try:

• Higher bonuses
• BOGO offers
• Volume-based discounts

If users do continue to checkout, you can now look at checkout abandonment rate. Looking at this metric lets you pinpoint whether your checkout process is creating too much friction. A few ways we’ve reduced the number of players who abandon checkout at the first-purchase stage:

• Implement a side cart
• Add discounts or offers throughout the checkout flow - something like a surprise BOGO deal players need to use immediately will give them even more of a reason to complete their transaction

• Accept the most popular payment methods, like PayPal, Visa, American Express, and debit cards
• Minimize the number of clicks throughout the process
• White label the checkout process so it still feels like a part of your game and an extension of the webshop experience. Players can get concerned and drop off if you take them to a page that doesn’t resemble any part of your brand

Stage 4: Players make a repeat purchase

Tracking the performance of your web shop doesn’t end at the first purchase - the goal is to increase player spend over the long-term, which means incentivizing them to visit your shop again and make more purchases.

To see if your web store is actually retaining players, you should start by looking at the primary metric, average number of purchases. This measures the number of purchases a typical signed-in customer makes - the higher the average, the better your retention. You can separate the average number of purchases into two parts: the rate at which players are coming back to your web store, and the rate at which they’re making another purchase. 

Average number of purchases = (total number of purchases / total number of linked accounts) 

Customers return to the store

Customer retention rate measures how many players are returning to your shop - and these users are often highly engaged. A few ways we help our developer partners boost retention rates:

• Show users how to bookmark the webstore on their mobile devices’ home screens. This lets them access the webshop more quickly and easily than repeatedly typing the URL into a search engine
• Run email marketing and other retargeting campaigns that show users offers on your webshop - like new products, personalized bundles, and liveops-related offers. (One major benefit of a webshop is getting direct access to player identity data like email addresses. You can use these to establish a direct line to players and entice them to return to your webshop with personalized offers) 
• Give players daily rewards or gifts tied to web store engagement. Players will want to keep coming back to your webshop if they earn a free reward every time - just make sure the reward feels valuable enough (e.g. it’s enough virtual currency that they can buy something in-game, or it’s a web-exclusive cosmetic, like a skin) or gamify your free rewards to make them more engaging 

Customers make another purchase

Once players return to your shop, they can purchase more products - this is when repeat purchase rate comes into play, which calculates the percentage of players that return and make another purchase. 

Repeat purchase rate = (number of players who made more than 1 purchase / number of linked accounts) 

If your repeat purchase rate is low, it’s often a sign that players aren’t consistently getting enough value from your webshop products compared to the in-game shop. Build value by: 

• Give players personalized offers. The good news is: these players already made a purchase, so you have that purchase data handy. Now you can segment players based on this behavior, and offer them exclusive deals tailored to their preferences, like showing a player a mixed bundle for a liveops event if their first purchase was related to a previous event. Don’t forget to communicate these offers via email and retargeting campaigns, too - you have this first-party player data now, so might as well use it!
• Display enough offers. Web shops with a limited number of offers leave players with nothing to buy except standard resource packs. You can create recurring, web-exclusive bundles to make sure users regularly have something to purchase when they return to your store. And with Stash’s unified catalog, you can make sure all your in-game offers appear on the webstore, too - with purchase limits and ensuring they’re a 1:1 replica of your in-game shop
• Refresh offers frequently: Those web-exclusive bundles are great, but they’ll get old pretty quickly if you don’t update them. Give players reasons to keep buying products on your webshop by regularly showing them new and fresh offers. This is a lot easier with Stash’s unified catalog, too: the moment you have a new in-game offer, it’ll update on your webshop in real time
• Deepen your rewards and loyalty. A deep loyalty and rewards program doesn’t just serve first time purchasers - it has enough tiers and a structure that gives players an ongoing reason to shift their spend to web from in-game
• Let users save their purchase info. When they’re ready to check out again, their info is already filled in for an even faster and simpler purchasing process - this means higher conversions, a boost in repeat purchase rates, and greater customer retention

Look at your continuous metrics

Most of the data points we just went through give a glimpse into webshop performance at a specific part of the funnel. But there are also metrics that relate to the overall performance of your store and are important to constantly monitor for any changes. 

Revenue metrics

Percentage of spend captured and gross margin

Probably the most important revenue metric for web shops is the share of gross player spend shifted by your web shops - i.e., percentage of spend captured. 

Percentage of spend captured = web shop gross revenue / (total gross revenue * (web shop gross revenue + app store gross revenue)) 

This metric looks at how much revenue goes through the web shop compared to in-game. The advantage of using percentage of spend captured, rather than gross revenue, to track web shop performance is that it is mostly isolated from other factors, including your game’s performance. 

