When I put a new game out whatever it tends to do right away is a good indicator for how it will always do.

So here's the question...

There are a bazillion articles about how to word your sales text, 30 day money back guarantees, where to put your buy button, what color your sales screen should be, how long your demo should last and so on...

Does any of it *REALLY* make any difference?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no. None of that stuff really matters much at all. The breakdown I would guess is something like...

Quality of Game Itself - 99.99999%
Cute Marketing Tricks - 00.00001%

The one exception being marketing that leads to exposure as if people can't see the game they can't buy it. But generally speaking I think if people like the game and have fun playing it and want to play more they'll buy it. If it's not fun it doesn't matter what you offer them or how you word your text. The exception I guess is where it's kind of fun but they're not fully decided, but the number of people that you can swing in that group doesn't seem to be very large.

Am I wrong?

Has anyone noticed significant differences by changing things like sales text, or where they placed a buy button?

Of course I'm assuming that the game itself is already generally sane. That is... that there exists a link to the buy page somewhere in the game, and that the process for buying is not overly complex and so on. I'm talking more about things like wording your sales text as customer benefits vs features etc...

Well according to Steve Pavlina's article, marketing "tricks" can increase your sales by 50% or more:

http://www.dexterity.com/articles/registration-incentives.htm

Yes our games that do well started generating sales within 1 - 2 days. If sales slow at start then typically stays slow.

Tinkered a lot with marketing text, overall think has provided decent boost. If the site's already nice think small tweaks can give decent boost. If site's bad then good tweaks will make huge boost. One game we resell the author's site is nice with good traffic but his sales mechanism is weak and his sales are slow while the same game here is our #2 seller doing very well.

I suppose that your are right and wrong Steve.

For me all marketing of shareware game(product) is on 99.99999% equal to good/great exposure of it.

All another tricks... - Yes, better to have good game. Even better have several of them in portfolio (at site) - this is important

The question still remains only about meaning of that "good" game for the potential customer though :D

Originally posted by ConanCurrie
Well according to Steve Pavlina's article, marketing "tricks" can increase your sales by 50% or more:

http://www.dexterity.com/articles/registration-incentives.htm

I've never seen any evidence for this in my own experiments. That's why I'm asking.

Originally posted by yeahgofigure
Tinkered a lot with marketing text, overall think has provided decent boost. If the site's already nice think small tweaks can give decent boost. If site's bad then good tweaks will make huge boost.

Well I'd agree that if a site is very broken then changes can have a big effect, but you say here that you can get a decent boost in sales from good site by tweaking. How do you know that? Have you done a/b experiments that have shown it conclusively on a reasonably large body of statistical sales data?

I had quite an eye opening experience the other day that is somewhat related to this theory.

I was round at a friends house and she happened to be playing a shareware demo which had a 1 hour time limit. The time limit was up, and she was going to buy the game, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and watch to see how someone else goes through the ordering process.

She clicked the buy button in the demo, which took her to a pretty generic looking regnow buy page. Entered her details and cc number, and that was it.

I'm stood there thinking "I wish all sales were that easy!", and decided to ask a few questions to see what made her so sure about buying:

me: Who made the game?
her: I don't know.

me: do you know their website address?
her: I'm not sure. I might've bookmarked it.

me: what's the difference between the demo and the full game?
her: erm... I don't know. I guess it just removes the time limit.

me: do they offer a guarantee if you don't like it?
her: ... I don't know.

me: was the page where you ordered the game secure?
her: ....... I hope so... why?

<at this point I knew she was getting annoyed at my quizzing, so just 1 final question>

me: so why did you just buy the game?
her: I like it, it's really fun.


That was quite an eye opener to me. I don't know if I would class her as the "average" game buyer, but in this case all notions of upsell, guarantee, good page layout, no external links on buy page, etc. etc. simply didn't matter. The game was good. She liked it. She bought it. End of story.

I tried all the tricks myself, as has been well chronicled in these parts. And no, they didn't make a great deal of difference.

I'm very intrigued by the truth in your statement:
When I put a new game out whatever it tends to do right away is a good indicator for how it will always do.

Although your figures might be something of an exaggeration (maybe the % difference that cute marketing tricks makes is somewhat larger but still not significant).

