Nevergrind, the EverQuest-inspired HTML5 browser RPG, climbed to new heights in June, 2015, with 102,477 pageviews across 13,033 sessions and 5,063 unique users. The previous record, 94,044, was set in April, 2015, when the game was initially launched along with its successful kickstarter campaign.
The monthy’s success was mostly driven by the re-design of the leaderboards and the Nevergrounds. The re-design took SEO and usability considerations in mind. For those reasons, the leaderboard was converted from an SPA to a conventional webpage design, allowing for direct linking to each leaderboard, such as the top 100 hardcore monks.
Predictably, this resulted in much higher pageviews, driving the monthly pages/session up to 7.86. I also observed higher session durations, which climbed above an average of 10 minutes, and higher lower bounce rates. Across all metrics user engagement appears to be on the rise, however the number of unique users and sessions is still well down compared to April, though that should be expected, to some extent, due to the massive marketing effort.
Throughout July I will be focusing on improving the game’s dynamic server features. Real-time chat was recently added, which has been extremely popular so far. I also plan to do several Youtube videos to help promote Nevergrind.
