HaxeFlixel Final Presentation

Editor's Notes

• #3: It is a open-source 2D Game Engine that lets you create cross-platform games easier with free, open source technology! It provides a place for both beginners and experienced developers to share their journey in learning how to make games. It has a community of enthusiastic technology driven people from all over the world. It has four core community members, 2 from the USA, 1 from Russia the Founder Alexander and 1 from Australia. Users from 100+ countries. The website operates a no. of channels in which to engage & interact within the community. The channels it operates are the website which includes a 14-step video tutorial on how to create a complete game in HaxeFlixel, a wiki, Twitter Page, development chat on Slack, HaxeFlixel organisation on GitHub, it’s blog and the forum. What is Cross-platform incase anyone asks and need further clarification. Cross-platform = able to be used on different types of computers or with different software packages. So if you use HaxeFlixel you can create games that can be easily published to all sorts of platforms: Windows, Flash, iOS, Android etc.
• #4: It truly is a global community. I have here a list of the top 10 countries for May so far in terms of sessions, just so you can get an idea about which countries are visiting the website the most.
• #5: Current Situation HaxeFlixel wants to grow its awareness & credibility, by increasing the no. of users and contributors. These are the goals I had which I included in my Mid-Presentation. As you can see the Twitter Page is still growing organically. Increase the no. of Twitter followers to 2,500 by December. Increase the no. of patrons pledging or fundraisers to 80+ by December. Increase the no. of new visitors to the website to 45% of all sessions. In March it stood at 38.5%-this will prove growth is occurring. Decrease the website’s bounce rate from 43% in March down to 35% by December. This will help prove that the re-design of the website is working. The goals of HaxeFlixel are like any communities goals. Wants to help users solve code problems through collaboration and the sharing of solutions. This saves time for indie game developers-do you really want to spend hours writing a piece of code if you don’t need to-someone/s has already & is willing to share it with you for free. Maintaining an active presence in the world of online game development such as keeping up with technological changes & developments within this industry. To be TOM for both beginners and experienced game developers. What is an indie game developer incase anyone asks for a definition? Independent video games (commonly referred to as indie games) are video games created by individuals or small teams generally without video game publisher financial support. Indie games often focus on innovation and rely on digital distribution.
• #6: Business Challenges for HaxeFlixel It is an open source community and does not operate for profit, like a commercial business would. It does however use Patreon: which is a crowdfunding platform allowing supporters to fund the project with a subscription model. Currently it has 29 patrons pledging $136 per month total. This helps cover the costs associated with operating a website-such as hosting, as well as small amounts to core community members who have contributed to HaxeFlixel’s game engine etc. Caters to a niche target audience, therefore growth is limited to those interested in game development. It is however a global community so that niche is bigger than say an Australian game development community. One of the key challenges is how do you market an open-source community website such as HaxeFlixel to a truly global audience?
• #7: They want to raise 6K US using either a Kickstarter campaign or through their Patreon page, so the Founder Alexander Hohlov can re-design the game engine full-time. I am going to conduct a fundraising email campaign using MailChimp to their 950+ members.
• #8: I also want to use Email to send out a Welcome Email to all new users when they subscribe to the email list which will be on the website. The email journey will include, NEWS, Promoting Leonardo’s eBook, Information about the Patreon/Kickstarter campaign, automated Thank you emails to those who donate or pledge, Updates on the fundraising campaign. I also want to include a one-off survey to ascertain some key metrics across all of the 950+ members. Free Code Camp has just done a 2016 New Coder Survey recently which had more than 15000+ people respond. You are able to find out who they are & how they are learning to code in a 5 minute read with lots of graphs, which makes it really easy to read & digest the stats.
• #9: Email Goals I want the deliverability rate to be 96%+ I want the Open Rate (Hobbies) to be around the 28% mark (according to MailChimp) I want the Click-through rate (Hobbies) to be 5.41% (according to MailChimp) I want the Unsubscribe Rate to be 1% or less.
• #10: Welcome to HaxeFlixel Email. I want too have a really simple email with just text, no images the only added extra is the social icons, Google+ group, Twitter, Website, github and email. The reason for such simplicity is I want it too look organic as if Alexander (Founder) himself has created the email, creating a much more personalised approach.
• #11: News in HaxeFlixel. I want part of the email campaign to include NEWS, such as promoting Leonardo, a community member’s eBook on HaxeFlixel. I will just include one link, to maintain the simplicity.
• #12: This is the front page of Leonardo’s eBook, with $3 donated to HaxeFlixel when a Full Bundle is purchased.
• #13: HaxeFlixel on Patreon The third email in the campaign will be introducing the Fundraising campaign with just one simple link. I thought about using a CTA button (Call to Action) but discussions led to its removal, As we are trying to raise $$$ so we don’t want to look like we have lots of it with fancy buttons, images etc It also makes it look too commercial and not personal.
• #14: I had a look at what is the best day & time to send out my emails. Everyone has a different opinion, but I have decided that I will look at either Tuesday & Saturday/Sunday and undertake A/B testing where I’ll evely split the 950+ members 50/50. Analyse the results, then adjust accordingly. Tuesday received the highest open & click-through rates according to Get Response who analysed over 300 million messages. The weekend is also ideal as this is a hobby for the majority of the members, so they are much more likely to open the emails on the weekend. Less emails are sent on the weekends as well, according to MailChimp’s insights. The best time to send an email is 8am for content in the hobbies category according to MailChimp. I will send out my Tuesday and Weekend emails at 8am.
• #15: The Twitter Page is extremely active & a lot of that growth is organic as they don’t do promoted tweets (as far as I am aware). They currently have 1,851 Followers in May so far and the page has been around for 3 years now. I want to maintain that organic growth and will compose and publish some tweets to see what effect that has on the no’s of followers, likes and re-tweets & fundraising amounts until December.
• #16: Here are some example posts I created, some will be Promoted. I will use a combination of text & text & images.
• #17: Improve the Website using SEO & UX Principles HaxeFlixel’s website is due for a re-vamp, when this occurs in the near future I want to look at specifically improving the SEO of the website which will in-turn also help the UX as well. By just adding some more content-in the form of H2 onto specific pages such as the Demo’s & Showcase page as I don’t think it clearly articulates what they are especially for a beginner to game- development. I also think it might be nice to have captions underneath each game’s image detailing what it’s called and about, who made it & when it was made-without you having to click on each game.-which you do now to get any information. I also want to add a sitemap, as this will help search engines, (such as Google) and users on where to find information on the website. As right now it feels a bit dis-jointed when I am looking through the website. I feel it should have an About Page at least to detail clearly what it is for new visitors and hopefully form a link with the Patreon page to help gain new pledgers. I also think it would benefit from having a Community Page which would clearly detail how you can interact with the community through it’s various channels.
• #18: Marketing RoadMap. Looking at 3 aspects, Email, Twitter & the Website, over a timeline from May until Jan-Feb next year.