This is the beginning of a collection of posts centred around in-game stores! I plan to use these as reference materials for best practises for store design. Archero seems like a reasonable place to start.
For the last three or so weeks I’ve been hooked on Archero after a colleague was visibly shocked when I mentioned I hadn’t played it. Turns out it’s a pretty good game, and it monetises well, bringing in around $3M in Net Revenue in July 2022 alone.
TL;DR Store Feature List
The segments are in this order, so feel free to skip to any part you are particularly interested in:
- Starter Offers
- Offer Features
- Offer Priority System
- Red Dot Notification
- Chests (loot boxes)
- One Long Scroller
- First Time Purchase Bonus
- Marketing Art
- Extra
- My Only Gripe
Starter Offers
Starter offers are an absolute classic first conversion technique in games. Archero has ‘Chapter Packs’, which are its closest offers to starter offers.
They unlock as you progress throughout the campaigns, and feature in the store without a time limit. I found the idea of no time limit an interesting choice, as it loses the additional conversion pressure added by FOMO.
On the other hand, if you choose not to purchase these offers, you become very familiar with them as they appear at the top of the shop indefinitely! These end up being clear value anchoring points for later offers and likely increase conversion of higher price point offers like the Battle Pass further in the funnel! This works quite well in this case.
The starter offer is priced at a very attractive $1.99, marked at 4x value (seems to be based on 400 gems + 260 gem cost for obsidian key, compared with cheapest gem IAP). The contents given are well designed, featuring:
- an obsidian key – this allows you to open one obsidian chest, which is one of the core monetisation loops in the game! Whenever you have an obsidian key, a small red dot will appear on the store icon in the menu AND on the obsidian chest, so it is fairly well signposted
- 400 gems – a quick glance lower down the store highlights that 400 gems for $1.99 is a great deal, compared to 80 gems for $0.99! The amount is more than enough for an extra roll on the obsidian chest, once you have gotten your first roll free with the obsidian key!
- 10k soft currency (coins) and 5 free revivals – while the real value comes from the gems + obsidian key, it is likely the soft currency and revives are the initial drivers for conversion as these are easiest to understand their immediate impact for new users!
Offer Features
Each offer is accompanied by a vibrant red ribbon. This does a great drop drawing your attention and clearly indicating the value of the offer, without much mental work!
In addition, they use the classic original price strikethrough technique (there is probably some better terminology), so you can quickly calculate how much money you are saving!
These features are particularly useful early in a user’s lifetime when the user is not really familiar with the value of in-game items and currency!
Offer Priority System
The offer priority system is very well structured, with the highest value and easiest to understand at the top, and things become progressively more complicated as you progress through the store.
Red Dot Notification
Red dots are everywhere and are the universal sign for ‘there’s something good going on here’. I think Facebook trained me to press red dots, but am not really sure. Maybe humans just love/hate small red circles.
Archero uses the standard red dot system in all of its game systems, including the shop, to highlight free things (including rewarded ads!!!).
The game trains you pretty quickly to press every red dot as it rewards you for your daily tasks, etc., which then leads you into clicking into the shop for your chests claimable through keys you collect in-game, or to view your daily rewarded ads. As these red dots refresh each day, it encourages the habit of at least one daily impression of the store!
Red dots do mean free stuff, and this hasn’t changed in my game experience yet!
Chests
Once you get a little bit through the game, chests become the core behind your progression as Epics items are required to efficiently increase your character’s stats.
Firstly there is a Golden Chest. This chest provides your initial items but quickly turns into providing the fodder for your collection.
This has a daily ‘free draw’ for an ad, this is smart for a few reasons:
- Provides ad revenue
- Pushes users into the store each day
- Makes it more difficult for the user to spend gems on it, encouraging the purchase of the higher-cost Obsidian Chest
Obsidian chest is free once per week, which is displayed in an obvious way, encouraging repeat log-ins and increasing the feeling of generosity.
The pity system is very clearly displayed to encourage repeat conversion and a long-term goal! The number of gems you receive early is quite high, so the goal of 10 chests for the epic seems like a reasonable early goal!
Archero includes a Wishes system for Obsidian chests, which adds some personalisation to the chest opening experience! The system allows you to select 4 items you want to have a higher chance in your chests. This system is really clever, as it shows off all of the epics, without diluting them with uncommons and rares, and the ‘choice’ makes the chests feel generous, despite epics still being very rare.
One long scroller
One long scroller is a standard feature for in-game stores among the top games. I’m a big fan of this feature, as it makes navigation and offer comparison frictionless and keeps the store feeling alive when there are not many offers active!
First Time Purchase Bonus
All the hard currency IAPs have a ‘1st-time’ bonus associated with them, designed to increase conversion at all price points!
If I purchase the $19.99 offer for 2500 gems (+2500 gems on the first purchase!), then I am less likely to purchase that offer again as now it only awards 2500 gems. I am now more likely to grab the $49.99 offer for 6500 (+6500 1st purchase) gems as the value is so much better.
Moreover, it continues with the theme of generosity. This game just feels very generous based on the framing of offers and rewards, making the user feel smart for spending. This makes that initial purchase immediately rewarding, and as such, you are more likely to repeat it!
The 1st time business goes even further with the ‘First Purchase Reward’ displayed on the home screen. No matter how much money you spend, on the first purchase, you will be rewarded with 620 gems worth of items, which is around $7 in value. You may not even see this on your first purchase so that dopamine hit with your initial purchase will be even higher, as the reward would be far greater than expected!
Marketing Art
Archero’s use of vibrant colours, animations and cool in-game characters make the store pop, visually interesting and fun! This cool cat dude (Meowgik) catches your eye immediately when you hop into the shop, delivering a funny and relaxed vibe, which is a good environment for encouraging purchases!
Extra
Subscription system, $3 for 3 days or $10 for 1 month. These two services enhance the daily log-in system, giving you even more rewards for daily sessions. The $3 is a ‘fools gold’ offer, as it is more expensive PER day and still provides worse rewards per day! Its purpose is likely to increase conversion on the VIP Sub, at $10 per month.
The system itself is genius – a user is essentially committing to D30 retention and may continue to spend with repeat renewals. In addition, the $10 sub only requires 3 logins out of the 30 to make your money’s worth!
The Battle Pass (BP) is the third priority in my current shop but is clearly one of the biggest revenue drivers in the game, as we are in the 78th BP at time of writing! It is priced at $4.99 for the standard battle pass and is Archero’s top-selling IAP on the US App Store.
The BP has two tracks, a $4.99 standard track and a $19.99 Advanced track. The BP tracks offer no new characters, but provide chests and various other virtual currencies and items. This makes the pass repeatable and cheap to produce.
My Only Gripe
Right, the only thing that made me a lil’ frustrated is the arrow buttons on the ‘chapter offers’. As you progress through the chapters, a new pack appears for each chapter. They all appear in the same place as the starter offer but are separated by arrow buttons.
These buttons have a small hitbox, so 90% of the time when I press them, the Store Purchase screen appears. This is not fun. I appreciate that they need to stay in the box to avoid cluttering the store, but just make the art a bit smaller OR put the arrows below the box, please.