Why I love the new Google Developer Console

Today Google released the preview of their new Developer Console to everyone.  I love it!  Why you may ask.  Well as someone who checks the statistics and ratings everyday of several applications, it's much easier to read and navigate.  The layout and design of the tables is very clean, allowing one to quickly get an overview of the current state of each application.



The new design allows you to quickly move between the statistics, ratings, app description, and apk uploads.  Previously you had to navigate between tabs and do a lot of extra clicking to get to similar pieces of information.



Yes, the new layout is very refreshing and I look forward to the other features that Google has in store for us developers.  What do you think?  Leave comments/feedback.

Game Development: Using Google Analytics to track user flow

Recently we have begun to take advantage of the flow visualizations available from Google Analytics for analyzing user behavior in Word Crank.



What is a Flow Report?

"Flow Reports in Google Analytics illustrate the paths visitors take through your website...In one graphic, you can see how visitors enter, engage, and exit your site. " -- Google Analytics

One aspect of these diagrams that I especially appreciate is the ability to compare two different time frames and see how the user flow differs.  I really recommend this if you include a new feature in your application and want to see what impact it has on user behavior.

How to Compare Two Dates:

1. Select Compare to Past


2. Choose a second date range


3. Choose similar time periods ( full months or weeks )

Happy flow reporting!

Being Amazon's Free App of the Day: The Results

On Monday, August 27th, 2012, Word Crank Elite was the Free App of the Day in the Amazon App Store.  We were very excited about being given the opportunity and promised to share the results (find out how this opportunity came about, here).  So overall, we feel that the promotion was a success.  We were able to increase our game's visibility in the App Store and received some valuable feedback.

 

Here are a few statistics from the past week which help highlight the impact on our traffic:

Aug. 27 - Sep. 2 Visits: 50,677 Unique Visitors: 14,201 Pageviews: 38,010 Pages / Visit: 0.75 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:11:17

Aug. 19 - Aug. 26 Visits: 1,508 Unique Visitors: 251 Pageviews: 1,169 Pages / Visit: 0.78 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:15:16

Based on the above table you can see that we had a huge influx of traffic; an increase of over 33x. We also saw an increase in the number of downloads of the free version of Word Crank, in the other app stores, Google Play and iOS.

What was unexpected to us was the number of negative comments related to the use of OpenFeint in the game.  On Google Play we have 4.4 stars, but on Amazon with so many people complaining about the use of OpenFeint we have only 2 stars.  That is unfortunate as we thought that OpenFeint was allowing users the ability to compete with friends and gain achievements.  From what we have been able to find online, there really is no basis for such negativity.  However, as OpenFeint was recently bought by GREE we were already considering alternative scoring solutions.

So what were our major takeaways?

• we should allow users the ability to choose which game level they wanted to start with, 3, 4, or 5 letter words (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should start the difficulty level at "Bonkers" (this will be included in version 1.3.5)


• we should move away from use of OpenFeint (TBD)

We will share some additional statistics within the next few weeks, as the impact of these types of promotions can have lasting effects.