Friday View: Nordeus on mobile success and reducing churn

Nordeus Top Eleven is one of mobile gaming’s biggest success stories, and it has a lot to teach the gambling sector about user experience and reducing churn

It may not attract the same attention as Candy Crush or Clash of the Clans, but football management simulation app Top Eleven is one of the biggest social gaming success stories. It’s produced by Nordeus, a social gaming developer based out of Belgrade, and started its life on Facebook in May 2010 before making the transition to mobile 18 months later, releasing on Android in October 2011 and iOS the following month.

The last three years have seen the game gain mass appeal and in November 2014 it celebrated passing the 100 million registrations barrier. Central to this popularity has been Nordeus’ branding partnerships with a number of top flight football clubs and current Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho, who lends his image to the app’s branding and features in the game as an AI-controlled manager.

But the core gameplay is what keeps people coming back. Last month Nordeus rolled out Top Eleven 2015, the most extensive update in the game’s history comprising a complete redesign. Now largely gesture and swipe-based, navigation has been tightened and graphics given a fresh new look.

eGR Mobile Intelligence caught up with Nordeus’ PR manager Milan Dzukic just after the re-release to find out its plans for mobile, what it has learned in the three years since its release and what gambling companies can learn from its renowned ability to prevent churn.

eGR Mobile Intelligence (eGRMI): How was Top Eleven first conceived?

Milan Dzukic (MD): Our main idea was to give players something new and unique, something not available at the time on any mobile or web platform. There were some really popular football management video games, but all exclusively as PC titles and we wanted that level of complexity and gameplay, but available on mobile and web. At the time, most of the games on those platforms had rather simple mechanics. As for the theme itself, it wasn’t that hard to choose – we all love sports and the most popular and most recognised one globally is football.

eGRMI: How easy was its development on mobile?

MD: One of the main features of Top Eleven is our cross-platform support, meaning that we wanted to give people the opportunity to play our game on any device that they happen to have in their hands at that particular moment; tablet, mobile, PC or laptop. ‘Start a game on one device, switch instantly to another and fi nish the match’ was our main idea. Having said that, our development was always looked at as a ‘whole’, not divided based on platforms.

eGRMI: Sports is a competitive area on the App Store. How have you managed to become so popular?

MD: We’ve looked to focus on the cross-platform support we offer, great gameplay and game mechanics, the fully implemented social aspect of our game, and especially the fact that we are all football management fans and that we wanted to make a game we actually want to play and enjoy playing. I think that’s resonated with the target audience.

eGRMI: Churn and app abandonment are two particularly prevalent problems within egaming apps. Is there any one thing that mobile apps need to do to ensure users keep coming back?

MD: There are a few things we’ve paid close attention to. We’ve always tried to make the gameplay as engaging as possible and having a good social aspect to the app is always going to help. Perhaps most important though is the need to give players a reason to get back to your game, otherwise they’re just not likely to re-open it. Also, you really need to listen to the players, and consider and implement their ideas and changes. And that’s what we’ve done with constant upgrades, and the most recent edition of the game we’ve just released.

eGRMI: The app is now more gesture and swipebased. What’s the thinking behind that?

MD: Our game designers and art department put a large amount of effort into thinking ‘what can we do to improve the user experience across the devices and really develop a user interface that is the most suitable for a specific screen size or type of device?’ That’s why no matter if you are using a mobile phone, tablet, smaller screen smartphone or phablet, you’ll have a fully tailored experience for that particular device.

eGRMI: How has the update been received so far?

MD: We have had really good feedback from our players, but we are continuing to track our community, Facebook, Twitter and support forums so we can react to any problems that come up. Our release was based on the constant collaboration with our community and closed beta testing, so we made sure to listen to their needs.

eGRMI: How important is it for apps to be continually updated like Top Eleven is?

MD: It’s very important and is exactly what we are always saying and sending as a message to young development teams and individuals. It’s really vitally important to listen to your community and constantly improve your game, implement new features, fix bugs and balance gameplay if you want it to succeed and gain longevity.