Every gap has a name.
Most teams don’t know theirs.
LootRate scores 14 dimensions across every monetization engagement. Here is what each one measures, what it looks like when it is underperforming, and why it matters to revenue.
The first transaction decides the lifetime.
First-purchase design, onboarding path, and checkout friction all compound on LTV from session one. A player who does not convert in session one rarely converts later. No other category has an equivalent multiplier on lifetime revenue trajectory.
First-Purchase Conversion
Measures
Friction and incentive design on the critical first payer conversion event.
Gap Signal
New players open your store in session one, see the same inventory as a player on day 90, and close it. There is no dedicated offer, no urgency signal, no acknowledgment that this is their first time.
Revenue Mechanism
The first-session conversion window narrows rapidly after install. A dedicated offer with a time constraint closes that window before it disappears. Players who convert in session one generate multiples of the LTV of those who convert later.
Onboarding-to-Store Path
Measures
Depth and timing of the store introduction during the new player experience.
Gap Signal
Your store is gated behind progression. New players reach it after completing the tutorial, or after their first loss, or on day three. By then, the behavioral expectation is already set: the store is an interruption, not part of the game.
Revenue Mechanism
Store introduction timing sets a behavioral pattern that persists through the lifecycle. Games that surface the store within the first two minutes of play see meaningfully higher payer conversion: not because the offer is different, but because the expectation is.
Purchase Friction
Measures
Payment provider modernity and checkout flow quality — a risk flag for teams off the standard path.
Gap Signal
You have built a custom checkout flow, or your web store routes through a payment provider without Apple Pay, Google Pay, or equivalent one-tap options. Players who reached purchase intent are reading form fields and confirmation dialogs. Some of them leave.
Revenue Mechanism
Apple, Google, Xsolla, and Stripe have competed checkout friction to near-zero. A studio on any of these standard paths scores a five by default. The risk this dimension flags is narrow but serious: teams who have built their own flow or are running a legacy provider are carrying unnecessary cart abandonment on every transaction. The fix is a provider switch, not a design project.
If any of this looks familiar, the teardown takes 30 minutes.
LootRate identifies the three gaps costing the most revenue before any engagement begins.
Every IAP is a commission paid to the platform.
The direct channel recaptures 20 to 25 points of margin lost to platform commissions on every transaction it captures. Most live game titles have not built a web channel, or have built one without actively routing players to it.
Web Store Presence
Measures
Quality, traffic strategy, and conversion architecture of the direct-to-consumer web channel.
Gap Signal
Every purchase in your game routes through the app store at 30% commission. You have considered a web store but have not shipped one. That gap compounds with every dollar of revenue.
Revenue Mechanism
A web store eliminates most of the platform commission on every transaction it captures. The margin advantage is structural and permanent. The higher the game revenue, the larger the recapture opportunity compounds over time.
Platform Fee Strategy
Measures
30% fee mitigation through web channel mix, web-exclusive offers, and player routing.
Gap Signal
You have a web store. Players cannot find it. There is no in-game routing, no savings message, no web-exclusive SKU to justify the friction of leaving the app. The store exists but generates a fraction of what it could.
Revenue Mechanism
The existence of a web store and a strategy to fill it are separate problems. Active routing, savings messaging, and exclusive SKUs shift spend from the in-app store to the direct channel. Without a routing strategy, a web store is a landing page, not a revenue channel.
Every payer sees this. Not every game treats it seriously.
Every payer passes through the in-game store. Layout, pricing architecture, and bundle design affect average transaction value on every purchase across the full payer base.
IAP Store UX
Measures
Layout, visual hierarchy, and discoverability of purchase options within the in-game store.
Gap Signal
Your store presents every SKU at equal visual weight. There is no featured item, no hierarchy, no reason for the eye to stop. Players scan and exit without a clear anchor to make a decision.
Revenue Mechanism
Visual hierarchy reduces the cognitive load at the moment of decision. A featured SKU doubles as a price anchor and a conversion trigger. The rest of the store becomes the reference, not the destination.
Bundle Composition
Measures
Value ratio, item mix, and pricing tiers across currency packs and bundles.
Gap Signal
Your top-selling SKU is a currency pack. It has a number and a price. There is no narrative, no named value, no reason to feel like this purchase is different from the last one.
Revenue Mechanism
Named bundles with mixed-item compositions convert at higher rates than equivalent currency packs because they create perceived uniqueness. The purchase feels deliberate, not habitual.
