Securing a coveted spot in the top charts can be a game-changer for developers. It opens doors to increased downloads, revenue, player engagement, and long-term success in the competitive mobile gaming world. To help you navigate the complexities of app stores, we developed the Store Intelligence platform.

Store rankings are not just empty metrics; they provide valuable insights into player preferences, market trends, and the factors that drive a game’s success. Access to such metrics is especially important for developers and studios aspiring to get to the top, who do not have the resources for expensive data solutions and data scientists to help them translate acquired data into actionable insights.

Together with our Benchmarks, Store Intelligence presents a tangible opportunity to understand your competitors’ strategies and how they turn them into engaging gameplay mechanics, monetization strategies, and more. The biggest advantage? Store Intelligence allows you to apply granular filters, such as store type, game category, date, and rank change, or focus on paid versus free games. That means you can view similar titles to yours and follow their development.

Consider this guide your first step in optimizing your games to increase their visibility in the stores:

Identify high-potential keywords

One of the keys to discoverability is understanding the keywords or search terms that lead players to top-ranked games. You might have heard about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a marketing strategy to rank a website on the top of search engines such as Google, attracting organic (not paid) traffic.

With Store Intelligence, you can pinpoint which keywords effectively drive this traffic. You can then optimize your game title, description, and metadata to increase visibility and attract more players.

Competitive analysis

Top-ranked games didn’t get there by chance. With Store Intelligence, you can analyze the ranking positions of successful games in your category and genre to uncover valuable insights. You can then use their gameplay mechanics, art styles, and user reviews to identify common elements across successful titles that resonate with players. This information can guide your game development decisions.

Pricing and monetization

Successful monetization strategies often align with higher rankings. With Store Intelligence, you can analyze store ranking fluctuations and their connection to in-game monetization to optimize pricing models and in-app purchases, driving more revenue. This approach can help you optimize your monetization strategies.

Promotion strategies

Studying the promotional strategies employed by top-ranked games can offer valuable lessons. Investigate their advertising campaigns, social media engagement, influencer partnerships, and other marketing efforts. Understanding what works for others can inform your own promotional initiatives, with Store Intelligence as your guide. Here are some tools to help you out:

• Google Ads Transparency Center: Find active ads published through Google (FREE)
• AdSpy: Searchable database of Facebook and Instagram ads
• Moat by Oracle Data Cloud: Search for specific ads and view their performance metrics.

Timing and seasonality

The game’s popularity can also be influenced by the time of the year. Use Store Intelligence to analyze how this factor impacts rankings and player activity. You can then plan game releases, updates, and events to align with periods of increased player engagement or holidays. Guided by Store Intelligence, strategic timing can give your game a competitive edge.

Store ranking data is a goldmine of insights that can propel your game to the top charts. These 5 strategies are just the tip of the iceberg regarding its power. We encourage you to go ahead and explore our Store Intelligence on your own. Although users of our core analytics can access this tool, they will realize that access to some features might be restricted. For unlimited experience, we suggest you update to GameAnalytics Pro.

Achieving success when creating a game requires more than creativity and innovation. Knowing and correctly interpreting your KPIs is undoubtedly the foundation of making educated decisions during game development. And to support you on your data journey, we compiled a list of the 22 most essential metrics to keep an eye on.

But while paying attention to your game performance cannot be overstated, it is equally important to deeply understand player preferences and industry standards. From performance comparison to trend identification, game industry benchmarks offer a grand scale to set realistic goals and expectations.

Providing data and insights from over 140,000 game studios and developers, our Benchmarks are a powerful ally for game developers. The tool offers a wealth of information on key metrics such as retention, monetization, engagement, and advertising, enabling developers to understand player behavior and market trends better.

Before we delve into concrete steps to guide you through interpreting the benchmark data, learn about various benchmark tables, associated metrics, and filtering possibilities:

How game developers benefit from industry benchmarks?

When comparing your game to other studios and developers, holistic data about player retention gives developers insights into how other games retain players. This data is valuable for understanding how players engage with games over time and allows developers to benchmark their game’s performance against industry standards.

You can, for example, analyze retention trends within your game’s genre to understand player behavior patterns unique to that category. Similarly, by examining retention benchmarks over different time periods, you can track player engagement changes and identify potential improvement areas. Such analysis can help identify correlations between different metrics and provide insights into player engagement and retention strategies.