I've seen Redclaw's story enacted many, many times over, by myself, by other technically literate types, and by complete ignoramuses, and the one thing they all have in common is the impulse buy factor seems to completely outweigh all the others. I actually put this into practise with my game and tried to adjust the buying & nagging process to make impulse buying much easier. It brought me a small increase in conversion rate but unfortunately at the same time as a huge decrease in exposure and general lack of will to bother with it any more.

So in a nutshell, I think that your initial sales are a great indicator of how well something will generally always do. I think you can adjust it somewhat better - but not by much. At my stage in business, I have determined that it's better to spend the time on developing new titles (get that solid foundation built) before tweak mania sets in.

Cas :)

We all have to agree the marketing side of things can be very frustrating. Massive amounts of effort equate to small upturns in sales, but then single flukes can have an even bigger effect.

I think I remember complaining about this in my first posts at dexterity.

With Space Tripper, I put massive amounts of marketing and efforts in. It must have worked because the game started selling from day one, but not alot.
Day after day, mailing hundreds of people, trying to get any kind covarage to try to improve the trickle.
Then we got that PCgamer review. Complete luck by the way. The game just happened to fall on the desk of a guy who loves hardcore games. It could have so easily gone the other way. ( as what happened to us with PCzone )

That review generated a shitload of sales. Now this is where my frustration really kicked in. A single mail to a single guy at a single magazine did more for us than months and months of marketing effort. Nothing to do with buy pages, or website layout.

So stuff it I thought. Whats the point of 3 months effort to generate a hundred sales, when a single e-mail could generate a thousand. It doesnt seem like a good use of my time.

I think we can all generally agree that exposure matters. That's why in my initial post I was sure to mention explicitely that I *wasn't* talking about exposure. (ie press releases and getting a good review etc...) For sure that leads to sales. Obviously you can't sell a game to someone who's never seen it.

The kind of stuff I'm talking about is sales copy, money back guarantees, web page layout etc... Like for instance... The site marketingprofs.com has the following articles listed as part of their hottest marketing articles category. These would fall into my "of dubious benefit" category

- Are You Making a Sale or Selling a Dream?

Evangilism vs Traditional sales - This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. This sort of stuff never seems to work, or at least if it does work percentages are so minor that it's barely worth the effort vs say.. adding an extra monster to your game.

- Copywriting Makeover: Write to Where Your Customers Are (Part 1 of 2)

Sales text. I've never seen any change in sales based on sales text. I swear if I had a great game who's buy screen told customers how stupid they would be to buy it and how we at Twilight thought they all smelled bad they'd STILL buy it. Of course maybe my experiments have sucked and I'm no good at sales copy etc.. that's why I ask. If you look at my site you'll see it's very straightforward text, not terribly wordy, and generally it just lays out what the game has. That's because all the other styles I've tried in the past haven't made much of a difference so I don't bother... I just try to be concise. Is that mistake? Maybe it depends on your audience. It could be that if I was selling solitaire card games it's an older audience that appreciates more description. I'm not sure.

Originally posted by svero
.. adding an extra monster to your game.

...or pulling some well known license into the game.... that is clean marketing by definition... ;)

Im with you svero. The wording of my post was all wrong really ( as always! ).
I got hung up on the exposure thing, and forgot to also say that we put so much effort into tweeking the website ( which has has 5 revisions already! ) and fiddling with words and numbers, but with no real results at all. In fact, our sales are not much different even though I feel our website is so much better. This includes game tweeks and updates.

I guess I was trying to say that a good game + good exposure is all thats needed, but a not so good game + good website etc can also work.

It simply comes down to game quality I guess. If the game rocks, website colours, style, wording, offers and layout mean so much less then to an avarage game.

Take for example a typical breakout game. In this case, the website can make a huge difference I feel. If I wanted to play a breakout clone, I would probably buy from the best looking website. Apart from that, whats to distinguish between them? Most of the features in game are the same.

But when you consider an original quality title, witout much competition, the website, style, offers etc mean so much less, as its the game it self that sets it apart.

Am I making any sense. Ive not thought this through really. Just fleshing it out with you guys.

Originally posted by BongPig
Take for example a typical breakout game. In this case, the website can make a huge difference I feel. If I wanted to play a breakout clone, I would probably buy from the best looking website. Apart from that, whats to distinguish between them? Most of the features in game are the same.


