What's Wrong with This Wordle?
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #97 - Look at Them Grow!. Check out the full article for more insights.
Last week I shared download estimates for Wordle!, an old game that has the same name as a web game that gained popularity in the last month. And no, I'm not talking about the clone Apple took down.
Normally, I don't talk about the same app (or game) for two weeks in a row, but the numbers I shared last week, which were pretty big for then, have been dwarfed this week and I just had to share an update.
Wordle! has reached new highs this week, hitting 80K downloads on Wednesday in a journey that doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. In total, the game was downloaded more than 500,000 times in the last couple of weeks.
The developer of the game committed to donating all of the new revenue to charity, which is very noble and surprising. But we can't let those big download numbers fool us.
I talk about "intent" often in the context of App Store Optimization, and say that if you are lucky enough to show up for something that isn't relevant for your app odds are those downloads won't turn into anything. That's mainly what's happening here...
Although Wordle! is a word game it's nothing like the Wordle people are looking for right now, so after they download it they get confused and leave, leading to enormous churn and no real revenue.
The game doesn't do a great job at keeping those new users or converting them either, which means the donation amount isn't all that high.
I urge the developer behind it to ride the wave and explain what's going on, make it easier to play the game and to pay for it. Why? Because it's a great opportunity to earn for a good cause.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