Relying solely on individual benchmarks may provide a limited perspective. Instead, we recommend a holistic approach by comparing and contrasting several benchmarks to unveil deeper insights. Such multifaceted analysis enriches your understanding of player dynamics and allows you to refine your strategies.

For instance, by analyzing how changes in session length correlate with retention rates, developers can pinpoint optimal session durations that keep players coming back for more. Similarly, understanding how playtime affects retention can inform decisions about game pacing, content depth, and progression mechanics to enhance player engagement over time.

Insights into monetization trends

Monetization benchmarks are essential to measure the effectiveness of in-game monetization strategies and assess the overall financial performance of their genre. These benchmarks provide insights into key revenue metrics such as conversion rates, average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU).

Once again, comparing with other benchmarks will only deepen your understanding of the market. For example, comparing monetization benchmarks to engagement metrics involves analyzing how revenue metrics like ARPDAU correlate with key engagement indicators such as session length, session count, and retention rates. If higher ARPDAU coincides with longer session lengths or higher retention rates, it suggests that players who engage more deeply are more likely to spend. Conversely, if monetization metrics are low despite strong engagement, it may indicate opportunities to optimize monetization mechanics or offer more compelling in-game purchases. By identifying these correlations, you can refine your monetization strategies and maximize revenue potential while maintaining a positive player experience.

Focus on your target player and keep testing

Segment analysis is a powerful strategy for deriving actionable insights from GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks. Filtering the data based on various parameters, such as time period, genre, region, or platform, will allow you to customize game features, content, and monetization strategies to suit specific player groups better.

To achieve the best improvements possible, you can conduct A/B tests to experiment with different game features, mechanics, and monetization strategies. GameAnalytics Pro allows you to roll out a discovery you made through A/B testing, target users in a specific country, build or operation system version, and set a config to switch ON/OFF at a specific time directly in the tool.

GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks are simply a treasure trove of data-driven insights for game developers. By leveraging its comprehensive dataset, you can refine the entire portfolio of your games, optimize engagement and monetization strategies, and ultimately scale the games for success.

When it comes to game and mobile app analytics, there are hundreds of metrics numbers to track. There are metrics like downloads, sessions, or DAUs on one end of the spectrum. These numbers are relatively straightforward and measure concrete actions. More complicated metrics include user churn or Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU). These are less intuitive to interpret and might raise more questions than answers.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all policy for game analytics, some useful metrics can help shed light on how you can improve your mobile game. To better understand how these metrics relate to each other and provide comprehensive insights into your game’s performance, we divide them into three main categories: engagement metrics, monetization metrics, and advertising metrics. Each category focuses on different aspects of player behavior, revenue generation, and marketing effectiveness, allowing you to optimize various avenues of your games.

Let’s dive into the first category.

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics refer to key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure how actively and deeply players interact with your game. These metrics provide insights into player behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels, helping developers assess the efficiency of their game infrastructures, evaluate player engagement levels, and optimize their games to enhance players’ experiences to maximize their retention.

• DAU and MAU: The daily- and monthly active users ratio measures the percentage of monthly active users who engage with the game on a daily basis, providing insights into the game’s stickiness and popularity over time. A high DAU/MAU ratio indicates strong user retention and frequent engagement, while a low ratio may signal potential churn or disinterest among users.
• Retention: Retention tracks the number of players who continue to engage with the game over time, typically measured at various intervals such as day 1, day 7, and day 30. High retention rates mean players find your game compelling and will likely return. On the other hand, low retention rates suggest issues with gameplay, onboarding, or overall user experience.

