I thought people might be interested in hearing the preliminary stats on the uninstall survey found in Big Head Zed.

How it works: After you uninstall the trial version of Big Head Zed a dialog pops up and asks "Would you help us make Big Hea Zed better by taking a quick survey?" If you click yes, this opens up a browser window and presents the survey. The survey is two drop down dialogs, three text areas, and an input box for an optional email address.

Number downloads: 2000 (bloody guess)
Number of visits on survey.php: 258
Number of visitors who left without taking the survey: 236
Number of visitors who clicked submit without inputing information: 4
Number of visitors who only answered the two multiple choice questions and left the rest blank: 6
Number of visitors who left their email address 4
Number of visitors who attempted to spam the survey with multiple submits: 0
Number of people who complained about the survey: 0
Useful surveys taken: 24

Admittedly some of these surveys were taken by visitors from this forum during Big Head Zed's peer review. Most of the people who left their email address either said BHZ was too expensive or they couldn't afford it at the moment. Although most of the comments were brief, I'm starting to see some patterns emerge. 1. People either love or hate the graphics. 2. People either love or hate the music. 3. I'm going to issue a $5 coupon to those who uninstalled for financial reasons. :) 4. I'm not emphasizing how good of a mental workout BHZ is (that's often listed in the "what do you like about the game" field). 5. It might be a good idea to offer a visitor on the survey page some incentive to completing the survey. (Contest for free copy of BHZ.)

I'm happy with the results so far, and it was not hard to implement. My biggest concerns were that people would find it annoying.

Number of visits on survey.php: 258
Number of visitors who left without taking the survey: 236

This figure really surprises me. Why would someone bother clicking yes only to exit the survey? Do you think its possible some people are turned off by the browser window opening? Or maybe the survey is larger than most people expected?

Maybe they expected some incentive to compete the survey, some coupon, discount etc.

That was a surprising number for me too. For one, I suspect when some people uninstall they're jamming on buttons dismissively, and click on Yes by accident. It appears that Yes is the default button, so if they hit spacebar or enter that would also trigger the survey opening.

I also imagine some click yes out of curiosity, but leave when they see it's just a regular run-of-the-mill survey. (Dan's point is well-taken.) You can see the actual survey here (http://www.gearhand.com/survey.php?form=dex). I don't think it's imposing, however it doesn't entirely appear "above the fold" unless you have it maximized and have a large monitor.

The only other explanation I can fathom is there is some technological problem I have yet to identify. I could run a survey to ask why people didn't fill out the survey... :D

Ah, I remember seeing this survey when I uninstalled BHZ. I just closed the browser when I saw there wasn't "just testing" in the primary reasons ;-)

I wouldn't expect many people to fill uninstall survey's out. I almost always ignore them, because, at the point I'm uninstalling, I could care less about the game, or it's developer. A better place to put the survey for me might be on exit from the game. Run it every time until they fill it out (then don't run it again). At that point I'm exiting the game, I've just played it and might be willing to type a few words.

I've tried that and it's surprisingly ineffective. About 8 useful results in well over a thousand downloads.

Cas :)

Yeah, but what % can't even run your game (I remember it being a moderately large number), so you can't count those, which makes me think the numbers are roughly equivelant to the uninstall variant. All I was saying was which one I was more likely to fill out. Most people won't bother if they don't like the game. The only time your likely to find people who will fill them out are people wholike the game, but there's something about it that bugs them, or they REALLY like the game and want to say so. I would expect the number of people who fill those surveys out to be in the same ballpark as the conversion ratio, and that surveys after execution would fair slightly better than surveys after uninstall.

However, since my game isn't done yet, I have nothing to test it on ;) And 8 responses (or 24) is better than none.

The % of people who can't run it I can't count.. this is of the 1000 successful downloaders who've actually played it. And yes, unfortunately the feedback is generally positive :) - or useless, like "make the game easier" or "make it so the fluffies can't die". But the fact is hardly anyone bothers.

Cas :)

Just had a random idea to suggest.

Instead of having some kind of timeout page as part of the demo version, have a sort of "tip of the day" kind of function. Which holds the user at that dialog for say 5 seconds.

Then while in that dialog, simply have a bunch of radio button or other simple questions that ask relevant information.

Only one question at a time.

That way, over plays of the demo, you build up a list of answered questions, then at uninstall time, you get your uninstaller to send the answers to those questions to you.

Not only will that give you information as to how many times the user tried to run the game (remember this is on a nag screen), but also gives you feedback from a relatively painless (in terms of user time) form.

An example would be...

In the nag screen.. have a random bunch of radio button "poll" type questions.. such as:

Is this nag screen...

- Annoying but I'll live
- So annoying I dont want to run the game anymore
- etc..

And each time the player plays, they get a different nag screen poll.

I think I'll give this a go with my own games. Although my game is intended to have a website with dedicated user-request functionality.

Phil.