Player.IO

We just released support for UltimatePay in PayVault, so there are now six different payment providers in total for you to use.

Integrating the UltimatePay in-game lightbox gives you access to over 85 payment methods that are then localized and optimized to increase your conversion rate, including support for the UltimateGameCard that can be purchased in over 70000 locations worldwide.

Are we missing any payment providers? Do you have a payment provider that you think we should add to the PayVault system? Just let us know!

We’ve just pushed two major updates to the website live.

We’re blogging now.
First of all, we’re launching a blog (you’re on it right now). Our plan is to use it as our official news channel for features and updates, and as an informal outlet where we can post relevant stories and comments on online gaming. You know, the kind of stuff blogs were invented for.

Updated frontpage
We’ve also completely revamped our frontpage and the features section. It’s got a big blue header, but more importantly, we wanted to take a lot of the learnings and feedback we’ve received from our customers about our old layout and apply it to a new version.

Once the decision to update the frontpage was made, we thought we might as well go the whole mile and get some professorial help with the messaging and copy text. So we got in contact with Joanna Wiebe from www.page99test.com, and we were lucky that she had time to lend us a helping hand. Joanna is currently writing an e-book on web copy writing and we’re already convinced it’s going to be a must have for anybody writing web copy.

Here are some of the shortcomings of the old version that we wanted to address:

• Unclear value proposition
  This is the big one. You had to browse around the site for a while in order to understand what Player.IO is and the value it provides, so a major goal was simply to better communicate our value proposition on the frontpage above the fold.
• Focused on existing customers rather than new visitors
  Obviously this is bad if you want to convert new visitors to customers.

• Our scrolling top section was moving too fast
  The old scrolling section would change every 5th section in a hopeless effort to show as much as possible. It had the almost the opposite effect; you didn’t have enough time to read one section before it would change to the next so you didn’t get to take anything in.
• No clear overview of our features and benefits
  The list of features was contained inside the scrolling section so you couldn’t get a quick understanding of what was available.
• Not enough focus on happy customers
  We’ve got some great costumers on Player.IO already (M&M’s, TWBA, BBDO, IMVU… just to name a few), which wasn’t getting enough attention on the old frontpage
• No call to action
  When you reached the end of the frontpage, we expected users interested in trying out the service to scroll to the top and click the small ‘sign up’-link in the top right corner. Instead, we wanted to add call to action links and buttons (“Try it now, it’s free”) at those key places where users are most interested in trying us out.

For comparison, here is the old and new version (click to view large).

The new frontpage and features section is live now, so give it a whirl, and give us your feedback in the comments below.