Read more: Decoding players’ patterns with engagement tracing

• Playtime: Playtime refers to the total time players spend actively engaging with the game across all sessions. It provides insights into player engagement levels and the overall appeal of the game’s content and mechanics. Monitoring playtime can help developers identify popular game features, optimize gameplay experiences, and tailor content to meet player preferences.
• Session length: Session length measures the average duration of a single gaming session, indicating how long players typically play the game in one sitting. Longer session lengths suggest high player engagement and enjoyment, while shorter session lengths may indicate issues with pacing, content depth, or player frustration. Analyzing session length trends can help you fine-tune gameplay mechanics, level design, and progression systems to maximize player satisfaction and retention.
• Session count: Session count tracks the number of gaming sessions initiated by players within a defined timeframe, providing insights into player engagement frequency and habits. Higher session counts indicate strong player engagement and interest in the game, while lower session counts may signal waning interest or competing priorities. Understanding session count trends can help developers identify opportunities to enhance return visits, introduce new content, or enhance social features to keep players returning for more.
• Churn rate: Churn rate is when players stop engaging with the game over a specific period, indicating the number of players who churn or disengage. A high churn rate suggests issues with player retention and overall game satisfaction, while a low churn rate indicates strong player loyalty and satisfaction.

Read more: Retention Rate Secrets to Reduce User Churn

• Player count: Player count refers to the total number of players engaging with the game within a specified timeframe, providing insights into overall player interest and adoption.
• New users: New users represent players who have recently installed or started playing the game for the first time within a defined timeframe. Monitoring new user acquisition rates gives you insights into the game’s appeal to new audiences, the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and overall user acquisition trends.
• Installs ratio: The installs ratio compares the number of game installs to other relevant metrics, such as ad impressions or clicks, providing insights into user acquisition campaigns’ effectiveness and marketing channels’ effectiveness. A high install ratio indicates efficient user acquisition and conversion rates, while a low ratio may suggest inefficiencies or issues with campaign targeting, messaging, or creatives.

These metrics are crucial to developers who want to understand how the players engage with their games. But knowing how your games compare to the market is equally important. With data and insights from over 140,000 game studios and developers, GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks are a powerful ally for game developers. Further, our Store Intelligence provides insights into store rankings, including historical data. Both these tools are carefully packaged in a tool we call GameIntel, and their unlimited potential is a part of the Pro subscription.

The next category of metrics relates to a product or service’s financial performance, particularly in revenue generation.

Monetization metrics

Monetization metrics KPIs focus on assessing the effectiveness of in-game monetization strategies and measuring the revenue generated from player interactions. Some common monetization metrics that we offer in our analytics solutions include:

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of players who take a desired action, such as making in-game purchases, subscribing to a premium service, or completing a specific level or task. A high conversion rate indicates effective monetization strategies and a players’ willingness to engage in these revenue-generating activities.
• ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): ARPU calculates the average revenue generated per user, providing insights into the overall monetization effectiveness of a game. By dividing total revenue by the total number of active users within a specified period, you can calculate the average value of each player and identify opportunities to increase revenue through targeted monetization efforts.
• ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User): ARPPU determines the average revenue generated per purchase user, excluding non-paying players from the calculation. It offers insights into the spending behavior and value of paying players, helping developers optimize pricing strategies, in-game offers, and monetization mechanics to maximize revenue from paying users.
• LTV (Lifetime Value): LTV estimates the total revenue generated by a player over their entire engagement with the game, including initial and recurring purchases. By forecasting the long-term value of players, you can prioritize user acquisition efforts, optimize retention strategies, and calculate the return on investment for marketing campaigns and user acquisition initiatives.
• IAP revenue (In-App Purchase Revenue): IAP revenue represents the total revenue generated from in-game purchases, including consumable items, virtual currency, expansion packs, and other digital goods.
• ILRD (IAP Lifetime Revenue per Download): ILRD measures the lifetime revenue generated per download from in-app purchases, indicating the revenue potential of each acquired user. These metrics allows you to understand the average revenue generated per user acquisition and evaluate the effectiveness of monetization strategies in converting downloads into revenue.

Advertising metrics

Advertising metrics evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising campaigns. In the context of game analytics, advertising metrics focus on assessing the performance of advertisements used to promote games and drive user acquisition. Some common advertising metrics include:

