UPDATE 2 | Your Itch.io Store Page


A good chunk of the Brand Assets chapter of the Zero-Budget Game Marketing Manual is dedicated to your game's store page. Here, all the marketing assets that form the collective brand of your game are brought into one place.

If a potential customer/player has found their way to your store, your page needs to do all it possibly can to bring them to one of three key actions: wishlist, follow or purchase (or simply download, if your game is free). There is no better, or more opportune time to have somebody's attention; they're a click or two away from owning your game. 

A little excerpt from the book with some general advice around store pages:

According to Hannah Flynn, Failbetter Games’ Communications Director, and somebody particularly interested in the successfulness of a store page: all of your marketing efforts will be for nought if your page doesn’t drive a visitor to take one of three key actions: wishlist, follow or purchase.

It’s easy to go wrong, however, and you can lose somebody very quickly if your page isn’t up to snuff. To that end, Flynn highlights three key questions smaller studios should be asking themselves in relation to their store pages.

  • CAN PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY’RE GETTING?
  • CAN THE INFORMATION ON THE PAGE GIVE THE POTENTIAL PLAYER CONFIDENCE IN THE GAME?
  • DOES THE PAGE CONVEY THE GAME’S PERSONALITY?

“People are browsing for games that they know they’ll like. This isn’t the place to tease or hint at what your game does. Be as upfront as possible about what your game is offering. This means really nailing the game’s genre in the short description. You know your game really well, which means this will feel very obvious to you! But say it early and clearly: ‘it’s a bullet hell adventure’. ‘It’s a casual puzzle game’. Be obvious, help people decide if they want what you’re selling.”

“You have to use your page to build trust with your potential player because you’re trying to convince them to part with money on what might be a totally unknown quantity to them. Try not to have anything on your page that would cause doubt, and do everything you can to build trust.

If it’s November 2020, and this game’s page says ‘coming 2020’ but doesn’t have a release date, or recent development updates, what does that say? Why would you follow a game which didn’t look like it was still being developed?

Sometimes, one part of the page disagrees with another. The description says the game has full controller support, but only the partial controller support box has been ticked. Things change throughout development; reflect them on your page.

The most obvious mark of trustworthiness is your review score. If your review averages aren’t looking good, you should have something on your page which shows that you’re addressing it. Maybe that’s responding to reviews which are factually incorrect, or maybe it’s an announcement post about an upcoming patch.”

“Is the page really specific to your game, using imagery and tone of voice that convey the feel of it well? Can you use the game’s tone of voice, or insert gameplay GIFs which show its atmosphere? If your game is funny, be funny. If it’s epic, use the specifics of its epic world: dress the page in amazing screenshots and GIFs to show its scale. Try not to fall into the trap of generic ‘in a world where…’ marketing blather. This is your game, and no one cares about it more than you. Be specific and let it shine!

One last thing:

This is not a once and done thing. Your store page is your game’s home. Every day, players are looking at it to decide if they want to try your game. Set a reminder to look at it at least monthly, and keep a rolling list of changes you want to make to keep it polished and working hard!”

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Share a link to your store page in the comments, and (time permitting!) we'll get back to you with a few notes on how it might be improved. 

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