Creators Often Abandon Their Best Sales Page
Buying a game, or backing a crowdfunding campaign, is an involved journey for a lot of consumers. They don’t just back every game that turns up in their feed, they want to find out what a game is, and how it’s played before adding it to their shelf.
Game Designers spend endless time learning what information needs to be presented on this journey so they can display this on their crowdfunding campaigns, but often the journey ends there. Once the campaign is fulfilled, the wealth of hard earned product knowledge is often neglected, most pages providing only a small blurb and a “what you get in the box” list. The in-depth details, amazing graphics, listed reviews, and other content is left on a crowdfunding website that the consumer will never see.
The Journey and how you got here.
When setting up a crowdfunding campaign for a new game, providing the right content for your campaign is pivotal to the game’s success.
We spend days, weeks, months packing our campaign with stories of ourselves and how we came to create this game, the lore of the world we are building, the art and designs of the game,the mechanics, what players can expect when they play, and even alternate game and play styles. On top of this we get reviews, responses from play tests, custom art pieces, opportunity to make your own video trailer, and the list goes on.
All of these efforts are essential for a new designer to give potential backers all the information they could ever want or need in order to consider backing the project. They allow each backer to go on their own information acquisition journey through your page to find something that turns them from “This game looks kind of cool” to “I am backing this game because it looks like a great game for me”. The consumer is able to briefly visit the incredible world of your game, and come away needing more; truly excited.
From a deep dive, to a small puddle
Most designers who have successfully funded their first game via crowdfunding will have left over stock, which means they need to create a website or find an online store to sell their games. This is when we see a major difference in how designers choose to present their games. We go from an in-depth exploration with minutes of scrollable information and graphics, wowing a new backer from the first click, to a few lines about the game and what you get in the box. The magic is gone.
The question we ask is, why?…..
When selling your game, the aim is to showcase the best parts to someone who has never seen it before, and convince them why THIS is the game for them. Whether in crowdfunding, on your own website, at an in person event, even on Indiverse, we are asking someone to buy our game. The responsibility falls to us to show them every reason why they should.
Does it matter?
In today’s fast paced world, presentation matters more than ever. Crowdfunding campaigns are designed to keep a potential backer on the page until they find the thing they need to buy a game. We intentionally used ‘buy’ just now. Crowdfunding platforms call it backing or pledging, but the premise is the same: money is used to buy a product whether it is available now or six months from now. This definition is important, as it highlights the difference of how we encourage someone to buy our game on crowdfunding platforms compared to all other online spaces.
Let’s check for ourselves: Search online for the last crowdfunded indie game you bought yourself. Open the game’s crowdfunding page, and then find a place it is sold after crowdfunding. How different were the two?
The secret that we already know…
The best part is you already have an answer to “why?”
The best part is you already have an answer to why?
This answer is plastered all over your crowdfunding campaign. It shows that there are people out there who saw nothing more than this crowdfunding page, and bought your game. You’ve already done all the work; the time, effort, and evidence you put into showing off the game that you wanted to create, before it even hit the shelves.
Use the answers you have already gained and validated from real world play testers, reviewers, and community members that you used to help fund your game. Let it take your new players outside of crowdfunding on the same journey that those early adopters did. They deserve the same journey of discovery to lead them from “this game looks kind of cool” to “I need this game.”
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you can use the content and material that we already have!
So what now?
Head back to your crowdfunding campaign and marvel at the work you have already done. Pat yourself on the back for all the love that went into making sure you could bring your games to life. Now, start tearing it apart to find the parts that you can use again. Reuse the images, animations, artwork, testimonies, how to play guides, and descriptions. Make them your own, and refresh the content to be relevant for post-campaign sales.
Don’t let your hard work and campaign page gather dust! Repurpose it, share it, and let every new customer experience the same incredible journey that your backers did!
If you’d like to see Dylan breaking down an example of a game he looked at buying, check out his video exposé:
https://youtu.be/hiFhv7QFFTo