• CPC (Cost Per Click): CPC represents the average cost of each ad click, indicating the efficiency and effectiveness of ad campaigns in driving user engagement. Lower CPC values suggest more cost-effective advertising strategies and higher engagement rates among target audiences.
• CPI (Cost Per Install): CPI measures the average cost associated with acquiring a new user through an advertisement, providing insights into the efficiency and return on investment of user acquisition campaigns.
• CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): CPM calculates the cost per one thousand ad impressions, representing the cost advertisers pay for every thousand times their ad is displayed to users. It is a common pricing model used in online advertising, with higher CPM values indicating greater demand for ad inventory and potentially higher advertising revenue for publishers.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR measures the percentage of users who click on an advertisement after viewing it, indicating the effectiveness of ad creatives, messaging, and placement in driving user engagement.
• Fraud Share: Fraud share represents the portion of ad clicks or impressions that are deemed fraudulent or invalid, often resulting from click bots, fraudulent traffic sources, or ad stacking techniques. Monitoring fraud share helps advertisers identify and mitigate fraudulent activities, protect advertising budgets, and ensure the accuracy and integrity of campaign performance data.

Both monetization and advertising data is available in our Benchmarks.

While there is no magic recipe for game analytics, the above metrics are standards that can help you get started in the world of analytics. The most important part of mobile game analytics is to get started and establish benchmarks for your own games. Once you understand how your users behave, you can measure things like the impact of a game update or changes to your user acquisition strategy.

If you like challenging yourself, we encourage you to explore advanced analytics concepts like segmentation, funnels, or custom events. GameAnalytics makes accessing this data easy and provides you with a set of actionable insights to help you optimize your games – no data scientist needed.

Addressing developers’ demands for more nuanced retention analysis, we created a solution beyond conventional retention metrics, empowering developers and studios to gain a deeper understanding of player behavior and refine their strategies for long-term success.

Our engagement feature enables developers to filter retention based on various event types, offering a granular view of player behavior beyond standard global filters such as country or platform. By creating custom cohorts for retention, developers can tailor their analyses to specific in-game actions, answering critical questions such as whether users return after completing a particular level, making specific purchases, or investing resources in the game.

Here is everything you need to know about this feature:

Tracking event-based player retention

While traditional retention metrics usually focus on install-based data, GameAnalytics’s Engagement feature allows you to filter retention based on player events. You can explore player behavior by tracking those who perform specific actions during a given period and return on subsequent days. The charts and cohort give you an overview of which players return after performing specific in-game actions, such as buying items or completing challenging levels.

For example, you want to see the retention rate of players who purchased a sniper rifle:

• In the condition field, select ‘user sent.’ This means you are looking for an event that was triggered.
• Choose a ‘Business’ event to indicate your interest in purchase-related events.
• Next you specify the event by selecting ‘Item type’ and ‘Item ID’, here it is ‘Weapons’ and ‘SniperRifle.’
• Now, the retention chart and cohort are generated.

You can additionally select a specific period you want to analyze.

Custom triggers for deeper insights

With customizable starting and returning triggers, you can focus on analyzing specific player segments. Whether it’s players who completed a level, made a purchase, or triggered a specific event, you are the one to define the conditions that matter most to you.
To better understand your players, you can explore the retention rate of users who purchased the said sniper rifle and completed Level One in World One:

• In the ‘Start’ trigger line, you implement the same conditions chosen for event-based tracking earlier.
• The returning event you seek is a state of ‘Progression.’
• Now, in the event filter, you set the status to ‘completed’ and select worlds and levels as you desire.
• The related retention chart and cohort are generated.

Accessible, in-depth analytics for game developers

While the Engagement feature is a part of all product tiers, event-based retention, and custom triggers are only available for Pro users. GameAnalytics Pro is designed to reduce friction points and empower developers and game studios to make educated decisions, enhancing the game experience and improving retention rates.

Aside from the Engagement feature, GameAnalytics Pro includes many efficient and relevant tools to help you optimize your games and apps, such as Scheduled reporting, Portfolio overview, Health monitoring, industry Benchmarks or Metrics API access. You can learn about the Pro tier here.

The importance of data in game development is undeniable and crucial for optimizing user experience, player retention, monetization, and more. GameAnalytics helps over 60,000 gaming studios optimize and improve their games, offering a well-supported ecosystem of integrations whatever your dev tools of choice. When considering switching engines, the real challenge lies in preserving historically collected data, which serves as a compass guiding future game enhancements and decision-making.

We understand these concerns and make sure that you can confidently switch between engines, knowing that your historical data remains intact and actionable.All you need to do is instrument your SDK of choice, and the data collection continues in our engine-agnostic platform, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and continually refine your games. To make it as easy as possible, GameAnalytics is compatible with a wide range of not only engines but also popular platforms like Roblox, Javascript/web games, development environments, and frameworks.

