Battlefy Hearthstone App
Problem
Missed tournament actions: Critical tournament notifications are extremely important for players on Battlefy. However, 15% of Battlefy users have their ad blockers and an additional 15% have browser notifications turned off, which meant that players were not receiving notifications on the platform. This caused players to be disqualified if they were not paying attention. This has been a long-standing problem that Battlefy faced as users expected to take critical tournament actions in real-time, informed by up-to-date information. See how I solved this in my Battlefy Player Experience case study.
Technical Debt: The Battlefy platform was mainly designed for PC gamers. Building custom features in tight deadlines for B2B clients over the years negatively affected the player experience on mobile and tablet. The legacy code also prevented us from building a real-time experience.
Relationship with Blizzard: As one of our most active games on the platform, Hearthstone brings 60k+ players a month. In early 2018, I designed the Hearthstone Decklist Management for desktop/mobile web. We worked closely with Blizzard in the last few years to run their global semi-pro league, the Hearthstone Masters Tour. Over time, we've run into security issues on our platform and the vocal community has publicly raged at us on social media.
Missed tournament actions: Critical tournament notifications are extremely important for players on Battlefy. However, 15% of Battlefy users have their ad blockers and an additional 15% have browser notifications turned off, which meant that players were not receiving notifications on the platform. This caused players to be disqualified if they were not paying attention. This has been a long-standing problem that Battlefy faced as users expected to take critical tournament actions in real-time, informed by up-to-date information. See how I solved this in my Battlefy Player Experience case study.
Technical Debt: The Battlefy platform was mainly designed for PC gamers. Building custom features in tight deadlines for B2B clients over the years negatively affected the player experience on mobile and tablet. The legacy code also prevented us from building a real-time experience.
Relationship with Blizzard: As one of our most active games on the platform, Hearthstone brings 60k+ players a month. In early 2018, I designed the Hearthstone Decklist Management for desktop/mobile web. We worked closely with Blizzard in the last few years to run their global semi-pro league, the Hearthstone Masters Tour. Over time, we've run into security issues on our platform and the vocal community has publicly raged at us on social media.
Solution
To continue nurturing our relationship with Blizzard and wow the community, we decided to create the best player experience. The Battlefy mobile app allowed users to receive notifications, check in, submit your decks, and play their matches all on their fingertips. With full platform integration, competing in Blizzard's Hearthstone Masters tournaments has never easier. Built fully on React, critical actions are presented to the user in real-time -- giving users the peace of mind during the tournament. The UI components were designed and built from scratch, shaping Battlefy's visual language. I believe that a truly great experience will not only solidify our position in the industry, but it will also create a strong community within the platform.
Goals
Downloads:
50% of Hearthstone Masters Tour players download and use the app.
Engagement:
Increased tournament actions on mobile app instead of web.
Time spent for completing player actions should decrease by 25% (ie. solving match issues, reporting score).
Feedback:
Product market fit: baseline 40% (source).
Results
38% of users downloaded the app
+18% increase in check-in rate
2.8k+ more players participating in Hearthstone Masters tournaments
48% of users would be very disappointed if they could no longer use the Battlefy mobile app (source)
150,000+ Apple and Android users
1M+ chat messages sent
30,000+ happy matches
Our most obsessed users matched 100x each
1000+ V-Bucks winners
60+% of users would be very disappointed if they could no longer use SCOUT (source)
Even though we originally built SCOUT to find a player's ideal teammate, we realized through research that users' find the most value out of SCOUT because of the friendships they've made. This was truly an AHA moment for me and the team. It gave us the confidence to experiment with more social features and truly understood who our users were.
Process
We chose to launch this player experience as a mobile app because we wanted to test the following:
- Would a primarily desktop Hearthstone player use the mobile app because of a superior experience (push notifications, opponent scouting, real-time information and updates)?
- Previous surveys showed that although majority of Hearthstone players compete on their desktop, 73% of them said they would download a mobile app if we offered it.
- Can we re-engage Hearthstone players to participate in more tournaments through the app?
- Is mobile the future of the Battlefy play experience? If the app was a success, it would be a positive signal for us as a product team to move towards a mobile-focused strategy.
Companion App
Focused on the Hearthstone Masters series, the companion app would give players the Battlefy platform experience on their mobile device. Our goal was to keep the robust functionality of Battlefy while also making our platform more accessible and intuitive — the app represents a step towards that. Once a player has joined a tournament on Battlefy.com, the mobile app can be used to manage the majority of the tournament experience. It should ultimately elevate the Hearthstone esports community through competitive integrity. We aimed to solve critical notifications once and for all. The hope is that players would love the Battlefy app so much that they will become ambassadors for the platform.
The results of this product would inform our company strategy moving forward. If this was succesful, we would expand the features to cover all Hearthstone tournaments. Eventually moving all of the player experience on mobile. If not, we would know that the improving the play experience alone will not get us to where we want to be. This app was considered a success both internally and externally (players and the Hearthstone team were pleased with the app).
MADE WITH LOVE
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