Crazyegg.com

[techbear]

Has everyone seen http://crazyegg.com/

Its data report is VERY interesting. What I've learned about my site,
http://www.aggressivegames.com/
is that people mostly seem to click right on the download buttons; few of them choose to go to the "more info" link. It's possible that we only have, say, 25 words and one picture to convince the viewer to try our games.

Does that theory jibe with your experiences? And if so, should we do away with the second "more info" pages altogether?

[bvanevery]

Why would you expect most people to read about a game when they can just download the demo and play it immediately?

Maybe a "More Info" button is a way to lose a sale. 'Cuz, the player should get their info by downloading and playing the game. It should play well enough that they want to buy it. "More info" is mental masturbation, a way for the customer to distance himself from the act of buying. If they couldn't mentally masturbate for a minute, then maybe they'd just go ahead and buy it.

Now I suppose it's possible that there's some last speck of information that the buyer might feel he needs to close the deal. It would be worth finding out what that is. Then provide it somewhere else, like in your 25 word sales pitch, or in the downloaded game. I'd work on having "More Info" be really accessible within the game itself, not the webpage about the game.

I haven't made a product yet, let alone try to sell one. But from what I've read and observed, a big image and 25 words is luxury. On portal sites you've gotta sell your game with 1 thumbnail of your cover art and the title of the game alone, with lotsa other titles competing to do exactly the same thing. I've read that in the cell phone space, you'll be selling with just the title alone, piled into a list of other titles, and that's a serious branding problem. Also I saw a portal site yesterday, can't find it now, that had a whole pile of pinkie-nail sized cover art images and no titles. This was some kind of "older games" sidebar, not deemed worthy of "full size" thumbnails or titles. Some games had titles or logos that were still readable, others didn't. So that said to me, plan the iconography of your cover art accordingly.

[Roman Budzowski]

Maybe a "More Info" button is a way to lose a sale.

Maybe. But it should not convince a visitor to buy, it should convince him to download the game. So if one needs only 25 words to download the game, then fine, if someone else wants to read 2500 words, then fine for him.

You should track visits to download ratio on short lead and long lead to determine if it's working or not.

best
Roman

[bvanevery]

If a person has broadband, and there's a big "Download Now!" button, what causes them to hesitate to download something and try it out? Sure there are places without broadband, but in this day and age, I think you'd do fine to ignore them.

[KNau]

I wonder how many people click "Play Now" expecting the game to open in their browser.

[Matthew]

We've tried a bunch of layouts and tracked numbers. Users respond best to a prominently-colored download button in the top-left-most position.

Not to pick on Legacy, but http://www.feverfrenzy.com/ is the #1 ranked site for "Fever Frenzy" at the moment. It's horribly confusing--they need to put a big download button at the top of the page. Yes, you can click the image to go to the product page, but even then the download button is a ways down.

In this example I bet they would see a 20% increase in downloads by moving the button on their product page, and a 100% increase in downloads off the game-specific domain with a prominent download button...

[electronicStar]

I wonder how many people click "Play Now" expecting the game to open in their browser.
Yes this happens to me all the time:o