So my big realisation from taking part in Steam Next Fest Feb 2024 was that I haven’t been doing enough marketing for my parkour game Freerunners and I need to change that. I have a list of things I want to do to increase the quality and fun of the game itself, but I need to fight my urges to work on the game and make sure I carve out time for the marketing side of things. The bit I know least about and need to learn the most about.
I didn’t get a chance to refresh my store assets before the Next Fest so I thought this would be a great place to start. I also wanted to track numbers before and after this test as well as with future tests to try and tell what has been working / not working. The current goal is to increase my conversion rate for people landing on my store page to wishlisting the game, as it is pretty low in general at the moment.
Check out the REVAMPED Store page here
I wanted to make some immediate changes. So 2 things I decided to act on first were:
Update the trailer as it was pretty old and the art, lighting, animations and mechanics had been improved since I made that initial trailer
Make the GIFS on my store page less “Choppy”. This was based on some feedback that I got during Next Fest. People felt that the GIFs didn’t represent the actual gameplay. This was mainly because the GIFs were so optimised (to keep the size low) that they had a low framerate giving it that choppy look
THE TRAILER
For the Trailer improvements because I wanted some immediate changes I decided to keep the structure of the original trailer. Instead I focused on re-recording each shot in the newest version of the game. I think this worked out well as it wasn’t too time-consuming, it made the trailer more appealing and it got rid of some glaring bugs that always annoyed me in the original trailer. We will have to see if wishlist conversion rate agrees with me though! Below you can see a comparison of the new and old trailer.
THE GIFS
For the GIFs, I decided the best thing for an immediate fix for the “choppy” problem would be to take the original MP4 video footage I had and remake the GIFs trying to maintain a better framerate. This was easier than it sounds as the GIFs still had to be low enough filesize with to work on the Steam page. However, I managed to up the framerate while keeping the size low mainly by heavily cropping them. I ended up liking the cropped look as I think the ultra-widescreen feel actually looks better! Below you can see the comparison of the old and new GIFs
OLD GIFs
NEW GIFs
These aren’t massive changes by any means and I’ll definitely generate more new assets in the future but I’m hoping these changes will be better than what I currently have. I have more tests and improvements planned but for this weeks test I think this is a good start. Over the next 2 weeks I’ll track the storepage and wishlish data and see if I get any kind of uptick! The numbers will tell me if I’m doing better or worse!
PLAY THE FREE DEMO HERE
Let me know what you think and give the game a wishlist if you like it!