We own and operate Chimpoo.com a free virtual world that allows kids (5-12) to own a cute monkey, play games, earn coins and spend virtual currency on their Chimpoo’s clothes, toys, et al.
There are ‘golden bananas’ and monthly subscriptions that cost real money – which allows kids to buy more exclusive items on Chimpoo.
Since kids don’t have wallets, they have to pester their parents (95% moms) to buy these goodies for them. For all of us who have kids, we know that parents rarely say ‘sure, go ahead…let me get my wallet’. We procrastinate, delay and just hope that our kids will forget about that purchase. Buts kids rarely forget and keep pestering us till we finally succumb and ‘give-in’.
Chimpoo.com has calibrated the number of times kids from different countries visit the site till they become paying members. We have used data over the past 3 months across 500 actual payments made. We call it the ‘Give In’ moment – that exact moment when kids win and parents lose. The interesting story in the chart below is how the Give In moment varies across countries:
| Country of visitor |
Number of visits by the child to chimpoo.com
|
| United Kingdom | 8 |
| Israel | 13 |
| United States | 13 |
| Brazil | 13 |
| South Africa | 14 |
| Italy | 14 |
| Australia | 16 |
| UAE | 17 |
| Malta | 21 |
| France | 21 |
| Singapore | 25 |
| Romania | 26 |
| New Zealand | 28 |
| Turkey | 31 |
| Mexico | 31 |
| Canada | 31 |
| Switzerland | 33 |
| Thailand | 48 |
| Poland | 54 |
| Portugal | 56 |
| India | 61 |
| Russia | 78 |
| Global Average | 13 |
The Global average is 13 visits, which means that it’s not really easy to convince your parents to buy anything for you at the snap of a finger.
Kids in the UK need to work the least (8 visits), kids in the USA (13 visits) are almost on par with the world – but it’s the kids in India (61 visits), for instance, who really have to slog hard!
Sure, there are economic reasons and just the resistance to ‘buy’ anything online, in the Asian markets. But over all, this could be a simple indicator to figure out, how often a new consumer kids’ online product or service will have to ensure repeat visits from the same customer to make the dollar fall in the cash register.
Authored by Alok Kejriwal – CEO and Co-Founder of Games2win.com.
Games2win entertains approx 15 million unique users a month via its online gaming portals and mobile games (as per comScore) and is one of the leading online games businesses in India.
*****
Nitin Pulyani
Amazing…
As an aside, have a question for you Alok, and everyone who can share their thoughts please.
I am just starting up and we are in the process of developing our first prototype. I recently left my job after a 7 year long career to shift to what I love, technology. However much I have been amused by technology and reading about technology, I regret I never learnt to code. That’s why we are getting our first prototype built by an outsourced company. I can design the product from scratch and know how each modules interact with each other, etc.. I know which technology does what.. So I can judge well. I have a fairly decent background with online marketing so I can do that well too.
My question: Going forward I feel this might be a hindrance since all my ideas are about online businesses. Is it a good idea to learn to code or should I build a kickass tech team once I get some traction? Alok, reading about your background, I never read that developed technology… it would be great if we can get some inputs on how you developed so many amazing businesses.
Thanks,
Nitin