Growth and retention for Ottoneu, the experts fantasy sports game

Ottoneu is an advanced fantasy sports game for die-hards. They had established themselves as a primer fantasy game that comes much closer to being a GM. The game had been running for several years and had a core user base, but Niv Shah, Founder of Ottoneu, was looking to attract new users while maintaining retention.

Project Kickoff

We kicked off the project by establishing a goal for the redesign for both growth and retention. We set core job stories for the users and identified why they would hire Ottoneu over other fantasy sports options. We worked through a couple of exercises to get an idea of where Niv wanted to take the brand.

Establishing a brand

After jumping off the kickoff, we got to work establishing a mood board. Working closely with Niv, we started to align on a couple of different options to move forward. I began to sketch out ideas for what the logo system could look like to cover baseball, football, and future sports. The team had a tight feedback and iteration loop and refined the logo as a group. Once we had the logo established, the rest of the look fell into place.

Draft day marketing launch

With draft day approaching, we were working towards the start of fantasy football season. To get started, we collaborated first on content and copy, establishing the page's tone and direction and making sure to look back at the job stories that we had set up during kickoff. The landing page for football quickly emerged when merging the copy with the established brand look and feel. The baseball landing page followed suit.

In-game experience

Working with the Ottoneu team, we started to apply the colors to the in-game experience to have a consistent experience when coming from the marketing page. We implemented changes iteratively, trying not to. Our team used the frequented Ottoneu forums to collect feedback on each of the new changes and keep the users aware of the changes that we were making. Not every change came well embraced but because the forums were so active, we could advocate in places and adjust in others to make sure everyone felt heard.

Results

Ottoneu surpassed initial growth goals. The draft day for football after our release was its largest-ever by a significant margin. Doing the redesign in collaboration with the users on the forums lead to maintaining high retention as well.