TLDR; Webshops are becoming very popular in mobile gaming, as they boost revenues significantly by building direct relationships with players and avoiding Apple & Google fees. To maximize success you need to drive high volumes of player traffic to your webshop. Be sure to use community & social channels, in-game promotions without direct links (EU only), SEO, and retargeting to get the most out of your webshop.

We recently dug into Apple’s policy updates in the EU and why we believe it’ll be a spark that ignites a wave of webshop adoption. Big gaming companies like Supercell, Scopely, EA, FunPlus, Zynga, NetEase, and Wooga are selling in-game products and subscriptions directly to players via webshops, and webshops are poised to be the norm in mobile gaming. With good reason, as webshops have been shown to increase revenue by up to 25% by avoiding Apple and Google commissions. To make sure your webshop is a success, you need to have a solid plan to drive player traffic without triggering platform commission fees. Keep reading for a breakdown of traffic-driving tactics that will allow you to bypass commissions and boost your revenue and player LTV.

Community & social media

It’s time to flex your community. Work webshop promotions into your regular cadence of social posts and community announcements. Promote discounts, limited-time offers, and exclusives to your Discord community and across your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok followers. Use images and direct links to grab attention and drive people directly to your webstore. Apple and Google can’t make any claim on these sales and can’t charge any commission fees.

This can be very effective approach; the bigger your community, the bigger the impact.

Marvel Snap uses their Discord server as a primary channel for announcing offers and promotions from their webshop.

Star Trek Timelines actively promotes sales and offers on their Facebook page and across all of their community channels.

In-game promotion, without direct link (in the EU only)

For the EU, it’s fair game to promote your webshop directly in your game. Make your players aware that your online store exists and publicize any discounts or exclusives available there. But to avoid commission fees, don’t provide a direct link or URL to your webshop, so Apple and Google can’t claim ownership of any resulting sales. Players may not be able to tap directly to your webshop, but if you provide good incentive (e.g. discounts, special items, etc.) then they’ll find your store by searching online or skimming your social media/community.

Don’t do this outside of the EU as it may result in your app being rejected from the App Store and Google Play.

SEO (search engine optimization)

Make sure you’re ready when players turn to Google or their favorite search engine to find your game store. Luckily, you should be able to secure the top search rankings since you likely own a domain/URL tied directly to your game. Be sure to tap someone on your team with SEO experience or hire an SEO agency, it’ll be well worth the small investment.

Supercell has their SEO dialed, owning the top result for "Clash Royale store"

Retargeting

Retargeting isn’t what it used to be due to the deprecation of IDFA and other privacy changes. On the other hand, retargeting active users to promote your webshop makes a lot of sense and is still very much possible. Scale will be limited overall as you’ll only be able to reach players who’ve allowed tracking. But with such a high revenue upside per conversion (because you aren’t paying the Apple/Google commissions), you could see strong ROAS, even if it is at a limited scale. Meta and Google are the most prominent platforms for retargeting and would be a good place to start. They both offer conversion APIs to synch your webshop with their bidding system to auto-optimize to maximize webshop sales. A tactic that is heavy used in “traditional” eCommerce (e.g. buying shoes online) and not always available with in-app conversions.

Retargeting will only reach users who have allowed tracking via a pop-up like this one.

Help is on the way

Don’t get us wrong, building, launching, maintaining and promoting a webshop is no small feat. And there’s a lot of new and changing stuff at play. But Sanlo is here to help make your webshop successful, plus as easy, and as simple as possible. And, while that might sound like a marketing line, it’s truly all we’re thinking about these days.

If you want more, best practices, and industry updates, then sign-up for our waitlist and don’t hesitate to reach out, we love talking about webshops.