US relationship marketers Swrve have helped London-based mobile startup Space Ape Games to improve player retention, loyalty and revenue across its suite of apps.

Using A/B testing of the prologue battle scene for Samurai Siege, thought to be a winning way to draw gamers in, Space Ape Games found its original video wasnt maximising retention or finding high-spending gamers. By testing four different versions of the a tutorial, Swrve was able to identify the one that would draw in the most high-spending users most frequently, growing day-one retention by five per cent. The company also used Swrve to target offers at different user groups, resulting in conversions of non-paid users to spenders increasing by three times.

“We spoke with lots of people during development, tested our theories and came up with an epic prologue we were very proud of,” said Simon Hade, Founder of Space Ape games. “But we discovered that it worked better for a very specific segment of users – who happened to look a lot like us, the developers – and for the majority of people it was two to five per cent worse. Swrve helped us iterate quickly to optimise the in-game experience for our users, and succeed in mobile.”

Swrve CEO told Mobile Marketing that he is convinced that now A/B testing is possible for apps, it is the future of app personalisation and loyatly on mobile.