Integration with leading game development engines

GameAnalytics offers 18 official integrations for all popular game development engines and environments, ensuring accessibility for developers across the board, making it a truly engine-agnostic platform, suitable for any tech stack. Each integration is tailor-made to satisfy the specific requirements of the game engine, providing a hassle-free and efficient experience.

These integrations are powered by streamlined SDKs, each comprising just a single line of code. While installation is a breeze, it’s worth noting that each game engine requires its unique line of code. These codes are readily available, either directly from GameAnalytics, the engine’s marketplaces, or dedicated hosting development platforms such as GitHub. Head over to our ready-to-use SDK documentation to understand their application and start collecting data and insights for your games.

PS: Our SDKs have built-in features to enable A/B testing and Live Ops – free of charge!

If you are considering switching your engine – or simply are looking to start with one –, check out our overview of the most popular ones:

Unity: Unity enables you to work with both 2D and 3D graphics and their Animator system can be used to create an animation state machine. The Unity-specific snippet empowers you to collect data and glean insights into player behavior effortlessly. Dive into detailed instructions via our Unity Integration Guide.

Unreal: Unreal engine is a great option for cross-platform development, high-quality graphics creation, and its ability to scale your game. Whether you want to start with the Unreal engine or already develop games through this platform, explore our Unreal Integration Guide to understand all the benefits that GameAnalytics can provide.

Godot: Renowned for its open-source nature and user-friendly interface, Godot operates on a language model similar to Python, which is one of the easiest coding languages used for game development. With GameAnalytics, you can dissect player progression, in-game events, monetization, and more in real-time. Read along with our Godot Integration Guide to learn more.

Cocos2D: This is the primary engine for writing games for iOS and Mac. While Cocos2D allows the development of regular old applications along with customized graphics, it also provides Objective C code. Our Cocos2D Integration Guide provides in-depth instructions to get you started.

Defold: This is a free-to-use engine that operates in Lua programming language with a high-quality visual editor and hot reload function. Head over to our documentation to explore the full potential of Defold analytics via our Defold Integration Guide.

GameMaker: Thanks to its intuitive interface, GameMaker eliminates the need to create a code base and engine from scratch. That allows game development beginners to easily create 2D mobile games. SDK for this engine is available in our GitHub repository and you can fetch it via the GameMaker Integration Guide.

Cordova: The biggest advantage of the Cordova engine is its ability to build mobile apps without the need to learn new programming languages or frameworks. That means developers can use and leverage their existing HTML, CSS, or JavaScript skills. To learn how to integrate Cordova with GameAnalytics, read the Cordova Integration Guide.

Flutter: This cross-platform development framework allows developers to work fast thanks to its Hot Reload feature and highly customizable UI design. Integrating the open-source framework to GameAnalytics is as easy as flipping the switch and is fully described in the step-by-step Flutter Integration Guide.

GameAnalytics compatibility extends also to many leading platforms and environments along the engines listed above:

• Android
• iOS
• Roblox
• Meta Quest 2
• JavaScript
• Adobe Air
• Construct
• C#
• C++

We know that working with data requires sensitive treatment. It is at our core to incorporate great measures toward legal, privacy, and security compliance. Continue reading to learn about our mission towards navigating the complexities of an ever-changing privacy regulatory landscape for you.

Privacy and Security: GameAnalytics’ Commitment

Integrating GameAnalytics into your game development process offers a wealth of benefits, from improving user experiences to ensuring player privacy. We understand the importance of trust, compliance, and data security in the gaming industry, which is why we go the extra mile to ensure your data is in safe hands. Our commitment to security and privacy is underlined by our impressive certifications:

• SOC2 Type II Compliant
• ISO27001 Certified
• Regular Penetration Testing
• Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Plans
• Robust Intrusion Detection and Infrastructure Monitoring

Our analytics tool empowers game developers to optimize and improve their games by collecting and analyzing crucial game data. We respect the privacy of both you and your players and do not provide collected data to any third party. Our products are further engineered with industry-leading security protocols to safeguard your data at all times. From multi-layered encryption to firewall protections, we ensure your data is uncompromised.