Challenge

Minehut was a game server hosting company that we (Super League Gaming) acquired to help grow our gaming communities. While it was very functional, it was built entirely of off-the-shelf parts. Beyond not having a unique personality, it also lacked a lot of standard quality-of-life features users had come to expect. 

We started by looking at user feedback and any and all data we could gather from the site. We found that user retention was very low, new users had a hard time understanding the product, and many of our powerful features were too hidden.

‍Outcome

We addressed brand recognition by doing a complete rebrand called Winter Night, based on the concept of being an explorer in an alien world but still being part of a community as you can see other adventures out in the distance. I really wanted the feeling of trying something exciting, yet being a part of something bigger to resonate with our users. 

We created extensive user flows and mapped out different journeys for improved UX and new features. After testing and validation, we restructured our navigation. We looked at the features and functions users most wanted and needed, these learnings drove the design structure.

We found out that almost all of our returning and power users always went directly to the dashboard and bypassed the home page. This meant that would could use the home page to educate new users with minimal impact on existing users. We created a home page that helped our new users, who tend to skew young, fully understand what the product was, how it worked, and what costs were associated with it. 

Finally, we worked on surfacing our more useful feature. This meant working with the development team to rework tech in some cases. We focused on features that really were major differentiators in the industry and made it very easy for our users to find and use them.

We rolled out the changes in small chunks and order to promote them and get community buzz. We broke everything into weekly releases and made sure each release was focused on easily understandable ideas about using our product.

Results

Our users loved the redesign and we got a lot of great feedback from the community. We were able to reduce user drop-off in almost every flow. We were also able to increase user retention from 30 days to over 90 days. New user numbers also increased from 2 million to 6 million users. 

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