Witzeal Technologies · Real-money gaming · Professional experience
Onboarding Funnel Redesign
Only 12% of new players reached a game on day one. A redesigned first session, tested against a 30% control, took Day-7 retention from 12.2% to 25.4%.
- Outcome
- 12.2% → 25.4% Day-7 retention
- Focus
- GrowthActivationExperimentation
- Role
- Product Manager · Witzeal Technologies · 2022–2023
- Evidence
- Documented outcome
Documented: the D0 and Day-7 baselines, the funnel and OTP/API diagnosis, the five changes and their economics, the 30% control / 70% treatment rollout, and the D0 and Day-7 results. Product reasoning is labelled. Implementation details and internal data are left out.
The 30-second version
Read the full story1Problem
Day-7 retention was ~12%, and only 12% of new users played a game on D0. An activation problem, not just a retention one.
2Approach
Five changes to reach the first game faster, including OTP auto-read and 3 free games. Tested 30% control vs. 70% treatment for three weeks, ~50K users.
3Outcome
D0 gameplay 12% → 33%. Day-7 retention 12.2% → 25.4%, +13.2 percentage points.
Problem
Signal
Only 12% of new users played a game on day one.
Day-7 retention was about 12%. I traced it through the onboarding funnel and the OTP API’s success and failure rates and delivery time. The loss sat before the first game, so this was an activation problem, not simply a retention one.
Read as a retention problem
- Where the loss is
- Players drift away over the first week
- What you build
- Reminders, rewards, re-engagement campaigns
Read as an activation problem
- Where the loss is
- Only 12% of new users play a game on day one
- What you build
- Time to value, the first meaningful action, the first 60 seconds
What the funnel showed
Decision
Changes
Five changes, all aimed at the first game.
Fix the first session before paying to bring players back. I owned the strategy, the funnel analysis and CleverTap dashboards, and the product and technical diagnosis of the OTP and API friction.
- 01Simplified signup and login
- 02Email ID fetched automatically
- 03OTP auto-read
- 04First 3 games free
- 05Live gameplay tutorial
Get new players into a game faster, and more of them come back.
Hypothesis
Product reasoning- If
- new users reach their first game faster, with less signup and OTP friction
- Then
- more of them will play on D0 and still be around on Day 7
- Measured by
- D0 gameplay and Day-7 retention, treatment against a control on the existing onboarding
Economics
Free games as a bridge to first deposit, not an open-ended discount.
The goal was to extend early engagement toward Day 7 and drive at least 5 game plays.
- onboarding bonus per user
- ₹15
- onboarding bonus per user
- ₹5 free entry × first 3 games
- minimum first deposit
- ₹20
- minimum first deposit
- game plays: the early-engagement goal
- 5+
- game plays: the early-engagement goal
Test
Controlled rollout
30% kept the old onboarding. 70% got the new one.
Three weeks, about 50,000 users.
Outcome
Outcome
More new players reached a game, and more were still playing on Day 7.
The positive direction continued into the first month (M0); later figures aren’t available, so none are shown.
What changed
Documented outcome- D0 gameplay
- 12% → 33%
- New users who played a game on day one
- Day-7 retention
- 12.2% → 25.4%
- Control vs. treatment, +13.2 pts
Learning
Learning
Retention is won before the retention metric.
Retention work often starts upstream of anything labelled retention: in the first session, and sometimes in OTP verification.
All five changes shipped together, so the contribution of each can’t be isolated.