Krikey + UserTesting

Sisters Jhanvi and Ketaki Shriram co-founded Krikey, a mobile augmented reality (AR) gaming and social media app. And they received more than $20 million in early funding from Jio Platforms, the largest telecom operator in India, to accelerate their company’s growth.

India, in fact, represented Krikey’s largest growing audience in 2020, so the co-founders dedicated 2021 to optimizing the app and adding features for Indian users. According to Jhanvi Shriram, “We believed the foundation of this initiative would come from understanding how our users felt about our product, and ensuring those feelings were communicated directly back to the developers on our team.”

But a number of obstacles stood in their way. The app features augmented reality games, so Krikey executives needed to see a user’s screen (to see how the AR experience looked on any number of Android devices popular in India) and his or her face, to see how much joy and excitement - or confusion! - the experience gave the person. Additionally, user input from India comes in many languages. Despite having multilingual developers at Krikey, the only common language among them is English. So they would need the interviews transcribed automatically. The co-founders began a trial run with UserTesting in December of 2020 and the rest is history.

The team at Krikey immediately began testing their Google Play Store page, where more than half of their users decide whether to install the app. Ketaki Shriram explains, “Our first user tests gave us strong feedback on what language to use, how to rewrite our product descriptions, and how to make our imagery more engaging. We even heard feedback - repeatedly - that users preferred the term 3D to AR, even though they wanted to see AR imagery in our marketing materials.”

So the Krikey Team incorporated this feedback, featuring their main game character on the Google Play Store page, stepping out of the phone frame, aiming a bow and arrow at a monster. This was a huge hit! As was their decision to refer to Krikey as a 3D app. From then on, Krikey has run tests every few weeks and incorporated user perspectives into fundamental choices, like which direction their characters move in a game and the decision to add mini games that players can enjoy (tic tac toe or puzzles) while the main games load.

Krikey’s first tests on the Google Play Store took their install conversion rate from 5% to 40%+ in six months. This means that 40% of customers who see the revised text and imagery for Krikey now download the app. And the number of users who create an account - making them more likely to engage deeply with the app - rose from 39% to 50% in the same time frame. The Krikey co-founders attribute this to another recommendation from users, to send download codes to Indian game players via WhatsApp, rather than text messages.

Jhanvi Shriram explains, “These changes have contributed to us crossing the milestone achievement of 1 million users.” The company now has significant momentum, with an executive team that has a direct line into customer perspectives and games that players love - in India and beyond.