I donno. I don't think even breakout style games are entirely commodity gaming yet. I'm sure Ricochet - Lost Worlds will do much better than other breakout games purely based on the quality of the offering.

I think one of the key reasons traditional marketing techniques aren't applicable to shareware is that shareware is "try before you buy" -- If we were selling toilet paper and people were looking on the shelf trying to decide brand A or B then all they've really got is the packaging and whatever slogans or text is on the packaging to decide. In our case people have already played the game. They already know if it's fun or not. So things like slogans and sales copy, presentation, become a far 2nd. That's my guess.

Other things though, like is my money safe with you etc, seem to be basically ignored by the majority of punters.

Hmm.

Cas :)

Given that exposure matters, whats the best way to achieve that? Aside from getting new sites to mention a new game, my best results have come from paid listings on sharewrae sites (except download.com). I've not had much luck with google adwords (1 or 2 extra clciks a day doesnt make many sales), and I've had limited luck with banner ads.
Anyone know any tips? I'm not scared to speculate to accumulate, show me a site where its worth me spending $300 on advertising, and I'm there!

Originally posted by RedClaw

She clicked the buy button in the demo, which took her to a pretty generic looking regnow buy page. Entered her details and cc number, and that was it.

I'm stood there thinking "I wish all sales were that easy!", and decided to ask a few questions to see what made her so sure about buying:

me: Who made the game?
her: I don't know.

me: do you know their website address?
her: I'm not sure. I might've bookmarked it.

me: what's the difference between the demo and the full game?
her: erm... I don't know. I guess it just removes the time limit.

me: do they offer a guarantee if you don't like it?
her: ... I don't know.

me: was the page where you ordered the game secure?
her: ....... I hope so... why?

<at this point I knew she was getting annoyed at my quizzing, so just 1 final question>

me: so why did you just buy the game?
her: I like it, it's really fun.


That was quite an eye opener to me. I don't know if I would class her as the "average" game buyer, but in this case all notions of upsell, guarantee, good page layout, no external links on buy page, etc. etc. simply didn't matter. The game was good. She liked it. She bought it. End of story.

It seems like simplicity is the key here, she tried it liked it and the buying process was quick and easy like in a shop. As developers I think it maybe that we get bogged down in things like deciding what should be in the demo and whats in the full version etc. Maybe trying to explain the features, benefits, the nag screens etc confuses people and puts them off buying. After all the premise of games are that they are entertainment in a fun or challenging way. Maybe websites and in-game stuff is too much of a challenge for potential buyers and they just dont want it.

This thread is certainly prompting me to think about my approach.


Alfie

I doubt that layout and such makes a difference to the conversion rate. But it does make a difference to how many downloads you get, I think. Which in the end leads to more sales.

I at least get excited when a game has a really good presentation, increasing the chance I download it. Contrary I get put off if I need to look for the download button or if the layout is simply ugly.

I agree that site that looks very poor will put off many downloaders, but for that to be a big factor your site would have to already have quite a bit of traffic. I hazard to guess that most sites that have built up a lot of traffic already have a pretty decent presentation whereas the majority of beginners get their downloads straight from download sites without customers checking their sites at the same time.

Certainly one shouldn't avoid having a nicely presented clean site, but I'm wondering if, once the basic sane things are put in place whether there's much gain to be had tweaking the details.

@cliffski : wrt exposure - I think most people share your feeling that if they could find a site where 300$ returned 450$ they'd advertise there (assuming of course that you made less than 150 on that site without promotion) -- I don't know of any sure bets in that respect. For me the best kind of exposure I've gotten is from things like press releases. For instance when I released Twilight Mahjongg I put out a press release with DP directory and got a 1/4 page blurb and screenshot in smart computing magazine. That led to extra sales of 15-20 copies of that game per day for a while. Well worth the 100$ or so I spent doing the release. AND... if I'm doing things right I should have been able to retain many of those customers and then sell them my next Mahjongg game. Another point of exposure that's been good is various retail deals I've made where the games were allowed to retain links back to my site. I know some other authors have benefitted from that as well. Lastly I'd suggest trying to get the games onto magazine cover disks. That's also been good.

I think things like choosing the right difficulty level that lets the first-time player enjoy the game despite not being good at it (or not knowing the rules) can have a huge importance on the conversion rate. Making the game easy to understand too.

