Improve Your Game UI and Upsurge Conversions
UI plays an essential role in deciding the success or failure of any game in mobile. Using the right design principles, you can help players glide through the menus, increase sales, or achieve other goals and measure the impact of any changes you induce in UI. This affects conversions directly and can either make or break your revenue.
Your primary purpose should be to help people find their way easily around the game by removing any friction in the interface. Players don’t want to waste time in navigating through the menus. The information they need should be made readily available to them through the interface irrespective of the difficulty or ease of the game. For example, the shop now button should be visible and highlighted so that it is easily noticeable and easy to press for unlocking the full game or getting virtual cash. The Mobile game developers in Ireland are using significant elements such as menus, forms, and buttons in applications to combine graphic design and analytics. The principles of UX design for games also improve the UI of your game. Here are the key tips for achieving this.
Tip #1: Consistency holds the key
The same set of rules should be applied consistently to the entire interface design, whenever possible. Thus, you need to define a precise style guide. Consistency in the design of the UI makes it more intuitive to the player, and the assets are made modular enough to allow reuse of elements and save a lot of time. From the very beginning, you need to decide the characteristics that will be shared in everything, just like the shine you may want to add on top of a sprite (for highlighting) or a level you want to add to the edges (for softening).
Consistency in both audio and visual effects in the UI needs to be provided to the player. Your design principles should not be restricted to any particular button in isolation but all the layers of the UI. For introducing a new menu to the players, you need to add layers and use colour palettes to make your interface modular.
Tip #2: Visual hierarchy should be maintained
Even though all buttons should have similar characteristics, based on their importance, certain buttons like the play and buy buttons need to be made prominent using colour contrast, size difference, placement (position) and layout, unique sound effects, or more detailed animation. Maintaining this visual hierarchy makes players notice and press these buttons most often. Apart from this, you can also add ornaments to the buttons by treating them like small illustrations.
Tip #3: Objective data should be used
Though your UI may look good, it may not be functional. Thus, you should use analytics to be certain that your design works and the changes you introduce improve the experience of the players. So, you need to use A/B testing, the method used by web designers and marketers every time. The simple steps involved in the process of A/B testing include the collection of data about conversions, introducing a specific change you want to test, collecting the same data after you implement the change and update the game, and lastly comparing the results.
A range of variables such as an icon, a label, or the colour of a button, etc. can be tested using A/B testing to check what improves the user experience. It is, however, always better to tweak only one variable at a time for A/B testing.
Tip #4: Minimalistic approach is beneficial
A complex UI that is overcrowded can irritate anyone as The UI does not seem to get any space to breathe. The right approach involves including only those elements in the UI that are not needed by the player. Moreover, leaving enough space around elements helps you highlight the elements by varying their size and removes distractions around it. This helps you direct the player to where you want and convert him by making him press a specific button.
On the other hand, by providing a crowded UI, the number of options you provide to a player on any given screen increase and the player will be spending more time in reading them to find the one he is searching for. This may lead to distractions and wastage of time, thereby preventing conversions. So, the best way to analyse this is by building the interface in the best way you can and then testing it to find the buttons that the players press most often, amount of time the players spend on each screen, and to observe how the data evolves after implementing changes.
Tip #5: Icons should be used sparingly
Icons may seem like a wonderful option which provides something interesting that you understand even without reading. However, you should be cautioned that icons do not always work and may, in fact, be confusing. They have overcrowded smartphones, both iOS and Android, as “buttons without labels.” You need to learn the meanings of these icons beforehand, otherwise, how can anyone know that the cog means “settings.” Similarly, an exclamation mark can signal a danger or a deal you don’t want to miss, thereby confusing the user. So, you just can’t use them everywhere.
Pictograms for play and forward buttons are mostly understood by the players as they mean to play the level and go to the next level respectively. It is also beneficial to label the icons to avoid confusion. Good labels let you know exactly what the button does.
To sum up
The principles of UX design can help you create a good game UI. The consistency of the UI makes it intuitive. Using visual hierarchy, minimalistic approach, and objective data helps in increasing conversions. Icons should be used sparingly, and analytics should frequently be used to measure the effects of changes on user experience and conversions.