Pricing Architecture
Measures
Decoy structure, anchor pricing, and price ceiling relative to genre benchmarks.
Gap Signal
Your price ladder runs from $0.99 to $99.99 in even steps. The lowest tier is your top seller. There is no ceiling to anchor perception, and no mid-tier positioned to make the $19.99 feel like the obvious choice.
Revenue Mechanism
A price ceiling anchors the entire ladder. A strategically inferior mid-tier pulls buyers toward the option you want them to choose. Without this structure, spend concentrates at the floor.
Peak motivation. Is your store ready for it?
Events are the highest-converting windows in a live game. Offer design and timing during these windows compounds revenue across the full year. A well-integrated event calendar can double the revenue per active player versus a static store.
LiveOps Integration
Measures
Alignment between store offerings and active events, seasons, and content updates.
Gap Signal
Your store does not change during events. The inventory is the same on a major content patch day as on a quiet Tuesday. Players at peak motivation are presented with the wrong offer.
Revenue Mechanism
Players are at peak motivation during active events: engaged, emotionally invested, and primed to spend. A store that reflects the event captures that motivation at its highest point. One that does not leaves the peak demand moment without a matching offer.
Event Monetization
Measures
Revenue capture during limited-time events — urgency mechanics and offer design.
Gap Signal
Your events have no spend-to-progress mechanics, no exclusive offers with countdown timers, no urgency architecture. Players participate for the free rewards and leave. The event generates retention but not revenue.
Revenue Mechanism
Scarcity within an event window accelerates decisions. Countdown timers, exclusive rewards, and spend-to-progress mechanics concentrate revenue into the hours when motivation peaks. An event without urgency mechanics is peak demand with no capture mechanism.
No trigger means no spend.
The earn/spend balance determines when players feel the need to spend. A poorly calibrated economy either eliminates purchase triggers or drives churn through frustration. Economy fixes are slow and high-risk: early gaps are expensive.
Economy Design
Measures
Earn/spend balance, currency scarcity, and reward pacing across the player lifecycle.
Gap Signal
Your economy distributes resources generously. Players always have enough to progress. They never hit a wall at a high-motivation moment. There is no designed trigger to spend.
Revenue Mechanism
Spending requires a trigger. The most effective economies engineer moments of meaningful scarcity at high-motivation points: just before a major upgrade, just after a loss, during an active event. These moments are designed, not accidental.
Currency Architecture
Measures
Number of currencies, clarity of exchange rates, and cognitive load for players.
Gap Signal
Your game has four currencies. Two are earnable, one is purchasable, one is a hybrid. Players cannot intuitively map what a purchase is worth in real money. They hesitate, do the math, and often decide not to buy.
Revenue Mechanism
Cognitive load suppresses conversion. The clearest economies use two currencies: one earned, one purchased. Each additional layer adds ambiguity that compounds across the decision lifecycle.
Offer Cadence
Measures
Frequency, timing, and targeting of offers relative to player progression and events.
Gap Signal
Your offer rotation runs on a fixed schedule regardless of player behavior, or the same SKUs have been in the store for three months. Players have learned to ignore the store.
Revenue Mechanism
Time-limited offers generate urgency that permanent SKUs cannot. The frequency, targeting, and duration of offers relative to player progression determines how often purchase intent is activated. Poorly cadenced offers either train dismissal or miss the window entirely.
How fast can you close a gap once you find it?
Experiment readiness does not generate revenue directly. It determines how fast every other dimension improves. Teams without A/B infrastructure validate changes through intuition. Teams with it compound improvements systematically.
Experiment Readiness
Measures
A/B testing infrastructure, instrumentation depth, and experiment backlog quality.
Gap Signal
Your team ships monetization changes based on prior experience and internal consensus. There is no holdout group, no defined success metric, no way to isolate the effect of the change. When revenue moves, you do not know why.
Revenue Mechanism
Experiment readiness determines how fast every other dimension improves. Teams without testing infrastructure validate changes through intuition. Teams with it compound improvements systematically. The difference between these two approaches widens with every quarter.
Your game is making less than it should.
30 minutes. We run your game through the 14-dimension scorecard live and give you your top revenue gaps before the call ends. No prep, no commitment.
▸Schedule a Free TeardownFree · 30 minutes · Revenue gaps identified on the first call.
◆ The Teardown
- Score your game live across all 14 revenue dimensions
- Identify the highest-impact experiment for your store
- Walk away with an Opportunity Index and priority #1