I assume making perfectly clear what the benefits of the full version are (ie. even for players who don't read the text on the buying screen) can also be important.

Ok, you KNOW I can't resist posting on a thread like this.

Let's pull this discussion back on track:

Svero says he wonders if better copy writing on his website leads to increased says. Additionally wonders if button placement and other subliminal tweaks affect sales.

I think that's about right. He wasn't talking about getting media coverage, we all KNOW that increases sales.


So, here's my 2 cents.

These things CAN boost sales IF you have a bad website. If you have a website that has problems from a sales perspective or a buy screen layout that has bad problems, you can certainly benefit. If you have a pretty good website and a pretty good buy button, you won't benefit and these things are not worth your time.


There are other things to think about.

Good copy writing is MOST useful for search engine opt. Its writing a good looking site that ranks you high on a major or multiple major search engines in high traffic key words. Figure out some brilliant way to get yourself listed as #1 on "free games" and you WILL get some major traffic.

Where you place a buy button or what words you use will only impact you if your original design was pretty bad.

For one of my first clients at vgsmart.com the only change we are making to the front page website is to concentrate only on strong selling products rather than rotating through all of them.

(This is called strength focusing, the theory is it is easier to improve sales of an already popular product than it is to improve sales of a poorly selling one).

So, overall, I agree with what Svero says. If you have a good setup, changing it wont make much difference. The only question is, what is a good site and what is bad... and that... is a much harder question that I won't get into in this post, lol.

Joseph Lieberman
Marketing Manager (I like this title)
www.vgsmart.com

I think we are mixing two different ideas in the same "subject"... most of your SALES come from your demo being good, and less from marketing tricks (nice buy button, sales text, etc)...

BUT think about where the downloads come from... I think once your site has enough exposure, thats where your marketting really matters, because you need to convince that person who will love your game, that they should DOWNLOAD it... because in the end, it doesnt matter how beautifully designed your page is, if someone doesnt like playing the game they wont buy it.... but if someone LOVES your webpage and the presentation of your game, they will download the demo and give it a shot...

am I wrong here?

What about people who don't buy on the basis of a demo? I'm seeing more people buying shareware without trying it first, and Steve ran an experiment where he didn't offer a downloadable demo. In circumstances like that, I think tweaking your website will help... I think so but I don't know so. I'm just getting started on tweaking my website and sales copy. Perhaps I'll know later after I've measured it all :)

Originally posted by svero
There are a bazillion articles about how to word your sales text, 30 day money back guarantees, where to put your buy button, what color your sales screen should be, how long your demo should last and so on...

Does any of it *REALLY* make any difference?


Steve,

Most of these are checkbox-style issues. You do one, check it off, and move on to the next one. Generally, once you've taken the idea into account you don't have to revisit it.

In other words, when *you* release a game, you've covered the bulk of the "easy stuff" already, simply because you've done it all before.

I agree with Terin on the importance of good copywriting. Again, though, this isn't likely to be something *you* have a problem with. At best, you'll tweak it over time to keep it current or add a bit of information you left off.

Here's a test: If you doubt the value of all that beginner-oriented advice, remove all traces of following it from your Web site and marketing material. See what happens. ;)

-David

But I'm not really doing it. In fact I pay little attention to it because every time I have tried making changes of that nature it hasn't made much of a difference.

And besides why would I do anything as a "checkbox" without knowing if it works? I mean I could add a 30 day money back guarantee and then measure the result and find it actually hurts sales. Seems like we take for granted a lot of standard things.

In practice it's not always so easy to measure, and you have to get a fairly significant sample size before you can make any real hard claim that one is better than the other. I have added things that are generally accepted (like the money back guarantee) to my site but I don't really know for sure that they work. The only way to really know is to measure, but so far whenever I've done measurements they've not gone according to what I believed was supposed to be true.

Incidentally, one great place to do experiments on wording is in google adwords. It's limited because there's limited text, but you can set up a number of similar ad groups and get fairly decent exposure and results on them in a short period of time. So I'd try stuff like..

"Mahjongg Variations. Free Demo"

vs.

"Mahjongg Variations. Try a Demo"

vs

"Mahjongg Variations. Play Now."

and so on... The results do vary by quite a bit.