Speaking of gross revenue, we need to mention it because it’s obviously an important high-level metric that tracks the total player spend on your web shop - but it can be misleading: 

• The most important factor in gross revenue (aka player spend) is your underlying game’s performance - which is different from your web shop’s performance. For example, if you launch new content and your total game revenue doubles, your web shop performance could actually stay exactly the same but it’s going to look like it skyrocketed because it’s taking into account your game’s gross revenue, too. 
• This metric tracks gross player spend - which isn’t the revenue you actually capture. Gross revenue is equal to the app store revenues you earn before accounting for the platform fees, which are 43% higher than your net revenues (thought it was 30%? Find out why it’s actually more here). That means you still need to deduct payment processing fees (typically ~8-10%) before getting to your net revenue.

A related metric is gross margin, which is your net revenue divided by gross revenue. You can calculate it in aggregate or for each channel (D2C vs. third party/app stores). Your aggregate margin factors in both your web shop processing costs and the percentage of spend captured. Per channel, the app store margin is pretty set (70%), while web shop margin varies with processing fees. 

To increase the percentage of spend on your webshop - and also your gross margin - you need to rely on channel incentives and engagement systems that will attract and retain users. Each game looks different, so it’s best to tailor your webshop to your specific genre, mechanics, players, etc. A few of the methods we focus most on when building a webstore are:

• Discounts and offers: Web shops are an ecommerce product at their core, so you should learn from the best ecommerce operators out there. This means using web native offer strategies like volume-based discounts, promo codes, and buy-one-get-one-free offers 
• Loyalty and rewards: The web is a great medium for finding new ways to engage with your most important players. Loyalty programs attract your best players to the web by offering great value, making them feel like VIPs, and giving them new and exciting ways to engage with your game 
• Engagement systems and experiences: Not all traffic drivers need to be about getting visitors to make a purchase - you can boost captured spend while enhancing player experience by using your web store to offer players new forms of content (e.g. web series), gameplay-supporting tools (e.g. build optimizers and tier lists), and community forums where players can meet new friends and teammates  

Average order value

Drilling down further, you can look at average order value (AOV). AOV is especially important in D2C because many payment processors have a fixed per-transaction cost - which can typically be $0.30 or more. Paying $0.30 to a payment processor for a $1 transaction is no better than paying $0.30 (30%) to Apple, so it’s important that you increase the average order value on the web to make up for this fixed cost. 

AOV is closely related to your game’s overall pricing/monetization strategy - you can increase it by repricing your products. And while you can push users towards higher-priced products using design, our main recommendation to boost order value on your web shop is to introduce a cart feature. A cart allows players to purchase multiple products with one transaction. For example, without a cart a player makes three $1 purchases that each cost $0.30 in processing fees (a 30% cost). With a cart, players can make a single $3 purchase which also costs just $0.30. That’s a difference of a 30% cost of sales without  a cart, compared to a 10% cost of sales if you do have one! 

Carts have the added bonus of highlighting the value that players are getting and offer web native discount strategies, like volume-based offers. This can increase overall player spend by, for example, suggesting players add another item to their cart to get 20% off their entire purchase. 

Payment metrics

In addition to revenue metrics, you should also be tracking data around payments. Your payment partners (or webshop provider, if you choose to outsource) should be taking care of this for you - but here’s an overview of some of the most important payment metrics to look out for: 

Transaction success rate

Transaction success rate is the percentage of transaction attempts that succeeded out of total transaction attempts (the inverse is the failure rate). 

Transaction success rate = # of successful transaction attempts / total transaction attempts 

Transactions can fail for many reasons, from the innocent (e.g., payment method errors) to the more nefarious (e.g. gaming fraud). These successes/failures should be determined by your payment partner - they have expertise in detecting fraud and suspicious behavior. With fraud losses reported in 2023 in the US reaching over $10 billion, it’s essential to work with a skilled partner that can help you avoid these sticky situations.

Purchase validity failures

Purchase validity failures measures the number of purchases that fail due to restrictions the developer sets. For example, if a player tries to purchase a one-time purchase bundle on the web when they already purchased it on mobile, the transaction will be blocked. 

This metric is unique to Stash - we plug into your existing segmentations and operate shared purchase limits across all environments (e.g. web and mobile). Doing so reduces player complaints and lessens chargebacks due to invalid purchases. 

Refund rate

Another payment metric to track is refund rate, which calculates the percentage of products returned by players after purchase. If your refund rate is high, it’s usually a sign that your players are either confused by your web shop or feel your products aren’t providing enough value. 

To reduce your refund rate: 

• Add details to the product description, like what’s included and what the product actually is
• Make sure the product description is clearly displayed before purchase
• Tweak your gacha system/loot box drop tables so players don’t feel cheated 
• Tighten up your purchase validity rules to make sure players can’t buy the same product twice

Set your webshop up for success

Tracking all of the right metrics and spotting opportunities for improving webshop performance is something we’re well-acquainted with at Stash. Our proprietary dashboard, Stash Studio, is a custom analytics feature that we tailor to each of our developer partners - at the same time, we bring in our ecommerce and web expertise. Together, we design a dashboard that incorporates the most important metrics from all perspectives: game design, ecommerce, and the web. Talk to us today about launching and optimizing a web shop that’s built completely from scratch for your specific game.