User research increased conversion by 20% for Toca Boca

Toca Boca is a Swedish app developer that creates digital toys for children. In order to increase conversions, they turned to user research to understand their audience better. The insights gained from the research led to a 20% increase in conversions.

To understand without help from an adult

Toca Boca works on the principle that their apps should be so intuitive that children can understand them on their own. The goal is to design and develop inclusive games where children can discover and use their own creativity independently.

UX Strategy: The Power of Play

In contrast to many other modern gaming companies, Toca Boca has chosen not to "interrupt" users and force attention. In this way, they encourage play and avoid negative experiences for both parents and children. This strategy led to the decision to separate the experience of Toca Life: World and Toca Life: World Store (in-app purchase store).

Challenge

User feedback was positive. However, there was a challenge in the user's player journey, as many were not finding the product's in-app purchase store, resulting in low conversion rates to Toca Life: World Store.

Toca Life: World Store 1.0 vs 2.0

Understanding user motivation

The cornerstone of a good app solution is understanding user expectations and motivations. To learn more about users in this situation, we looked at:

User Research
Analysing existing data to find "drop-off" points in the current user journey.

Qualitative user tests
Conducting three observation studies to see how users interact with both Toca Life: World and Toca Life: World Store. One before and two after to test and iterate our solution.

Feedback
We also collected feedback from parents to better understand what their children needed help with.

Analysis and the Big Insight

The results showed that users did not understand what they were supposed to do in Toca Life: World Store. Every time they came into contact with the in-app purchase store, it created uncertainty for users.

Insight: Toca Life: World Store needs a stronger connection to Toca Life: World.

A design that motivates users

The solution was to reduce friction and increase motivation by integrating Toca Life: World Store into the play world more clearly.

Solution: The new map view shows a flat version of the play world

To reduce the distance to the play world, we did the following:

Introduced a "flat" map view in Toca Life: World Store representing the play world. It creates a stronger connection and shows that the user is in a slightly different but familiar place.
Introduce a plus sign in the map view that shows objects the user can add to the play world.
After users click on the plus sign, objects that can be added to that location on the map are displayed along with a price.