Now you might be saying to yourself that that answers my question. That the copy IS very important. The situation is different though. In one case it's ONLY the copy. And in the other case the player has played the game. Since most of my exposure is through demos I'm guessing that the text has outlived its usefullness relative to how fun the game was.

I think the reason that things like button placement aren't necessarily getting reflected in your experiments is because the trial version is such a TREMENDOUS marketting tool in itself that it completely overshadows smaller details like headline text and money back guarantees.

I think you definitely have a point, in that it's more important to concentrate on creating a trial version that people ENJOY and makes them want the full product. It's true, if I get hooked on a demo and really really want the full version of the software, the site would have to be really terrible and fishy looking before I changed my mind. This is because the trial version has already made the sale, and the job of the site has shifted from being a salesman to being a cashier.

Remember Steve Pavlina's experiment? He removed the trial versions of his games and was still getting great sales. Suddenly the importance of things like well-written sales text, easy to navigate website, good screenshots, risk-free purchase, etc increased dramatically. Although he would actually have to run an experiment before we can be sure, I highly highly doubt that if Dexterity.com looked like a GeoCities template site with spelling mistakes, vague screenshot descriptions, and nothing to indicate that Dexterity is a reputable company, that he would have gotten many, if any, sales.

Ultimately, I think the site is there more to sell the person on the demo than it is to sell the full product. You should measure your visitors:downloads ratio before you discount the importance of the things you are blowing off as not working. Most of the tactics mentioned, including money-back guarantees (which also help to establish the reputatability of a site and give the visitor a reason to even bother with the download), could be doing a lot of work convincing the visitor to try the trial.

If these things aren't affecting your download rates either, then that certainly is interesting :)

Originally posted by SyneRyder
What about people who don't buy on the basis of a demo?

I think they're in the minority and I believe that if you targeted all your marketing without demos you'd lose money. But yes certainly in this case the sales copy would really matter because it's the ONLY thing the customer has to go on. Then you fall back into a more traditional or retail marketing scenario.

>I think the reason that things like button placement aren't
>necessarily getting reflected in your experiments is because the
>trial version is such a TREMENDOUS marketting tool in itself that
>it completely overshadows smaller details like headline text and
>money back guarantees.

Sure.. that makes sense to me, but then is it true? I've said pretty much the same thing in this thread. I've yet to see anyone say they've seen significant sales increases by changing things like copy. Well 1 person did... but it's unclear whether they measured or not.

>I think you definitely have a point, in that it's more important to
>concentrate on creating a trial version that people ENJOY and
>makes them want the full product.

A properly laid out game/demo is also marketing work to some extent of course. Things like thumbnail screens can create a desire to see later levels and give an impression of how big the game is and so on.

>This is because the trial version has already made the sale, and
>the job of the site has shifted from being a salesman to being a
>cashier.

Yes I agree. And incidentally that's why my demo's all take you to the purchasing page and not the game information page when you click "Buy Now". Maybe the demos should also have a "I'm not sure I need more info" button?

>Remember Steve Pavlina's experiment? He removed the trial
>versions of his games and was still getting great sales.
>Suddenly the importance of things like well-written sales text,
>easy to navigate website, good screenshots, risk-free purchase,

I'm dubious about the results we saw from this because I dont think enough time had passed. Also steve put the demos all back, so I'm skeptical that the improved sales kept on after a few months. I've never done this experiment myself, but I'd expect to see sales go up a little after first removing the demos because you'd be focusing your site on the sale for people that already have the demo, but that eventually sales would go down.

>etc increased dramatically. Although he would actually have to
>run an experiment before we can be sure, I highly highly doubt
>that if Dexterity.com looked like a GeoCities template site with
>spelling mistakes, vague screenshot descriptions, and nothing
>to indicate that Dexterity is a reputable company, that he would
>have gotten many, if any, sales.

Sure. And that's why I mentioned that the site should be reasonably sane. I agree that a very amaturish site will scare off potential downloaders and customers. If it was bad enough some people would run away.

>If these things aren't affecting your download rates either, then
>that certainly is interesting :)

I get a fair amount of traffic but a lot of it is from people who already have the demos. I've just started running an experiment on demo downloads though and so far no extremely significant difference.

All I know, is that if Liquid War was shareware instead of freeware, I'd STILL buy it off their "beautiful" website (http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/).